Rare Gamer interviews Grant Kirkhope

by Paul on Jul 20th, 2010

We’ve quite a big update for Rare fans everywhere, folks! Grant Kirkhope, Audio Director and Composer for a multitude of Rare titles including Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, Viva Pinata and Goldeneye, has agreed to have an interview with us regarding his work and time at Rare!

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll explode in a million giddy pieces as you hear what Mr. Kirkhope has to say about the behind the scenes workings of your favorite Rare titles! Without further ado, the full fledged half hour interview with Grant Kirkhope may be found below, lovingly peppered with several of Grant’s compositions to carry you along, d’aww we spoil ya rotten.

We’d like to extend our extreme thanks to Mr. Grant Kirkhope, who took the time out of his day to sit down and let us interview him, it means the world to us really!

 

 

Also for posterity we have two other written interviews we had with Grant back when we were Spiral Mountain …

After enough nagging e-mails, we managed to coax Grant Kirkhope out of his hiding hole long enough to talk to us.

In case you weren’t sure, Grant started his career with Rare in the mid 90’s by doing the sound for Donkey Kong Land 2 on the Gameboy. He was later given the task of the music on the classic shooter Goldeneye with Graeme Norgate, which led him to greater things, namely composing the music for Banjo-Kazooie. Grant has also composed for a number of other Rare titles, including Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Rare’s most recent console endeavor, Viva Pinata. And his next game? Banjo Kazooie 3, of course.

Here below are two brief interviews with our favourite composer from Paste and Kowbrainz respectively;

 

Paste’s interview:

 

How did you get your job?

I used to play in lots of different rock bands over the years, I met Robin Beanland (Head of Music at Rare) in one such band. He went of to work at Rare and I continued to play in bands, when it all collapsed he suggested I try and do what he was doing. I bought an Atari ST and a synth and a copy of Cubase and sent five demo tapes over the course of a year to Rare and heard nothing. Out of the blue I got a letter asking me to come for an interview, and I got the job!

Who inspired you to go into this line of work?

No-one really, I was completely unaware of music in games when I first started.

What do you like about your job?

I get to write music for a living, how cool is that, and I get paid for it….hehe! I really am very lucky, if I wasn’t composing here at Rare I’d be composing at home for nothing.

Dislikes?

Sometimes the beaurocracy gets in the way of creativity.

What is your annual pay?

I can’t tell you that….hehe!

What are some skills that are important to being a composer?

For a games composer it’s essential that you can write in as many different stryles of music as possible. You never know what you may have to do. For the Viva Pinata Romance Dances I had to write 60+ different pieces in varying styles, it was good fun though!

What level of training/education do you have?

I did a music degree at The Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in the UK, my first study was Trumpet.

What is a typical work day for you?

Get to work and compose, compose, compose! On most of the games I’ve worked on I’ve done music and SFX, but these days the jobs are getting more and more split as the games are getting bigger, so you tend to have some people composing and some people doing the SFX.

Do you have any advice for aspiring composers?

Listen to as much music as possible and always say yes no matter what someone wants you to do. To get your foot in the door you may have to to stuff that you might not like, but that’s the way it is. And remember to write music for the game and not for yourself, if you’re a metal fan and you write serious grunge for a cute platformer you’re not gonna get hired!

Who is your favourite composer?

Hmmmm…..I’ve got a few, Edward Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Danny Elfman, John Williams….and I love the score to the recent film ‘Stardust’ by Ilan Eshkeri.

What do you think is your best soundtrack?

I guess I’d have to say Viva Pinata, as it’s the first time I got to write for full orchestra. Also it’s the kind of music I love to write, I’d probably write in that style even if I wasn’t writing for Rare.

 

Kowbrainz’s interview:

 

Just wanted to say thanks for your brilliant work on Viva Pinata. I’ve been a huge fan of your works since Banjo-Kazooie, and after unravelling a brand new Xbox with VP yesterday, I can say that I’m truly in love with your orchestrated pieces – real works of art, I’ve even downloaded them off Rare’s site and listen to them wherever I go now.

I’m soooooooo proud of my pieces in Pinata. When I was at the recording on the first day and the orchestra kicked off with my first piece I nearly burst into tears…hehe! It was a truly amazing experience! Night 3 is my favourite I think…..nice and sombre!

It must be a great feeling, I’d imagine – having your own compositions played out by an orchestra. I think anyone would feel like going to tears after going from midi tracks to that.

I have to agree with you on the Night 3 piece – probably one of the more beautiful songs I’ve heard from you. Day 2 is a favourite of mine as well… but then again, they’re all very nice. I’m looking forward to hearing the Jameleon Romance dance – I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.

The Jameleon dance eh! The artists wanted to have the music change like a Chameleon changes colour so I thought I would stick together some of my old stuff and have some static in between to separate them. You should (hopefully) recognise the music apart from one piece!

I look forward to hearing some more great soundtracks in the future from you… Banjo in particular, really. I’d love to hear some classic BK style melodies orchestrated, too.

I’m still not sure if I’m gonna do Banjo with full orchestra yet…..you’ll have to wait and see!

It’s obviously been a while since you’ve composed anything for Banjo, but do you have a favourite piece from the games thus far? Or do the current pieces you’re working on top everything from the past?

Personally I can’t decide on a single favourite tune… both games had a large share of great songs. I’m not sure whether I preferred the ambience of Atlantis or some of the more upbeat tunes like Rusty Bucket Bay, Mayahem Temple and the like.

Hmmm….I’d better not say too much about the new Banjo game…hehe! I am trying to keep the same oddball feel about it all……you might hear the odd reference back to some of the old pieces if you listen carefully….hehe!

I do really like the Atlantis theme, it has one of my favourite chord sequences that creates a nice feel. Rusty Bucket is a good fun piece, those trombones make me smile when I hear them! The chant in the Mayahem Temple is my voice pitched way down, can you tell what I’m saying I wonder?

They really were fun days! That original core team that did those games was a great bunch of people. We all had the same sense of humour and had great fun……we’re not really together these days which is a shame…oh well!

I know a few of the other pieces from Dream got reused in some other games like DK64 and Banjo especially, but were there any other pieces that got dropped which you’d particularly like to bring back?

I have used some of the ideas from ‘Dream’ here and there, in fact one of the main Pinata themes is from that game, I’ve been saving it for a worthy game for years…hehe!

One question that sticks with me refers to the piece during the Jameleon dance which was initially meant for Dream – I’m itching to know what it was actually going to be used for, it’s a shame it was left out of games until today.

Hehe……that piece in the Jameleon dance was for a character called ‘Bigbelly’, a drunken pirate. I did a big intro to the piece with the sound effects of a bottle being opened and drunk out of and a few burps!

Something which I was wondering about was the amount of information Rare gives you on a level or setting before you do a piece of music on it. Is your inspiration based on a basic description with a few of the concept artist’s sketches, or do you get to see a proper beta model of the level before you begin? It just occurred to me that although some of your pieces are so fitting for their respective settings, it isn’t like you’d be seeing the finished level before you get started on the piece.

Hmmm, sometimes I can see backgrounds that are pretty well done, it just depends. There’s always a good description of what is going to be drawn tho’ as the designers have lots of documents with details of the whole game.

A quick last one if I may – Viva Pinata’s soundtrack may be orchestrated, but does that make it your favourite game soundtrack of all? Or do you prefer the work you did for Goldeneye, or Grabbed by the Ghoulies; or the quirky tunes for Banjo and DK64?

I think Pinata is my favourite so far as I got to use full orchestra. But it’s also the kind of music I like to write the most, I’d probably write that kind of stuff for pleasure if I wasn’t employed to do so.

Thanks for your time, happy to be able to talk to you.

We’d like to give a big thank-you to Mr Kirkhope for lending us his time, and a good-luck to him in his future endeavors.

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