Composer Walter Mair’s music is everywhere and you might not even realize it. Perhaps you’re aware of the titles with his name on the marquee: the Apple TV+ show Liaison, starring Eva Green and Vincent Cassel; the memorable, Megan Fox-starring horror flick Til Death; and, recently, the 2023 reboot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. He’s also contributed score cues to everything from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to Ryan Gosling’s surrealist 2014 directorial debut, Lost River, and the Netflix hit Squid Game, among many more.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, from publisher Activision and developer Sledgehammer Games, finds Mair bringing out an engaging onslaught of sonic techniques to complement the grand and compelling scope of the title. There is the foreboding of the pulsating rhythms and minor-key strings of the London Contemporary Orchestra and a staggering amount of synths; the gritty growl of 1990s techno bass; the energizing interplay of the various instruments; the expert deployment of sound design; and Mair’s trademark penchant for elevating the sensory experience with an intelligent utilization of experimentation.
In general, the gig gave Mair the opportunity to get involved in a kind of “adaptive” scoring modality that fits a game like this perfectly. A player might be in the thick of it with the action or they might be just chilling a bit and exploring. The player is in control — not the composer — and that demands a flexible array of cues to fit the machinations of this player-directed force. This is naturally quite different from scoring a film or television show. The composer still usually isn’t in control, but neither is the viewer. (Save for the novelty interactive fare that isn’t terribly ubiquitous.)
“It was super cool, because I could write these long suites — ups and downs, and action and low action, and [for] just walking around; instead of doing multiple tracks,” the London-based, Austria-born Mair told Vehlinggo recently in a Zoom chat that found him back in Vienna and yours truly in Brooklyn. “So it was very unique in that respect.”
We kick off the Q&A below with a tad more discussion of the adaptive approach, along with other elements of scoring for Modern Warfare III. Then we turn to his roots with a mother who taught opera singing; his experience scoring for different types of media; what people expect from the famously adventurous composer; and more. [Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Vehlinggo: I haven’t owned a new video game system since the Playstation 2, so I might come off a little ignorant during this interview. However, I very much dig your Call of Duty score and your work in general, so I still think I can pull it off. [laughs] I was reading up about this “adaptive” scoring system you were involved in. How does this work? Do you feed cues to the programmers, who incorporate it into some kind of code framework? It seems quite the departure from scoring to a fixed picture, like in film and television.
Walter Mair: That’s exactly how it used to work. Initially, you write the suite of, let’s say three minutes. It’s going to be looped and there are high-intensity and low-intensity versions. For example, a “sneaking around the corridor version.” Then depending on the speed of the player or the game, things would be triggered. That used to be the case.
And with [Call of Duty:] Modern Warfare III, we had a very different system, which allowed me to write a long suite of several minutes. Sometimes when something would happen, there was probably nothing visually triggering that, but the player feels more engaged. But at the same time, the programmers would make sure that before something happens, they would start to play a certain point from my suite. So by the time you get there, you’re almost likely to hit the cue points, and if not, then this kind of section loops a few times.
That’s fascinating. Is this your first time under this system?
Yeah.
And would you do it again?
A hundred percent, yeah. It makes my life easier, because I can write [a cue for] a mission — let’s say it takes 15 minutes. I take it in and then I think, well, players could play faster or slower. I’m just going to write something that’s super interesting. And we’ve done many playthroughs and tests and they all succeeded, because even if there’s not a 100% hit, the player still has an emotional kind of hit. Then something happens and the cues can elongate.
In general you’ve scored quite a few video games, or contributed some music to a host of titles. Could you tell me more, aside from adaptive elements, about the differences generally between video games and your series and film work — like Liaison or Til Death?
I think the main difference is time. On a game you usually have 12-18 months — you come in at the later half or stages of the project. And with a film or TV show, usually the editor is done [and] there are release dates and everything needs to be fast. On Liaison I had plenty of time, just because they had to reshoot. There were a few things that happened, so it gave me more time. But usually it would be kind of fast-paced or rather fast.
Games like Call of Duty or anything else I’ve done, there’s a bit of free time where you can… play around, being creative, messing about in the studio — just doing something really… out there, just pushing the limit and being creative. And once you have to turn over X amount of minutes per week, or per month, then you’ve got a pool of sounds — something cool that you draw from.
I’ve noticed in the press around this, you’ve talked about mixing things up a bit — playing string instruments with guitar picks or running brass instruments through distortion pedals. How do you know when to do this kind of stuff? Is it your own artistic intuition about what to use? Or do people request something unorthodox for a specific title?
Oh, that’s such a good question and very tough to answer. Sometimes my clients know how much I mess around with sounds, so they expect that… there are no limits. For instance, the Call of Duty pitch is me messing around, recording solo cellists and [other] instruments just as a picture. They’re running it through literally analog effects or a… tape machine. It’s just a two-track and… you can just run stuff through and at the end something different comes out — it alters in time and pitch. And I thought, this is nice to bring it in and mix it and layer it. So my clients usually have to encourage me or they allow me to be creative at first and then either rein me in or are like, “Hey, we like that, push it further.”
With Call of Duty it’s been great. The pitch is amazing. Because in the pitch, you have a bit more — not time, but there are no constraints. So you just totally let loose and you just do whatever you think might be right. And then the game director was like, “OK, just keep going. Just push it, push it, push it. Whatever you want to do, let’s push it.” And that’s when we turned up at AIR Studios [in London] with the [London Contemporary Orchestra] and did recordings and then mixed it up, using different mic techniques that we wouldn’t necessarily use. You just play with the sound and have fun.
The project managers know what they’re getting into with you.
Yeah. I remember on Liaison, where the producers and the director and the execs partly were in the studio, partly joining us live on Zoom, and the audio links were an uncompressed quality and they can hear it and join in. And some of them didn’t fully get the brief — they thought it’s a regular recording session. What I’m doing is creating patterns and weird stuff and rhythms and textures, and they’re like, “OK, interesting. We have no idea how this score is going to be, but it’s interesting.”
Have you always been interested in blending acoustic sounds — actual string instruments and stuff like that — and electronic instruments? And how does that influence your creativity and how you approach these video games or film and TV?
It goes back to my early childhood, when my mom used to be a teacher for opera singers. We’re talking about a very operatic kind of voice. And so ever since I was little, there was opera music played in the living room of my parents.
And if there’s a comparison between opera music and anything else, it would be metal. It’s being played out loud and in your face. So my mom never listened to it quietly. So us kids — my sister and I — would hear it. Even if we were playing with Legos and stuff, we’d still hear opera in the background. There’s an influence there.
But when you’re a teenager, you want to be as far removed as possible. So I produced electronic music. But something was ingrained from my early childhood, when I then decided to study composition. I knew I would have to learn more about the classical side, because that is super important — the orchestra. And I could see just melodies from opera. That’s something that awakened [in me].
Now I combine the electronic side and the classic side, because it’s just the most fun to me. Sometimes the score is more, I dunno, 60, 70 [percent] on one side and a third on the other. But I usually try to keep the balance, because that’s what interests me most.
And if I can’t bring electronics into the score, if it needs to be orchestral, then my next idea will be: “If it’s still orchestral, can I still kind of mess with the sound? Can I still kind of treat it and tweak it and make it more interesting?” And that’s usually being met with quite open arms.
I love it. Going back to Call of Duty. When you’re scoring, are you able to play a music-less video game to get ideas for the cues, as you maybe would when scoring “to picture”?
No, because usually in the beginning there’s a bit of security and you can’t get access to everything, so I usually fly out to the developer. In this case it was San Francisco with Sledgehammer and they would play stuff [from the game] for me. We would literally explore together… and talk stuff through.
Zoom is amazing. You can do a lot virtually. But to sit in the same room, feel the chemistry, feel the passion, feel everything: It tells me so much more about the project and it usually triggers something in me as well, seeing everyone responding; and how to play the game and how it all works. Then later they would send the playthroughs, which I then use to write against.
Oh, so a playthrough sounds a bit like scoring to picture: You’re writing music to a recording of someone playing a game?
The playthrough is as interesting or as entertaining as how good or as bad the person is who plays the game. When I get stuff very often, it’s from the audio department. And as audio geeks, we’re not too good at playing first-person shooters. But the person who did it, she got better and better every week. And it was just kind of a fun to see how good she got and how well she played the game. And it’s kind of an inside, fun joke as well.
That does sound fun. When you look back at the experience of scoring Call of Duty, what are some highlights? Which memories will you bring with you going forward?
There’s nothing super cool to tell you about, other than the first time we went to AIR with the [London Contemporary Orchestra] — after I prepared on pen and paper ideas of mockups of how weird it could sound with weird textures and rhythms stuff.
I didn’t fully understand what I’d done. And then I’d talk to the orchestrator and make sure that whatever is on paper is playable by the musicians. But often it’s very creative: remain on that note, choose a different note within those intervals. It gets out of hand sometimes and I don’t know 100 percent what it will sound like. I get an idea and at the session, I hear it for the first time, and I’m like, “Oh my God, that is unheard of. I’ve never done anything like that. I’ve never heard anything like that!”
And then I go to the musicians… and I brief them, like play harsher or softer or mellow or kind of spooky or eerie. And these guys — they’re so good — they would just give me some ideas back.
This kind of chemistry and this bounce of effect that we have at the live recording session: that’s incredible. At those sessions, anything is possible. And that’s kind of driving me to go from one session to the next and push it further and further just to see… what’s out there, what can we grasp.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is out now on Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC (via Battle.net and Steam). Mair’s score is currently streaming on various platforms.
