Interview With

Lawrence Schwedler

Audio Director and Composer, Metroid Prime Hunters
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We are humbled to be interviewing Lawrence Schwedler, one of the key people behind the sounds of Metroid Prime Hunters. Lawrence was credited for composing all music within the game. Lawrence shares how he approaches scoring music, what it was like to make music for a Metroid game, a fun story from his time at Nintendo Software Technology (NST) and working with Kenji Yamamoto himself.

SHINESPARKERS :
Thank you for agreeing to take part in this interview, Lawrence! For our readers who don’t know you, please introduce yourself, and your connection to the Metroid franchise.
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I’m a musician with twenty years of experience in the video game industry as a composer and sound designer. As audio director of Nintendo Software Technology I produced music and sound for fifteen game titles and co-authored two U.S. patents, one for interactive real time music composition and another for interactive wave table sound generation. One of those game titles was Metroid Prime Hunters, the first Metroid game for the Nintendo DS. I currently direct the Music and Sound Design program at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington.

SHINESPARKERS :
You started working for Nintendo Software Technology in 1999 as an Audio Director. We’re keen to hear your backstory! What inspired you to work in audio in the first place?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I’m a classical guitarist by training, although I also played the club scene in Los Angeles in the early 80s as lead singer for the band Midnight Fiction (Lawrence’s Bandcamp page) After earning a Masters degree in music at UCLA I worked as a production assistant for a multimedia company. That led to a job as composer/sound designer for The Dreamers Guild, where I worked on I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, FaeryTale Adventure II, and some other PC games. Eventually I wound up at Nintendo Software Technology in Redmond, Washington.

SHINESPARKERS :
When you create sounds for a video game, what process do you take to help you produce something suitable for the project you are working on, and how did this apply to Hunters?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

Every project is different. A franchise demands that you honor what came before while adding something new. But you can’t go too far or you’ll piss off the fans. I started by studying the music and sound from previous Metroid games and thinking about how our game might carry on the tradition and still break some new ground.

SHINESPARKERS :
During periods of writer’s block, how do you manage to push through and get back to where you need to be?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

Being a media composer means delivering on a deadline, so writer’s block becomes an existential threat to your livelihood. You learn how to deal with it or you find other work. I schedule a regular time during which I won’t be disturbed and then force myself to produce anything during that time, regardless of whether it’s any good or not. My good friend film composer/record producer David Kitay once told me that he sets a goal of writing several minutes of bad music a day – in other words, disengage your internal critic and simply get something done.

SHINESPARKERS :
We would love to hear more about how you approach scoring music for a video game. Can you share your process with us?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

It really depends on the project. The Metroid franchise provided a large body of work to serve as a style guide, and the Metroid universe itself suggested a dark, dangerous, tense, sci fi, epic, serious approach. The DS platform heavily influenced my process because I had to create my own virtual instrument sound banks, which in turn influenced my choice of instrumentation. I also rely heavily on the use of models (a compositional technique I learned from my mentor at UCLA, guitarist and composer Theodore Norman) in which you take an element of an existing composition – rhythm or form, for example – and use it as a scaffold on which to build an original composition. It’s a great way to get rolling – after a while you abandon the scaffold and do your own thing.

SHINESPARKERS :
How did the gig for Metroid Prime Hunters come up for you?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

As a staff composer at NST, I was paid a salary to produce music and sound for all our projects. By successfully developing sequels for a number of other franchises, such as RidgeRacer, WaveRace, and 1080 Snowboarding, I guess we earned the right to do one for Metroid.

SHINESPARKERS :
What was it like to work at NST, and with your fellow colleagues at the time?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

It was stressful to work on such high-profile games with such a huge fan base, knowing that everything we did would be compared to legendary Nintendo games we all loved. Every game developer loses sleep before their game is released, worrying about all the things they didn’t have time to do, sweating over how their work will be received. But it’s also a lot of fun. I got to work with an amazing team of programmers, designers, and artists, many of whom I still know and work with.

SHINESPARKERS :
How much previous knowledge of the Metroid series and its universe did you have before working on the game, and how did this impact the music you created?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I was not that familiar with Metroid before starting work on Hunters, but I quickly became a big fan.

SHINESPARKERS :
It’s cool to hear that Hunters encouraged you to become a fan! What are some of your favourite Metroid games, and why?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I played Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime as I prepared to work on Hunters, so those two are probably my favorites. I loved the fast pace and tight control of Fusion, which I played on the DS. I got lost in the expansive mood and story of Prime.

SHINESPARKERS :
What are your thoughts on the most recent game in the series, Metroid Dread?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I’ve only played the first bits of Dread, and I haven’t yet devoted the time to get good enough at it to progress very far – I’m the first to admit I’m not a particularly adept video gamer 🙂 But I watched my son play it for several hours, and absolutely love the heart-pounding panic of being pursued by an E.M.M.I. The level design alone boggles the mind.

SHINESPARKERS :
Both you and your colleague James Phillipsen were credited on Hunters for sound design, music and voice. How was the workload divided between you?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

Soon after I began working at NST I realized I wouldn’t be able to do everything myself, and so I hired James Phillipsen as the second member of NST’s audio team. We’re both composer/sound designers, but on Hunters I did the music and James did the sound design.

SHINESPARKERS :
How did the hardware limitations of the Nintendo DS impact the quality of the music and sound?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

The DS had technical limitations which had a big impact on music and sound design. One consequence was that I made all my own sound banks and used control data to render the music at runtime. The advantage to this approach is that performance data is extremely malleable, unlike digital audio data, allowing for instantaneous shifts in key and tempo with almost no cost to cpu.

SHINESPARKERS :
We interviewed Richard Vorodi, the Single Player and Story Designer for Metroid Prime Hunters. He said that he believes at the beginning, the team had freedom to explore different gameplay and story ideas. From your perspective, how much creative freedom did you have when scoring the game?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I was always allowed extraordinary freedom in my work for Nintendo, perhaps because they trusted that I understood the role of a media composer for franchise titles.

SHINESPARKERS :
Musicians within the Metroid community have been curious to learn what sample libraries were used to make the music and sounds in Hunters. Which instruments and hardware were responsible for your creations?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I don’t recall which libraries I used. I used my Fender Stratocaster, my Guild D25 acoustic, a Specter bass, and a fully-weighted 88-key synth/MIDI controller.

SHINESPARKERS :
I’m sure that will be a great help! On the topic of musicians, how do you feel about fans remixing and arranging your work?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I think it’s great! It’s a practice that dates back at least to the Middle Ages, where composers would use the music of their predecessors as the foundation for new works. I should also point out that as a salaried staff composer, all of the music I wrote for Nintendo is considered “work for hire” under U.S. Copyright law, meaning that I have no ownership of any kind. That said, I am extremely grateful to Nintendo for giving me the opportunity to make a good living doing what I love to do.

SHINESPARKERS :
We want you to take this opportunity to highlight what went into creating the sound for Metroid Prime Hunters. What was it like to work within the hardware limits of the Nintendo DS, and what kinds of tricks and methods were used to get the most out of the system?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I recorded my own samples in order to build custom sound banks that could fit into the limited memory of the original DS. I used a special adaptor that allowed me to send MIDI data directly from my keyboard into the DS SDK so that I could play my sound banks in real time and hear them on the DS speakers and headphones. I built my orchestra to sound as good as possible on the target hardware.

SHINESPARKERS :
Did you receive any guidance or support from other composers at Nintendo that was helpful during the development of the game?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

Nintendo’s Kenji Yamamoto, composer for the Metroid series (including Super Metroid and the Prime trilogy) came to Redmond early in development to instruct me in the ways of Metroid. I could not have done what I did without his guidance. Mr. Yamamoto taught me to appreciate the role of music in the Metroid franchise and its specific application to gameplay, and I took the lessons to heart.

SHINESPARKERS :
Mr. Yamamoto is a musician many Metroid fans have a deep respect for, and based on your answer there, it sounds like you share that same respect! What was he like to meet and work with?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

My memory of working with Mr. Yamamoto is that he was supportive, generous, and patient. James and I were newbies to the world of Metroid at the start of the project, and yet he treated us with respect. That gave me the confidence to try to add my voice to the Metroid canon.

SHINESPARKERS :
Let’s explore the sound design and voice that went into the game. Can you give us some insight into how the creation of some key sounds came together, such as the weapons, death screams and environment sounds?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

My colleague James Phillipsen was responsible for all the sound design in Hunters, and I can’t remember much in the way of specifics. I seem to recall him saying he had to get pretty creative to make the “big” sounds for Hunters sound big on such small speakers. When I left Nintendo in 2012 to teach at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, James stayed on as NST’s audio director. His latest title with NST is Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.

SHINESPARKERS :
How is working on audio for a Nintendo game, comparable to other gigs you have been a part of in your career?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

There’s nothing quite like working on a game eagerly anticipated by millions of people. It’s not all fun & games – you can’t help but feel that you have big shoes to fill, and imposter syndrome invariably rears its ugly head. At the same time, it’s thrilling to know that millions of people will hear your music.

SHINESPARKERS :
What sources of inspiration did you turn to for help developing the soundtrack?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I’m not sure how to answer that – I think I find inspiration at the moment of creation, when I’m running with the barest hint of an idea and the sound of the instruments carries me away into some new place.

SHINESPARKERS :
Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt, a demo bundled with the Nintendo DS system, contained arrangements from previous Metroid titles. Was any music from previous Metroid titles considered for Hunters?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I don’t recall. As I learned from Mr. Yamamoto, the Metroid franchise has a hierarchy of melodies that serve specific functions: the unlocking of a door, the acquisition of an artifact, the arrival on a new planet, the completion of a mission. We took this system into account as we designed the music for Hunters.

SHINESPARKERS :
That’s a cool insight! So there are strict melodies that each Metroid game has to have under Mr. Yamamoto? Can you tell us more about this system?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I was referring to the stingers and melodies that are common to all Metroid games – melodic phrases tied to specific game functions. Other than that, I remember having extraordinary freedom as to the background music in the game, once we got rolling and I had a handle on those functional melodies. As I recall, it was my choice to arrange pre-existing Metroid background themes for some of the tracks, and to write original music for the rest.

SHINESPARKERS :
First Hunt released in 2004, with the final release of Hunters distributed in 2006. How did the game’s sound develop between those two years?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

First Hunt was a proof of concept demo, while Hunters was a fully-developed game. We used what we learned on First Hunt in order to deliver Hunters two years later, including a full single-player story mode and an awesome multi-player mode that quickly became the team’s favorite part of the game.

SHINESPARKERS :
One of your arrangements, the Psycho Bits battle theme appeared in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. How does it feel to have your work appear in other titles beyond Metroid Prime Hunters?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

It’s a complete honor! I didn’t even know that music from Hunters was in Smash Bros. until I heard about it from one of my students.

SHINESPARKERS :
Was there any music that did not make it into the game, and if so, what were the reasons, and what can you tell us about those themes?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I’m not sure if we held anything back. I don’t usually throw stuff away; instead I just keep working it until it fits.

SHINESPARKERS :
What was your personal favourite arrangement from the game?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

As a parent, I’ve learned not to play favorites 😉

SHINESPARKERS :
Looking back, can you share some of your fondest memories from working on the game? Perhaps a few anecdotes from your time working at NST?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

One of my favorite memories of NST was not from Hunters, but from 1080 Avalanche. At the beginning of the project the whole team went to Mt. Baker for three days of snowboarding to get a feel for the sport. Many of us had never snowboarded before, and I could barely walk when we got back because of the muscle strain. We drank a lot of beer and had a blast – it was a great way to kick off the project.

SHINESPARKERS :
What sort of things did you learn from your time working on Metroid Prime Hunters that have been helpful in your career since?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

That there’s nothing like working on a great team. The friendships you make last a lifetime, and they’re ultimately more important than any reviews.

SHINESPARKERS :
We want to say thank you for your work on the Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt and Metroid Prime Hunters titles, and thank you for taking the time to respond to our questions. To end this interview, do you have a message to share directly to the fans?
LAWRENCE
SCHWEDLER :

I have two words for you: Metroid Dread.

In addition, Lawrence shared images of his memorabilia from the development of Hunters, including a Nintendo DS box that was bundled with Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt, and a bottle of Blue Bubble Gum Jones Soda. Jones promoted Hunters in a sweepstakes with several Samus-branded bottles – Lawrence has never opened his to this day.

© 2021 Shinesparkers and Lawrence Schwedler
Special thanks to Darren and RoyboyX
Interviewed on 10th November 2021