The game of music

Inon Zur has become one of the world’s leading composers of music for video games.

By BARRY DAVIS
Inon Zur (photo credit: LAURA GRIER)
Inon Zur
(photo credit: LAURA GRIER)
Israel, as we all know, is blessed with musical talent of practically every form and discipline. Indeed, it has been remarked that if we had been endowed with natural resources to match the seemingly bottomless wellspring of local musicians, we would have been an economic superpower.
Inon Zur is certainly doing his bit to ensure that the Israeli musical flag is kept fluttering high and proud overseas, and he is also helping to nurture the abilities of some of our homegrown artists and possibly fuel the growth of a new sector of creative endeavor here.
The 51-year-old Zur has been based in Los Angeles for over two decades now and has become one of the world’s leading composers of music for video games.
His three nominations for a BAFTA award are concrete evidence of his lofty standing in the global industry, and he has wielded his baton over some of the world’s most prestigious classical ensembles. He has garnered kudos for his work on, for example, the wildly successful Fallout 4 video game, and this week he was over here to share some of his accrued wisdom and experience with some budding professionals at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
The students were clearly enthused by Zur’s presence, but Zur says he was just as inspired by his stint at the academy.
“I had a great time,” he says. “I was really impressed with the students of the interdisciplinary department. They are serious students, with an open mind. You can see they have excellent tutors. It was just great fun to be a guest there.”
While the animation sector continues to evolve nicely here, video-game soundtrack work has yet to take off locally. “You could say that music for video games has been a recognized field in the United States for the last 20 years, and in Europe it is doing well, but in Israel the field is almost completely unknown. It is only in the last five to seven years that people in Israel have begun to be conscious of the existence of the genre, that there is music for video games, and that it has its own unique character and, of course, there are artists that write the music for it.”
Zur expects the sector to grow incrementally, both here and elsewhere, in the near future. “Today, people – including composers – understand that this is an area that is about to play a central role in the media music industry as a whole.”
Zur says that although he has been in great demand for some time now, and lauded accordingly, his chosen pursuit may not quite have the pride of place it deserves in the minds of some people who may consider writing music for video games inferior to, say, creating a movie sound track or theme music for a TV show.
“The fact is that it is the other way round,” he observes. “You need a lot more creativity when it comes to writing music for a video game. In movies and TV you always feed off the frame, and you constantly have to depict what is happening in the scene.
On the other hand, with a video game you are given a situation or a scene or simply a story, and you have to write music. Composing for a video game is much closer to what was once free composition. You don’t write music that has to always suit the image on the screen.”
There are advantages to the less-anchored discipline.
“That allows you a lot more freedom with the music.”
Does it then follow that video-game music composition is more challenging or more fun? “That means that it is a different,” comes the steady response. “Each person should decide what suits them.
Personally, as a composer, I really like the freedom I enjoy in this area – the search and the creativity you have with video games. It is a demanding field, but it suits me.”
Mind you, it is not as if the composer has complete carte blanche and can simply write whatever he wants without referencing the visual substratum.
“At the end of the day, the music I write has to serve a project,” says Zur. “The idea is to harness our creativity and our originality in order to achieve a better and more attractive product to our consumers.”
A fine line has to be trodden. “Sometimes people [music writers] go for more comfortable music. They think that if they produce something familiar, they will create something more attractive. I don’t think that is correct. I think people are looking for some degree of originality, something a bit different, as long as it is based on a premise that is familiar.” That rules out avant-garde offerings.
There is, it seems, a formulaic element to the work.
“You can have originality or signature music, only if it comprises around 20% of the material, and all the rest is a premise that people recognize.”
By now it had become abundantly clear that Zur takes his work very seriously, and is the consummate professional. Then again, it is not just about ensuring you end up with a polished product that complements the video game action. “We composers always have to keep in mind that we have to serve the project.
That doesn’t mean that the music we write is inferior or less complex or less challenging, compared with concert music. The difference is that we write music that, in fact, is part of a system, and that means we have to remember for whom we are working and why, and then we have to create what I call the third or fourth dimension – the emotional dimension.”
Zur approaches the materials he produces as an integral element of the video game, but which have substance of their own. “The music has to be good and you have to feel the music. It comes through the emotional dimension. It has to evoke emotions in you or support the emotions you feel from the movie or game you are playing.” It all began for Zur back on his home kibbutz of Merhavya near Afula. As a child and youth, he studied classical music and proved to be gifted, although he did not land a musician’s posting in the army, instead serving as an officer in the Armored Corps. He subsequently developed a penchant for jazz and considered studying improvisational music in the States.
However, instead of going for one of the better educational institutions, such as Berklee College of Music in Boston, he ended up in the lesser-known Grove School of Music in Los Angeles. It proved to be a life changer.
“The teacher, David Grove, specialized in media-related music, with the emphasis on jazz, Zur recalls. “It was three years of writing and writing, and after that I found myself drawn to media music.”
The graduate quickly found his place in the industry. “I began writing for children’s TV shows like Power Rangers and other things. I did that for around five years. I got a lot of experience, and I wrote music for hundreds of TV shows.”
Then Lady Luck played her hand, and Zur duly found his vocation, initial reluctance notwithstanding. “I got a phone call from an agent of video-game composers, but I wasn’t interested and I cut the call short.” Thankfully the caller was made of sterner stuff.
“He rang back, and eventually I agreed to give it a chance, and I’ve never looked back.”
Over two decades later, Zur has recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, most readily associated with The Beatles, but also used by the London Symphony Orchestra, and he constantly juggles several video game projects.
While the kudos and comfortable lifestyle are well appreciated, Zur says that at the end of the day, it is the human element he finds most rewarding.
“The biggest prize for me is connecting with people through my music, and meeting the people. Most of the time, I sit in my ‘cave,’ writing music. It was wonderful going to such a prestigious place like the academy in Jerusalem and hearing the questions of these young composers and the way they connect with music, and I can teach them and give them something from my experience. For me, that is the real prize.”