STEPHANIE ECONOMOU

Fresh from her Grammy win for Best Score Soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök, L.A based composer and BAFTA Breakthrough Artist Stephanie Economou explains how System Of A Down inspired the score…

Congratulations on your Grammy win! How was the ceremony? Was it a surprise to win?

Yes! I am still recovering from the hangover [laughs]. Emotionally, it was a big day and I’m still reeling, truly! I really did not go in with very high expectations. I think I was certainly the underdog in that category, because I am newer to games. I did not expect to win – my fellow nominees in that category are titans in the video game music industry, so I was just happy to be there. I was insanely surprised to be nominated! Especially because Dawn of Ragnarök is technically a

DLC or an expansion, so it’s a smaller game compared to some of the other ones that are in there. I’m thrilled and super honoured. When I won, I think I blacked out a little bit. I couldn’t remember anything that I said or what happened. You can tell how surprised I was given how far back in the auditorium I sat, because I was like, ‘I’m not winning, we should just sit back here – there’s more space.’ When I was backstage and I had a moment to myself and I was like, ‘What the hell happened?’ It was very surreal.

This year the Grammy Awards introduced a brand new award category, the ‘Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media’, which you won for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök. Considering that the gaming industry is bigger than the film and the music industry combined, why do you think it took the Grammys so long to catch on and formally recognise game composers?

It’s wild how many people I’ve spoken to who are basically like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool that there’s now a separate video game category – it’s really a sign of the times.’ A sign of the times? It’s been decades and decades that this music has been a big part of people’s lives! It means a lot. I don’t know what took so long. Video games operate very differently on a musical spectrum. They’re interactive, they’re responding to a player, they’re immersing a player on a totally different level. So to have those soundtracks recognised on their own just validates that we have a big part in connecting with people in a visceral way. All over the world the impact of games is staggering, and music plays a big part in building those worlds and establishing those memories for players. We’re all thrilled as game composers to be recognised and it means a lot to gamers too, who have loved this music for so long, to see it on its own on the stage. Personally, there’s just something that happens when I listen to the music from games that I love that does not happen with other forms of media. It’s this indescribable thrill that washes over you because it’s tied to a moment in time where you were playing the game, where you were living and breathing these stories. It transports you; that’s a really special thing about game music.

You’d already scored the Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla DLC The Siege of Paris before Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök How different was your approach for the latter?

The soundscape for The Siege of Paris was rooted more in the historical landscape of Paris – the fun thing about Assassin’s Creed is that it is rooted in a lot of history. When it came to Dawn of Ragnarök, that’s a story that is purely mythological so there really were no rules. There were no rules in The Siege of Paris either, which I thought was really fun of Ubisoft to be like, ‘You don’t need to be precious about what instruments you’re using and how you’re composing the music, feel free to experiment.’ But for Dawn of Ragnarök, all bets were off.

How did black metal come into the picture?

In my early conversations with the developers, one of them said, ‘We’re listening to black metal. Do you want to look into that?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds amazing.’ I loved metal music growing up, but I never really knew the specifics. I did a bunch of research and I was connected with someone called Wayne Ingram, who is the guitarist for a band called Wilderun – they are an amazing Vikingesque black metal, cinematic folk band, and we immediately unlocked something with them. We started composing together and I was basically arming myself with this whole toolkit of black metal sounds, like growly vocals and distorted ostinato guitars. It was really fun and we got to lean into something that I didn’t know that I would be able to discover within myself. What I love most about working in media music is that someone can just say ‘black metal,’ and then your whole life changes. That’s the beauty of it – you’re challenged and pushed stylistically all the time.

Headliner saw that System of a Down played a big part in your influences for the game’s music…

Yes! Toxicity is one of my favourite albums of all time. When I think about the music I listened to when I was a kid, I went from Bach to Blink 182, to Led Zeppelin to Backstreet Boys; Christ in heaven, what was happening? [laughs] But it’s all part of it. It’s what shapes us. System Of A Down creeped its way into this album, and Ubisoft said ‘This is sounding a little bit too much like System Of A Down. Can we bring it back to black metal?’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a huge compliment!’

We know there are cliches in horror film music; does that factor in at all in the same way with epic fantasy games? Are there things that are expected of the genre, or things you try not to do?

When I read the story synopsis for Dawn of Ragnarök, I was like, ‘Oohh, mythology. Cool. There’s all of these realms, it feels very fantasy-driven.’ My first stab was too fantastical. It was too mystical, and that wasn’t right. They were basically like, ‘Yes, it’s mythological but we want to keep it grounded…and big…and personal.’ So, back to the drawing board. I found something that works better, and that was black metal and the more Nordic folk side. The marriage of those two things really seemed to get that scale, sense of wonder and the beauty of these realms, but also the danger and the fact that this is a very heartbreaking story for Odin. Honestly, Nordic folk and black metal – there’s so much overlap between those two genres. I ended up acquiring and collecting a bunch of instruments, one being a Tagelharpa, which is a Scandinavian box with a couple of strings on it, and they’re floating. That ended up being a big sound in the score. I also used some other string instruments which gave it a nod to Nordic music, and those great, catchy melodies – in a primitive way, coupled with these distorted guitars and punchy drum kit. That brought the whole environment of Ragnarök into colour.

In terms of the music production kit you use to record and edit these scores, what couldn’t you do without?

I have been using Steinberg’s Cubase as my DAW for about 10 years. I started using Cubase when I began working with composer Harry Gregson-Williams, who has been using Cubase pretty much his whole life. I saw the way that he was harnessing the technology and that this is the most intuitive tool for composers. It just makes sense. When you’re writing music, especially in this industry where you’re up against crazy deadlines all the time, you just want a tool with no hiccups where you go, ‘I have this idea. How do I get it down?’ With Cubase it just comes out. It’s the most natural workflow, in my opinion, for any creative person. I’ve been using it for about a decade. There are lots of tools in there that I really, really love. I’ll never compose using anything else – truthfully. It’s like I’m not looking at a screen. For some people, composing just comes out right on sheet music. For me, it’s sometimes sheet music, but really I’m just sitting in front of Cubase and that’s how I’m expressing the music. Most of us would be nowhere without

Cubase and it continues to evolve to great places. I love Steinberg because they really listen to their users and they create things that they know are going to be groundbreaking for the composers that use the software. I’m a big fan!

The Ragnarök score was very collaborative and you intertwined different soloists with layers of guitars, drums and strings – how did Cubase help with this?

I love the audio manipulation features in Cubase. I am pulling in a tonne of soloists from everywhere. There’s so much to be done and bringing it all under one roof in Cubase just made it so easy. When manipulating audio, it’s fantastic. Their VariAudio feature is one of my favourites, whether it’s going in and timing a performance of a guitarist or something to make sure it’s spot on and really tight, or if it’s manipulating pitch – it’s something that I could never live without, and they just make it so easy. It’s so visual, too. It’s all crucial. For me, mixing is not a separate thing. I’m mixing as I’m composing to make it all sound how it should sound and the workflow allows for that. I also often use the Steinberg plugins that come with Cubase to harness the sound and make sure that it’s how I want it to be, so it encourages a lot of exploration and experimentation, but also, you can be very precise with all of the tools that Cubase gives you.