If There’s Music Somewhere, We Put It There Deliberately: A Chat with Cyberpunk 2077's Composers

cyberpunk2077_its_good_to_be_in_town_rgb-en.jpg, default, A still from 'Cyberpunk 2077', 2020, photo: CD Projekt Red, If There’s Music Somewhere, We Put It There Deliberately: A Chat with Cyberpunk 2077's Marcin Przybyłowicz & Piotr T. Adamczyk

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Cheap plastic, switches straight out of the Chernobyl power plant, keyboard springs creaking… Marcin Przybyłowicz and Piotr T. Adamczyk, the composers of the music to ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, prove that even when using old equipment, it’s possible to make an incredible soundtrack for a game all about a city of the future.

Filip Lech: What are computer games to you?

Marcin Przybyłowicz: I’ve been dealing with games for fifteen years. For me, they’re a way to make a living, as well as an opportunity for creative experiments and the exploration of more and more artistic areas. I’ve never stepped into the same river twice throughout my career.

Piotr T. Adamczyk: Although some still take it with a pinch of salt, computer games are the art form of the 21st century. In 10 or 15 years, no one will dare treat them as anything but.

FL: What about video game music? Some believe that the best game soundtracks are the ones you don’t notice while playing.

PTA: I completely disagree! We’ve got amazing possibilities of creating interactive structures and, on top of that, we can use music of the same quality that we use in films. You can be very focused on the game and not so much on the music, but you would certainly notice if it wasn’t there. I could sing every note from the game soundtracks that I remember.

MP: Up until today, everyone can hum along to the music themes from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or other classic films. It’s the same with games – the themes from Super Mario Bros or the first Diablo are things that have really implanted themselves in the minds of gamers.

It reminds me of a certain conversation I had with students at the Film School [in Łódź]. They were being taught, the old-school way, that good film music is music you don’t notice. I think that’s a fundamentally wrong statement, not just with regard to games or films. The same applies to all visual media. We must realise the role fulfilled by illustrative music – its goal is to elevate the artwork.

A film is a static, pre-edited work – it’s the same with each screening. With games, we can allow ourselves to do much more, especially in the case of RPGs made by CD PROJEKT RED. We make non-linear music, each game is different – our compositions’ form and structure must be tailored to what’s happening on screen. Working with games, we’re in a much better position, and we’re granted more freedom.

Music should evoke emotions in the listener, which is why we’re doing our best to make our music be a certain way. We want to influence the world somehow, not just the gaming environment. That’s what we did with The Witcher. At some point, the music really polarised the audience – and that’s good! People started talking about it and suddenly it turned out that it made them feel very strongly; these weren’t always positive feelings, but it’s impossible to make music that will suit everyone. The Witcher soundtrack requires a sort of an emotional investment – the identifying feature of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is the fact that the plot structure, as well as all of the stories told through the numerous quests, often depart from the fantasy canon, or clichés of the ‘rescue the princess, kill the dragon’ sort. Instead, by tackling the themes of domestic violence, racial discrimination, genocide, war, parent-child relationships, or by focusing on Geralt, an outcast who belongs nowhere, the game becomes all about attempting to find your place in the world. Our music goes hand in hand with the game’s plot, forming an emotional basis for the entire thing, including stories like that.

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ – CD Projekt Red – Image Gallery

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FL: You need to lend credence to the world depicted in the game.

MP: Games are an abstract creation, developed in real time for our entertainment. On the screen, we see a location, a piece of the depicted world, a character. The soundtrack’s aim is to breathe life into the animation to cheat our perception.

PTA: ‘Always mind your surroundings’, said Henri Ducard to Batman, and we, too, need to pay attention to what happens in the entire sound spectrum at any given moment. There are various sources of sound in the world of games – the radio, advertisements, films – we shouldn’t create too much of a hodgepodge.

We try to give the players as much freedom as possible to create their own soundtrack (though we always draw their attention to how it might affect their emotions). There are very few random elements in the game. If there’s music somewhere, it means we put it there deliberately.

FL: What’s your definition of cyberpunk?

MP: I’m not sure if I can unambiguously say what cyberpunk is, it’s a really capacious genre. One of its main motifs is the fear of subjugation. Just like the Matrix, it’s a story about what lengths humanity can go to, to wilfully give up their freedom to machines. It’s happening right now – in 2020 – due to machine learning and neural networks. More and more areas of our lives are automated, and it’s going to progress even further. This theme isn’t that prominent in Cyberpunk 2077 though.

PTA: The common feature of all of these worlds is the conflict between the individual and society, technology, anything that can control said individual. The cry of the human being, the desire to make one’s own decisions are the topics cyberpunk touches upon.

Nowadays, we keep getting bombarded with advertisements and applications making our lives easier. That’s why the genre is so popular.

MP: We’re beginning to live in a cyberpunk world.

FL: How had cyberpunk sounded to you before you started working on the game?

PTA: We’re obviously familiar with the genre’s milestones and we had plenty of associations, but we tried not to be governed by them.

In the beginning, I tried to use the sounds of an old synthesiser Roland Jupiter-4. Each time I pressed a button, I could hear retrofuturism straight out of Blade Runner. Eventually, none of those recordings were used in the game.

MP: What we wanted to do most was to cause a clash between the players’ cyberpunk expectations and what we proposed in the game.

FL: Piotr mentioned the Roland synthesiser, which we won’t hear in the game. What instruments will we hear in Cyberpunk 2077?

MP: Cyberpunk 2077 was created using mostly electronic sounds. There are organic elements, such as electronic violas (Tina Guo), a drum set (Ilan Rubin from NIN) and vocal parts. We decided that our artistic concept won’t go well with symphonic sounds, or a symphonic-electronic hybrid. We went and made it as electronic as possible. That implied the use of a particular arsenal. We used Prophet synthesisers from Dave Smith Instruments, as well as the Mooga ones.

PTA: You’ll hear, for instance, Leploop, usually associated with techno scene, a bit machine and mono synthesiser made by total freaks from Italy, as well as instruments made by Bastl, a Czech producer of boutique modules and synthesisers.

MP: We’ve got quite a lot of Folktek instruments. It’s an American company led by a whacko who puts together synthesisers by hand. They make extreme oddities that work in unpredictable ways, especially the Mescaline. It’s an instrument with which you can create absolutely anything.

PTA: You could use it to make an entire game. Its spectrum of possibilities ranges from the most aggressive, unhinged bass to the most romantic and sophisticated synth pads used for emotional scenes. It’s an astonishingly versatile instrument, even though it looks odd.

I spent a lot of time on the Internet, looking for information about instruments used by people with connections to various weird music scenes. Such instruments are rarely used by film of game music composers. They don’t use them because they’re smart – they’ve got little time, they need dependable solutions that always work. We had plenty of time and could allow ourselves to work with instruments that we needed more time exploring so that we could unearth their potential.

MP: The source of the unique sound of Cyberpunk 2077 are non-obvious instruments. Piotr and I are owners of a Polivoks Soviet duo-phonic synthesiser. It looks awful – cheap plastic, switches look like they came straight out of Chernobyl, keyboard springs creaking. On the other hand, it’s an indestructible piece of equipment with a unique sound – dirty and rusty.

FL: What genres will we hear in Cyberpunk 2077?

MP: Our basis is the RPG system Cyberpunk 2020 developed in 1988 by Mike Pondsmith. It’s a universe deeply embedded in pop culture, meticulously described and defined. We quickly realised that we’re searching for energy, craziness, a bit of aggression. Also – overstimulation, as that’s a defining quality of Night City, where the plots of both Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk 2077 take place. It’s a huge, colourful city and the music has to keep up with it.

We quickly gave up on the 80s. The melancholic, neon style didn’t fully convince us. So many great bands had their golden age a decade later – the Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine, The Prodigy, Nine Inch Nails – I could list them endlessly. We focused on rave, industrial and techno.

PTA: During our work, we had to deconstruct those genres, make them work narratively. How do we use techno, emotionally a rather neutral and cold genre, to tell a love story?

Battle scenes are based on dance music, which connects nicely to Pondsmith’s world – your actions should be loud, regardless of the consequences. It enhances boldness – I shoot but I feel bulletproof.

FL: Is there anything more you’d like to tell the players?

MP: We’d prefer the players see everything for themselves. We’re in this cool position in which we had the opportunity to work on the game for several years, and now we can also play it. We know a lot about it, so we wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for others by revealing too many details.

FL: There are more and more game music concerts and festivals. How would you envision your dream presentation of Cyberpunk 2077 music? A concert, a party, renting an entire building for a rave?

MP: We talked about it some time ago. Piotr said that it should simply look like a techno party, preferably in an industrial location. Loud, plenty of lights, crowded and crazy.

FL: Would that be legal?

PTA: The company wouldn’t let us do it illegally. [laughs]

FL: Have you ever played a game that you really didn’t want to listen to?

PTA: I always do my best to play the way the developers would want me to. I don’t fumble with settings, I just start a new game, and I want to let my imagination run free.

MP: It’s rare for something to be off in blockbusters. I encountered such a situation once, but out of politeness, I won’t say what game it was.

Having worked with games for so long, we can’t put aside our craftsmanship and experience – and play the way most users do. Piotr and I often discuss new releases. Although we sometimes happen to have our personal preferences regarding certain ideas and the overall vision of making game music, it usually ends up with an agreement that the game has been made at least decently. With big projects like that, you can’t afford any slip-ups. Something may not appeal to us subjectively, but I can’t remember any blockbuster in which something was off or designed so badly that it ruined the pleasure of playing the game.

Interview originally conducted in Polish, translated by AWP, Dec 2020

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