Before he was an award-winning composer of music for videogames including the “God of War” series and the “Mass Effect” series, UCLA alumnus Cris Velasco was a guitarist in a death metal band in Bakersfield.
Today, he is an in-demand video game music composer living out his ideal career. But the road Velasco took to get to this point wasn’t a smooth one. And in fact, Velasco, who said he didn’t have a strong musical background, didn’t know he wanted to compose music until he was in community college.
Upon entering Bakersfield College, Velasco took as many different courses as he could, trying to find a subject that stuck. In his second year at the school, Velasco took a music appreciation course, in which he heard Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Symphony No. 40.”
“I had a sudden epiphany in class. I had no idea why (the piece) was affecting me like it was, and I knew right then that (composing) was what I was going to do,” Velasco said.
At this point in his studies, however, Velasco said he still could not read music. So he stayed one more year at Bakersfield College, immersing himself in music: theory classes, piano lessons, classical guitar and jazz guitar.
Before applying to schools, Velasco said he wrote a couple of thirty-second segments of a symphony of his own. These segments constituted his portfolio, which he sent to the California Institute of the Arts and UCLA. Both institutes accepted him, and Velasco chose to attend UCLA.
Once at UCLA, however, Velasco said he realized that he was not interested in composing contemporary classical music. He said film and video game music represented an ideal musical pursuit for him – music that could be unabashedly epic.
“I think film music and game music really gave composers a real opportunity to go back to their melodic and harmonic roots,” Velasco said.
UCLA at the time, however, was not exactly set up in such a way that made this musical endeavor an easy one, because of what Velasco described as a lack of synergy between the music and film departments.
Paul Chihara, professor of music and head of UCLA’s visual media program, provided an opportunity for Velasco to experience the world of film music, which Chihara said he believes is just as important as classical music.
“I’ve always felt that film music should be a part of music (education). We should study John Williams the same way we should study (Johannes) Brahms. It’s music,” Chihara said.
In addition to working on music cues with Velasco, Chihara – who was, at the time, a composer for Walt Disney Studios and a visiting adjunct professor at UCLA – said he took Velasco with him to a couple of scoring sessions for films. In regard to their work together, Chihara said Velasco showed great promise for a future in film and game music composition.
Chihara also said life as a working composer was difficult at the time that Velasco began his career.
“The road to success in composition … was very narrow, (there were) very few outlets,” he said.
Velasco said he did indeed have a difficult time breaking into the world of game music composition. After seven years of attempts, Velasco submitted a demo to producers of the “Battlestar Galactica” game. Though the producers had already hired another composer, they agreed to allow him to compose a minute of music for the game because they enjoyed his demo.
Over time, Velasco said they gave him more and more minutes of music to compose, and eventually chose to replace the other composer and give Velasco sole control over the composition of the game’s soundtrack.
“I don’t even want to say it got my foot in the door. It got my little toe in the door,” Velasco said.
After composing the music for “Battlestar Galactica,” Velasco said he attended as many conferences as he could in the hopes of fostering connections in the business, which led to the game that he considers his big break, the first game in the popular “God of War” franchise. He has since composed music for a multitude of other games, including games from BioWare’s “Mass Effect” series, a three-part science fiction epic.
Velasco, who operates under the company name Monarch Audio, has also been nominated for a plethora of video game music awards and has won several as well, from organizations such as the Game Audio Network Guild and the Hollywood Music in Media Association.
Rob Blake, who was BioWare’s audio lead during production of the “Mass Effect” series, said he was impressed by Velasco’s enthusiasm and that he was a perfect fit for the hectic schedule of video game production.
“Things move very, very quickly in game development,” Blake said. “So we need people that can take … changes and really run with any new direction that we’re given.”
In addition to their adaptability, Blake said Velasco and his music partner Sascha Dikiciyan introduced new musical ideas that the production team would never have thought to implement.
“There were some scenes that we were going to play in a dramatic … really over-the-top light. And, they delivered something that was actually quite different. It was quite subtle and delicate. … They nailed it,” Blake said.
Velasco continues to work prolifically on video game music, having been credited for music from the “Mass Effect 3” downloadable content released just this past November. And though he is slated to write music for a couple of movies in the near future, Velasco said he couldn’t be happier with his life writing music for video games.
“I love waking up in the morning and going down to my studio to write music for an awesome game every day,” Velasco said. “I’ve had a lot of career highs already, and I hope there are a lot more (to come).”
Email Bain at abain@media.ucla.edu.