Ever since he first emerged in the early ’80s, Thomas Dolby has been a driving force in the progression of electronic music. With now-classic songs like “She Blinded Me with Science,” “Europa and the Pirate Twins,” and “Hyperactive,” he managed to eliminate the cold edge often associated with electronically produced music and make it work within a pop format. While he continues to make his own music, Dolby’s career has branched out considerably over the years, first into film music and more recently into video game soundtracks. He also recently provided the musical score for The Gate to the Mind’s Eye, a video of computer animation.
Dolby knew from the time he was a teenager that he wanted to work in a creative field, but he wasn’t initially sure whether he wanted to be a director, actor, writer, or musician.
“I kind of fell into music because it didn’t require a lot of entry qualifications,” he said. “I was very pleased to find that once I had records out, music videos were starting to happen, so I directed some of my own videos and got to experiment in other areas of expression.”
While the technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is today, Dolby didn’t feel limited at the time. He says that people viewed electronic music as a novelty, so he felt it was his role to demonstrate its potential.
“I think it’s pretty ironic, really. If you could go through my trash bin from the early ’80s, you’d find all those bleeps and blips,” he explains, referring to the early pieces of analog gear that later became favorites in creating techno and ambient music. “I was desperate for people not to accuse me of coldness. It was taboo.”
Even though technology has been a key component of his work, Dolby still uses the piano as his primary songwriting tool. He waits until he has a strong sense of how a song will sound before turning to electronics to realize it. Otherwise, he finds himself “instantly drawn into that analytical way of thinking” that can get in the way of creativity.
In addition to writing songs for Howard the Duck, Dolby has scored the films Gothic and Fever Pitch. Compared to other areas he works in, he dislikes film scoring because of the lack of freedom composers typically have.
“You can spend days writing one little theme for a love scene, and then the love scene has to go, so it ends up on the cutting-room floor,” he explains. “And the studio owns it, so it’s kind of tough. When you’re working on a game, the team is smaller and the budget is smaller, and you tend to be left to your own devices more.”
Though he doesn’t have anything lined up at the moment, Dolby is interested in doing more film work in the future. With studios negotiating for the movie rights to games such as Myst and Doom, his experience in the computer field has led to increased interest from filmmakers.
“It’s really hard, because something can look good on paper but, at the end of the day, it’s not something you want to be involved in,” says Dolby, discussing how he chooses film projects. “It makes me appreciate how lucky I am with my records—that I can have a vision and, a year later, it’s in the stores. I really appreciate that freedom, which you just never have with a movie.”
One thing Dolby does look for in a script is an abundance of exterior landscape shots, as that’s where music tends to be noticed the most.
Dolby became involved with The Gate to the Mind’s Eye after meeting the director at a screening of the series’ previous installment. He had long been a fan of artists working in computer animation and felt it was possible to tell a story using only images, music, and sound—without dialogue.
“I felt that the tempo of the one I saw was very MTV,” says Dolby of his approach to the project. “The pace was like watching a series of videos. I felt that it needed room to breathe, and some of the best material we had was long and drawn out.”
Writing music for video games presented Dolby with a unique challenge, as there were no tools available for creating truly interactive scores. Unlike films, game narratives don’t unfold in a concrete, linear fashion, so the music must be manipulated from within the game itself. Through his company, Headspace, Dolby worked to develop the software necessary for composing interactive soundtracks.
Dolby’s most recent project was the soundtrack for the newly released Cyberia. Up next is Double Switch, a Sega CD game starring Debbie Harry. He has three additional titles in the works, and his company has also begun developing its own games.
Game companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of music and are bringing composers into the development process earlier. Dolby says one of the biggest problems with game music in the past was that “everyone has a cousin who can do music,” and developers often failed to account for the special demands of interactive audio.
“More and more now, most game designers know what I do, and they tend to come to us earlier,” explains Dolby. “Everybody’s looking for a competitive edge. They’ve already taken all the shortcuts they can with graphics, and they realize I might give them an advantage on the audio side. If you leave the music until the end, there’s no memory left, no budget left, and no time left.”
Dolby admits that technology still imposes limitations on video and computer games, but each new platform improves on the last, creating more room for innovation in interactive music.
“What interests me is that in electronic music, MIDI is a series of ones and zeros,” he says. “If your skill is as a keyboard player, you hook up a MIDI keyboard and that’s the controller you use. What’s happening with games is that if your skill is running around a corridor shooting Nazis, I’m essentially turning that skill into a MIDI controller. Instead of a keyboard, it’s actions—opening a door, loading a gun, blowing up a few aliens. Technology is empowering non-musical individuals to make music using the skills they already have.”
At present, Dolby is dedicating most of his time to Headspace. In addition to composing music for interactive entertainment, the company develops tools to make that type of composition easier. While Dolby has no immediate plans for releasing his own music, it’s not because he’s turning away from it.
“I figure that will always be there,” he says. “But I feel there’s an important role for me in everything that’s happening now. Headspace is a bit like forming a band—I can bring in friends I think are talented. On some projects, I’ll write a few themes and supervise the overall work, while someone else handles the nuts-and-bolts composing. That helps them build a track record, and it allows us to take on more projects instead of just one at a time.”
