Martin O'Donnell recently sent us word about the music recording sessions he's produced so far for HALO 2.

"On August 2nd, 2002 I produced the music for the Halo 2 Announcement Trailer at Triad Studios in Redmond WA. The engineer was Steve Culp and we recorded a 32 piece orchestra and a 16 voice choir. I tend to keep my groups small and then overdub or layer takes in order to get a bigger sound. This allows me to have more control over the final mix and have better separation between parts for future music arrangements. On May 2nd 2003 I produced the music for the E3 2003 Halo 2 Demo at Studio X in Seattle. Reed Ruddy was lead engineer and Sam Hofstedt was second. On both sessions the musicians were contracted by Simon James who was also 1st violin, Marcie O’Donnell (my wife) conducted the choir and I was the composer and orchestrator.

I wrote and recorded two and a half minutes of music for the announcement trailer and about seven minutes for the E3 demo. The first trailer was entirely a post-score to a game engine rendered movie, and the E3 demo was actually played back in real time during game play off the Xbox. Implementing that music was much more difficult because the entire middle section was different every time it was played. I still wanted it to sound like a movie score even though the action could change subtly. Because of the technique I use to create dynamic and interactive music, I made sure that I had recorded each section of the orchestra independently of the others so that I could isolate the celli from the violins, for example, and layer those sections back together as separate voices controlled by events in the game. My wife Marcie has a Masters degree in choral conducting and I asked her to work with me on the choir. The good part is she was able to prepare the piece I had given her the week before the session and then not kill me when I threw brand new parts for a completely new piece at her when she walked into the session.

All this music has been mixed in Surround Sound and will be released as part of a bonus DVD that will come free with the re-release of the Halo Soundtrack this fall."

Marty O'Donnell
Audio Director for Bungie Studios
Microsoft