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Dirt 3

Dirt 3: The Soundtrack

Dirt 3 is released today, and to celebrate we continued our talk with composer Christian Stevenson, who's responsible for marrying the visuals to an eclectic soundtrack. And by all accounts, it's not exactly easy.

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We covered last week the rules to creating the perfect soundtrack with Christian. Here, here discusses how he became linked with the Dirt series and his meticulous approach to its soundtrack.

First, some background; how'd you get into this?

Christian Stevenson:Back in the 90s I used to make snowboard movies. I'd travel the world and we ended up doing a record deal with Sony. We released a movie through Sony Music and soundtrack through Columbia records. At the time a buddy of mine was over at Sony PlayStation called Jeff who was head of Marketing. There was a guy who worked for him called Guy Pierce. Guy Pierce is now the brand director over at Codemasters. I started loaning him snowboards, got him into that and my action sports world, and he got a taste for it. Meanwhile I made six snowboard films, released two CD soundtracks, the went into full-on TV production, presenting a TV series for Channel 5 called Rad, an action sports show.

That went on for ten years. So that's my world. Three years ago, Guy Pierce from Codemasters came to me and said he wanted to bring my world into his. "I do point-to-point rally racing but I want to make it a bit cooler and have a cool soundtrack, like you have with your snowboard films and and I want to bring that vibe over and bring those brands in that you work with, all the cool skate, snowboarding and clothing brands" - so that's all how it got started. I got involved with Dirt 2 soundtrack, got some cool brands involved and brought my world, the world I work with, into the gaming world of Codemasters.

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So when Dirt 3 rolled round you were the logical choice?

C.S:Dirt 2 did really well. Got great reviews, sold well. And one thing Codemasters was noticing that was people were commentating on the soundtrack. Noticed one of the fans uploaded songs from the game on Youtube, no visuals, just a Dirt 2 grab and the song, and these things were getting 50, 80, 100 thousand hits before they were taken down for copyright reasons. Then someone else would put them up. People wanted to know what the music was. We have a list of the music on the box, so people wanted to know what these tracks were. That was Dirt 2 - and that was more a high energy rock, electro soundtrack.

But when it came to Dirt 3 it was an entirely different game. It grew up a lot more, the front end was totally different, so it as a very challenging project for me to find the soundtrack for that game.

They wanted a different sound, a lot more electronic than the more rock-based of Dirt 2. We still have rock and indie, but it's a lot more eclectic but a lot more keyed in to the front end. It was a big challenge. I worked my ass off, spent hours and hours, days living in record stores looking at all the music, trying to find specialistic record shops. Because back in the old days you'd have fifteen record stores, and now you have three of four. So trying to find specialist stores was a mission in itself. But luckily with the invention of Last.fm and the like, you're trying to find all the cool music. I'd just talk to people and go see bands. its like A&R a soundtrack for a film, but doing it for videogame.

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Dirt 3

Do you skew towards to newer, unknown bands, actively try and get this great new music heard?

C.S:That's a big one. You try and discover bands, and you want to be the one that shows them off to the world. We pushed Friendly Fires on Dirt 2, we had their songs there, people went crazy for them. We had a band called Glamour of the Kill, they didn't even have an album out and we had them on there, people were going crazy.Dinosaur Pileup - we had song from them and they didn't have an album out for a whole year, so people couldn't get a hold of that tune.

So it's really fun and you get a buzz off people discovering a band, and then you want some big hitters on there as well like Black Stone Cherry - love those guys.

You want to discover bands, and help people discover them too, but you want to give something you know they're going to love. On this one we've got some big bands like Alter Bridge, but then there's new bands like Black Spiders and Furyon, that people are going to get really stoked on. Then we have Biffy Clyro, who everyone knows and loves. it's mixing it up.

One of the songs was artists like Danny Byrd. He's a new artist but is bringing back the early 90s rave, drum 'n bass sound, that party vibe, like the Prodigy did on that last album. We're mixing it all up. but you made a good point - trying to expose people to new stuff, while giving them some of their favourites.

Dirt 3

How does the licensing work? You make a list, then go to Codemasters, then go to the bands? With smaller bands you can avoid labels and go to the bands direct?

C.S:Some bands are really cool, sometimes you get a cool label...I even had this one band, I approached them, they gave me their label contact, and that guy was a huge fan of Dirt 2 and he'd been playing it, saying he'd lost so much sleep to this game. So it's like "wow" when you have a fan of the last game you worked on.

It's a long process. I think I must have started with 700 to 800 songs, threw ideas around, trying to find out what the designers want. Then we'll wittle it down to 300 songs and so on. We got it down to 150, and then basically I sat in a room with the designers, the audio engineers. We had like six guys in there and we just listen to music, because we want to make sure it's the right sound.

We talk about each track, about what works, what doesn't work. I'm trying to fight my corner on why it works and its a long, long process trying to find that perfect 50 - 60 songs.

And of course, when you get songs approved you have to go to the labels, and of course I'm trying to get first album stuff from Kings of Leon because i've been championing the band forever but you can't even touch them any more. I don't want the new stuff - I want Red Morning Light, stuff of Youth & Young Manhood, which would be killer for racing a car. but we still found stuff as good from bands that have been on the up and up.

Dirt 3

Is it easier to approach labels now to get them to sign on to a videogame?

C.S:It is. It's easier to work with labels because the sales of songs and singles aren't there anymore. They're looking for other revenue streams. They see the potential how they can make some money from their artist on a videogame. And not just being on a videogame and getting the mastering and publishing money, but they also get money from the exposure.

Kids put the songs on Youtube, they Shazam it, find out the band name, and go buy the single, or hopefully buy the single. A lot of kids might go and torrent it. Getting the exposure out for the band, kids will see them live, and they'll sell some merch, because that's were the bands are making their money.

I got into bands by watching and listening to old skateboarding films from the late 80s early 90s. And what was interesting was you had a label like Epitaph Records, home of Bad Religion, Brett Gurewitz actually owns the label. Back when I made my very first snowboard film in 93/94, he actually sent me his entire library - early Offspring, Bad Religion, Pennywise - rock and punk, metal and skate punk.

He said "use whatever you want and don't worry about getting anything signed - use it." He saw the potential of these snowboard and skateboard films did. It brought his bands to a bigger audience and it worked. And it was cool because i didn't have to pay for it - it was beautiful marriage between Epitaph and all these snowboarding and skateboarding film directors and producers.

You can read out review on Dirt 3 here.

Dirt 3'st full track listing and playlist is righthere.

Meanwhile you can check out what Ken Block thinks about Codemasters interpretation of the sport as part of our massive multi-part Dirt 3 presentation here and here.

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