1981 was the first piece that Wall composed, while the ideas in Bell’s Theme came about when he spent time researching the character and understanding his motives. He wrote two themes based on that idea, 1981 and Bell’s Theme. We wanted to give the game a different sound.” Those shows are great for what they are, but that type of sound immediately makes you think of Stranger Things. “The danger was, you do synth work from the 80s and it ends up sounding like Stranger Things, Halt and Catch Fire, or any of the shows that have scores like that,” Wall explains. Since the game was set in the early ‘80s, he wanted synth work – and lots of it – but to modernise it. The weeks that he spent studying scripts, story treatments, and documents covering level design and the game’s flow inspired ideas around instrumentation, timbre, tonalities, and ultimately the type of score he was going to compose for the game.

Sometimes it can be hard to get your head around.”īefore he started working on Black Ops: Cold War, Wall completely immersed himself in-game material provided by Treyarch’s audio director, Brian Tuey. “That's not actually always the case with Black Ops. “I felt this is probably one of the more cohesive single-player campaign stories in the series,” Wall explains. This has led to Wall’s most dramatic score to date, one that combines heavy 1980s modular synth work with live orchestral performances and, of course, a 32-piece Russian choir – because why not? With the latest instalment in the series, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, mainly rooted in the Soviet era of the ‘80s, Wall was able to approach the score from a different direction, tapping into his passion for storytelling through sound with lived experience of growing up as a kid in the ‘80s. His subsequent work on Black Ops III and Black Ops IV broke free of the typical conventions that you might associate with an action-heavy first-person-shooter series, featuring solo performances from contemporary jazz vocalist Antonia Bennett sitting alongside big band jazz arrangements and massive orchestral anthems. It was a huge hit with fans, picking up the Best Video Game Score Award at the ASCAP Film and Music Television Awards as a result.

Wall’s Call of Duty debut was 2012’s Black Ops II, which combined futuristic hybrid sounds with homages to classical WWII music.

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