Who is Steve Burke? (1)
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The Kameo Original Soundtrack boasts 27 ambitious and striking tracks feature the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Kings Choir. Thirteen partial tracks are provided here for your listening pleasure.
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The complete tracks are on the soundtrack, which is available now in stores everywhere. Learn more by checking out the Kameo Soundtrack link! |
Steve Burke composed all the music for Kameo™: Elements of Power™, specifically for the game. Around 70 minutes of the music was recorded with an 80-piece orchestra and a 40-piece choir in Prague. The other hour or so comes from sampled bits recorded in Steve's studio at Rare. Learn more about the man behind the magical music of Kameo.
How did it all start, Steve?
I grew up on the Isle of Man, a great place to live with plenty of opportunities to get involved with music from an early age. I started playing the Clarinet and joined the Manx Youth Orchestra when I was at Junior School, and was hooked on music from that point on. At home I had a piano that I played nearly every day—basically, quite a traditional classical music background.
At 20, I decided to head off to London and study music at King’s College London. This was a great place to learn about composition, conducting, orchestrating, and I studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music as well. After that I specialized in Composition at the Royal College of Music for my Masters degree. While I was at college I went to as many film score recording sessions and concerts as I could blag my way in to, and learnt just as much from those as the college lectures. I was also lucky to meet and talk to great composers such as John Williams and Michael Kamen.
After working for a film composer in London for a year or so after college, I found out that Rare was looking for a composer/sound designer. Somehow I managed to get the job and have been busy writing music and making bizarre noises for games ever since. Working as part of a team of extremely talented programmers, artists, and designers is a great experience.
What’s the very first thing you do when you sit down to think about the music for a game like Kameo?
I wanted to create a score that was very diverse, and perhaps a bit different to other game music that I’ve heard. It was a good opportunity to come in to the games industry without any preconceptions, and just do what I thought worked.
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 If you could be any of the Elemental Warriors or other characters in Kameo, which one would you be, and why?
I’d be Flex, the little watery slappy chap. That pelvic thrust move of his is awesome!
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Can you give us an idea of the process behind preparing music for a game like Kameo? What processes are most important to the successful completion of your work?
I’ll often sit down with George Andreas (Lead Designer) and we’ll talk about a Level or cutscene that needs music. All I’m after are a few key words such as scary, ominous, playful, etc. (I’ve even had a “Scarily playful”!) I can then go away and create something to fit those descriptions. Other times I’ll try a few things out and play them to the development team to get some feedback.
I’ve got my own studio at work, as do all the musicians at Rare, where there are lots of computers, samplers, keyboards and fancy coffee. A typical day towards the end of development on Kameo usually starts off with me scoring the music to another cutscene that has just been finished by the animators. Once I’ve written the music I’ll then create the sound effects. This usually means popping down to the main recording studio where I can make noises for the scene. After that (and the obligatory mid-morning caffeine hit), I’ll mix the audio and hand it over to the programmers to put in the game. At the moment I’m also doing a lot of speech editing and balancing for the many characters in the game that talk.
What was your greatest challenge while working on Kameo?
Trying to grow my hair long without it going all curly.
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