Martin O'Donnell - Composition

Composition

O'Donnell currently uses a silver Apple Macintosh computer for composition. In an interview O'Donnell wished that his software would easily upgrade to newer revisions; "for the last twenty years of technology, every time a 'new' version of something comes out, the old version gets trashed and I find myself unable to do something that I used to depend on," he said. O'Donnell remains involved in the implementation of his music as well as the composition, and is currently Bungie's Audio lead. He composes at Bungie from a sound-proofed room in the corner of Bungie's office, dubbed the "Ivory Tower".

O'Donnell said in an interview that he feels that one problem with games is those that play music non-stop, which he feels detracts from the overall impact. Composers are forced to either write ambient music, he says, or very light music that is not emotionally driven, which he said is a detriment. O'Donnell prefers to write music towards the end of the development cycle, because he would rather score the final timing for things like cinematics and gameplay changes. O'Donnell credits part of the success of the Halo theme to his background writing jingles. For that music, O'Donnell had to make sure he could write music that would "get in people's heads" after 15 to 30 seconds. O'Donnell pushed Bungie to spend money on hiring singers and musicians to record the theme before Macworld as a way to present a strong showing.

Among the video game composers O'Donnell admires are Jeremy Soule, Jason Hayes, Koji Kondo, and Nobuo Uematsu, but he notes that he is older than most fellow game composers and that he was not directly influenced by them. Instead classic music by Beethoven, Brahms, and Barber and progressive rock groups like Jethro Tull and Genesis informed O'Donnell's taste and works.

In addition to composition, O'Donnell also arranges his work. He created a special arrangement that was used for a Halo 3 segment of Video Games Live in London, after which O'Donnell appeared. He has also appeared with and without Salvatori at other shows featuring his music, including later Video Games Live tours and Play! A Video Game Symphony.