Background
As the audio director for Bungie, Martin O'Donnell was tasked with writing the music for Halo: Combat Evolved. He had scored previous Bungie projects, including Myth: The Fallen Lords, while working for his audio company, TotalAudio, along with Michael Salvatori. O'Donnell was nervous about the project, saying he approached it, "with fear and trepidation". O'Donnell stated his main influences were music he liked—"a little Samuel Barber meets Giorgio Moroder". Bungie's Director of cinematics, Joseph Staten told O'Donnell, "the music should give a feeling of importance, weight, and sense of the 'ancient' to the visuals of Halo".
O'Donnell's first piece of music, "Halo", which would become "the signature theme for Halo", was written and recorded in three days. O'Donnell recruited Salvatori and three other colleagues he had recorded jingles with—Robert Bowker, Jeffrey Morrow, and Rob Trow—to produce the "chanting monks" that open the piece. Originally, he had intended the Qawwali accents to be sung by one of the professionals, but after singing an example of what he wanted, the others suggested using O'Donnell's own rendition instead. The theme premiered at the 1999 Macworld Conference & Expo demonstration of Halo: Combat Evolved.
The remaining themes were written, recorded, and produced throughout 2001. The music was written with a variety of equipment including, "keyboards, synths, and samplers as well as digital recording equipment controlled by computers". Live instrumentations, from members of the Chicago Symphony and Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra, were added where needed. The soundtrack features a wide range of sounds, O'Donnell described it as, "Gregorian chant, string orchestra, percussion and just a bit of a 'Qawwali voice'". Working closely with level designers, O'Donnell divided the music "into chunks". Based on these "chunks", " audio engine could play back dynamically based on the player's actions". For the soundtrack release, O'Donnell rearranged the music featured in the game in order to make listening to the soundtrack "more enjoyable".
Bungie had previously released soundtracks for their games due to fan request, but Microsoft was hesitant to commit to producing a soundtrack for Halo; at the time most video games did not get a commercial soundtrack release. The publisher finally relented after pressure from O'Donnell and the outside solicitation of musician Nile Rodgers.
Read more about this topic: Halo Original Soundtrack
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