"Let's just make it so no one turns off the music". An inauspicious first step for one of the best gaming soundtracks in recent memory.
While Red Dead Redemption is wowing people with its characters, open world and Western gunplay, the unsung hero of the title is its soundtrack, which unusually for a Rockstar game features not a single licensed track.
Think about it; Grand Theft Auto games are littered with real songs by real artists. Red Dead Redemption is set in 1911. How man songs from 1911 do you know?
Exactly. A great piece over on The Guardian goes into excruciating detail on how the game's original soundtrack was thus composed, including fascinating tidbits on where it was recorded and the deck it was recorded on (which was used on "everything from T-Rex and Grateful Dead, to Herbie Hancock").
"They were showing us the echo chambers beneath the floor that Les Paul made, which are 50ft under the ground," says Woody Jackson, one of the two composers. "It literally looks like a video game where you need to crawl into a hole and down a ladder. They wouldn't let us go down there, it's too far and too dangerous. But when we were doing the Widmore track, I was like 'put the chamber on!' and we did and it sounded great."
So great. Read more...below!
Redemption songs: the making of the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack [The Guardian]