Introduction:
In this exclusive interview with Nathan Hanover, the Clarion took a deep dive into the world of music design and life as a composer. Hanover is a composer who specializes in creating music for video games, podcasts, and interactive media. His music is everywhere, highlights include The Joy of Creation, a Five Nights at Freddy’s fan game; Dialtown, a phone dating simulation game; Just Roll with It, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast; and most recently the soundtrack of Generation Loss. Hanover has an Undergraduate Degree from the University Centre of Colchester in Film Music and Soundtrack Production.
Link to my previous generation loss article here: Generation Loss Part One: The Analysis
Photo of Generation Loss logo
Generation Loss:
Generation Loss is an episodic horror semi-scripted live-stream show. The show has had a remarkable impact on the lives of many in such a short time, it’s been a week since the finale.
The Clarion: How would you describe the start of your involvement in Generation Loss? What was the choice to work on it like? Did you know much about it beforehand?
Hanover: I knew about the project very late compared to the rest of the Generation Loss community who have followed the project for around two plus years. After working with one of the members of the Just Roll With It team to compose the soundtrack for their horror Dungeons and Dragons podcast, Blood in the Bayou, I became aware of Generation Loss and planned to reach out to the creator for possible employment in the show.
Surprisingly however weeks later I got a private message in my Twitter inbox from said creator of Generation Loss who had streamed a video game earlier that year which I also was involved in called Dialtown: Phone Dating Sim. He had enjoyed the music in this game a lot, and once my work finished on Blood in the Bayou, its creator suggested me to the Generation Loss creator, complimenting my music, my turnaround time, etc. So, while I planned to contact them, they contacted me. {Ranboo, the Generation Loss creator, uses he/they pronouns.}
The Clarion: G.L. has such an already iconic story and aesthetic. What was composing music for it like? Did you find it limiting?
Hanover: As you noted above, I have a Bachelors’s with an honors degree in Film Music & Soundtrack Production however mostly specialize in Video Game music, this project was exciting for me as this was technically the first time I had put my degree to the test, this wasn’t a game. This project was a mix of live theatrical performances and pre-recorded scenes, there weren’t any concept art, cutscenes, or shots I could look upon to brainstorm my ideas as 90% of the show was live, other than looking at the set of the Cabin, the already released marketing, and the script, I had to conjure ideas I thought would fit into the scenes I had built in my imagination.
With the marketing already released and trailers of the show on the internet, stock music had been used of an 80s FM (Frequency Modulation Synthesis) Synthesizer repeating a dissonant stabbing chord pattern, the creator of Generation Loss enjoyed this sound, and I used this as the basis of my soundtrack, taking this idea and creating my own. Generation Loss’s theme includes two main motifs, the stabbing chord pattern, and an arpeggiated sequence of this same chord. The chord I decided to use was an A Minor with a sharp 7th (the G# note in this context) creating an AmMaj7 (A Minor Major 7 chord), in the correct context this dissonant chord can become bittersweet, tugging at the heart, however putting the 7th at the bottom of the chord creates a Minor 2nd clash between the G# and the A, always giving that sense of unease and raw dissonance. This chord progression and the arpeggio outlining the chord show up all over the soundtrack, even hidden in other character themes.
I played around with modulation effects, granular synthesis, and stuttering glitch effects to make the soundtrack sound as unique as it does, this was quite fun for me as most of my other work has been long-drawn-out ambient pieces, Jazz or Swing, or even Orchestral. So to work in this retro 80s aesthetic, but to corrupt it in such a way where it was listenable, but unusual as if the act of Generation Loss had taken effect on the soundtrack was enjoyable to me and opened the door to truly unique ideas.
The Clarion: G.L. has some of the hardest-hitting emotions in horror. Your music is a significant part of that impact. How do you do it – how do you create such emotional music?
Hanover: For me, to make emotional music work I have to determine what notes I’m going to use, what scale to write in, and what directions I want to take the piece, but the key factor people may not think of is not what’s written in the music, but what’s written around the music or what the music is actually being paired to. For example, in episode 1 of Generation Loss, there is a mixture of unease, ambiance, and comedic music, when the main character goes into the basement the music is a long drawn-out ambiance, unsettling effects, and detuned piano, but the scene had been juxtaposed by a comedic cooking segment only moments ago. The tonal whiplash in the music makes the scene hit hard, one moment they are cooking slime for a slime demon, and the next they are exploring a dusty basement with literal skeletons. Episodes 2 and 3 were similar but the style had changed, the ambiance had been removed in favor of SAW-esque pieces, driving drums, electronic stings, etc. but still included elements of comedy, “The Lasor Room” for example inspired by old 70s spy films, juxtaposed by the driving rhythm that scored the scene moments before where the characters begged for their lives on a carousel.
The Clarion: What, if any, were some of your stresses or worries while making the soundtrack? In contrast, what was the most enjoyable part of the process?
Hanover: My biggest worry was the deadline, while I started the project in January 2023, I had only created the main theme and a random draft of an idea that eventually became the opening to “Live or Die”, my work truly began at the end of March and had around 2 months to create the soundtrack, due to how tight the deadline was I was writing music days before the first episodes premier and is why the soundtrack has a delayed release as online stores request music to be submitted 3-4 weeks before release. I found feedback quite hard as usually I work 1-to-1 with the employer to show off drafts and brainstorm ideas, track titles, etc. but this project was different due to how busy everyone was, I’d essentially write several pieces a week, get feedback, and then create edits to be greenlit the following week and repeat. No one had time to sit down and brainstorm so a lot of the feedback was in bursts but due to a timezone difference, this meant I’d get feedback very late into the day for me to act upon the following morning.
In contrast, I feel my favorite part of the process was to see how excited the creators and actors got about my music which encouraged me to create better and better pieces. One of the actors even now talks about my music and how passionate he is about my soundtrack which is nice to see. Another thing I enjoyed was hiding stuff IN the soundtrack itself, secret codes, visual art IN the music, and hiding motifs in other pieces to show the connection between tracks/themes, the Snowfall Jingle motif crops up in a few pieces, but the Generation Loss motif shows up even more.
The Clarion: Did the soundtrack go through any major changes before it was finalized? What song was made first? Which was last? How long does a song normally take you to make?
Hanover: I don’t believe the soundtrack went through any major changes as once I had the style of the project down, I could work within those boundaries however tracks had little changes along the way, even a few cut tracks of failed ideas. The first track I wrote was in January 2023 which was the Generation Loss theme which went through 2 iterations before landing on the one used in the show. The last track was the Button cutscene which was also the longest to create due to severe technical difficulties with the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) I use which doesn’t score to video well. Most tracks can take anywhere from a day to create to a week, the “Achievement Unlocked!” Jingle naturally only took me a few hours to create and finish as it was only 3 seconds long and is an altered version of the Generation Loss motif, however, “The Button” took me around a week to create and finish to the point I was working on it the day before episode 1’s premier.
The Clarion: Do you have any behind-the-scenes stories about Generation Loss?
Hanover: I sadly don’t other than the coincidence of myself wanting to reach out to the Generation Loss creator only for him to actually reach out to me weeks later following his previous encounter with Dialtown: Phone Dating Sim and the suggestions from his friend who hired me for Blood in the Bayou.
Photo of Just Roll With It logo.
Previous Work:
Prior to Generation Loss Hanover has made music for many video games and series. One, a Clarion favorite Dungeon and Dragons podcast, Just Roll With It. Just Roll With It features many online personalities as they play custom D&D campaigns together. Another is Dialtown, a phone dating videogame.
The Clarion: What has working on JRWI’s sound been like? How have the different campaigns influenced your process? Do you have a favorite?
Hanover: Working with Just Roll With It was by pure luck if I’m honest, the creator of Blood in the Bayou made a Tweet searching for a composer to work on his project, and one of my friends suggested the link to me, I’m quite pessimistic so I replied to the tweet not expecting any response, but my track “Blood Sugar” had sealed the deal for him and I was hired! Blood in the Bayou was exciting to work on and my first foray into Podcast music. Its deadline was harsher than Generation Loss which made me pivot the soundtrack halfway through, instead of writing music to the episodes themselves to creating looping music like I would a Video Game for the editor to add in and swap on their choosing. Once Blood in the Bayou was complete, the main JRWI member approached me to work on their main campaign, Riptide, a sea shanty pirate podcast with over 100 episodes! Riptide took me a while to get into the swing of the style I and the JRWI team wanted, having just came from BitB my brain had to readjust the musical style to fit this pirate aesthetic, initially there was a lot of trial and error when creating its theme and the mood but luckily since the team uses Video Game music as their background music, I had a plethora of examples to build upon. I feel I enjoy Riptide the most out of the 2 as while it’s pirate music, it has its own universe where genres exist together so for one track I can include fully orchestral, and then write a Punk Rock piece next which despite being so different, the variety of the world and it’s sound allows it to gel well.
The Clarion: Dialtown is such a unique game, and your music plays a great part in that. How did you make such a massive soundtrack?
Hanover: I work quite quickly when I create music, I know FL Studio like the back of my hand which allows me to be extremely efficient, Dialtown was also in development for almost 3 years which gave me more than enough time to research, plan and write its music. Dialtown’s soundtrack was fun to work on as like Riptide, was quite diverse in its sonic style, mixing Jazz and Swing, Orchestral, and some ambiance together throughout, Dialtown is also a visually unique game which allowed the music I created to be unorthodox in its creation. Unusual chord progressions to uncommon tonal modulations and creative ways to use the most unusual instruments in its setting, from Camera clicks, snaps, and hits as the percussive basis of “Oliver, aspiring filmmaker, qualified goblin” imitating drums, to the vibrato of the Stylophone’s in “Karen, so, so dunn”.
The Clarion: How has the experience of working on so many different projects been for you? Do you have a favorite? Which was the most challenging?
Hanover: A lot of my work has been building experience for my future work, despite starting in 2015, I feel the last 5 years or so have been building up to the start of my career, and the initial 5 years were portfolio-building, I keep my early music up as an example to show off my blunders, from weird mixing, terrible melodies to ideas that worked in theory but failed in practice, but I also keep these early blunders public to show off how my style as grown. I get complimented on my leitmotif skills and how to tie a motif together to be recognizable and fun to listen to, but if you look back at my early 2015-2017 work, you can see that those skills were in their infancy.
I don’t feel I have a favorite project as I see my work from the creators’ point of view, not the listeners so I can hear all the imperfections or things I feel I could have done better on, but every so often I’ll go back to a track of mine to listen to, to re-experience it, but there’s always a threshold that is hit once I stop listening or thinking of my previous pieces in favor of my newer upcoming music.
The Clarion: Is there anything you’d change about your work?
Hanover: I like this question as the simple answer would be “No”, but for the long answer, I feel anyone who creates art is a bit of a perfectionist who won’t let go of a particular piece until it’s perfect and I feel like that’s the same for me, I don’t release a piece until I feel it’s perfect At that time. The catch musically is my knowledge is ever expanding, I don’t think you ever stop learning as it’s such a massive topic to the point even individual genres have their own information and knowledge on what makes that individual genre work. There’s also equipment, I have far better equipment, knowledge, and technology than I had 5 years ago, a track I believed was perfect 5 years ago won’t be perfect now and as such, every so often when the mood strikes me, I’ll revisit a track to rearrange and update. I was going to do this with Dialtown’s soundtrack but knew it would be far too costly and time-consuming, but I have done it with my standalone tracks such as “The Castle (2016)” and “Return to the Castle (2018)”, “Autumn (2016) and “From Summer to Winter (2021)”.
Photos of Nathan’s cats Milly and Myrtle.
Personal Life and Thoughts:
Wanting to know more about Nathan outside of his work? In this section we talked advice and his personal life!
The Clarion: Do you have advice for other musicians? Do you have any advice for college students?
Hanover: It’ll sound pessimistic, but I feel the best advice I could give is the saying “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket” I’m unsure if this is a cultural saying but essentially don’t funnel all your time, effort and money into one thing. When I first started, I was embarrassed at the thought of music NOT being my primary job and put all my time, effort, and money into it and then realized how BIG the music industry is and how saturated it is more so from the recent Pandemic. Due to this it hindered my developments greatly, couldn’t pay rent, couldn’t fund myself further, etc. because no one was hiring and there were literally thousands of composers out there all wanting a piece of the pie. Naturally feeling deflated by this I’d look on the internet for interviews of bigger composers and what their advice was which always boiled down to “If you continue and do your best you’ll make it” but I feel this is survivors bias, having seen just how BIG the industry is, I feel I’m not even scratching the surface yet.
But I soon learned a lot of their advice came down to one (or more) of three things, Luck, connections, and being in the right place at the right time, one great composer I’ve always been inspired by recounts how he would submit his portfolio to X company for months with radio silence, until he knew a friend who worked at the company who was willing to show his portfolio to executives, eventually getting hired (Connections). Another worked in a music store testing music software, and one day a pair of company executives entered and were surprised to see the music coming from the music software was from the store clerk and offered him the job at the company eventually getting hired (Luck + Right place at the right time). I’m nowhere as big as the previous examples but to use my own example of how I came to work on Generation Loss really starts in 2016 when I worked on two Video Games, Porkchop’s Adventure and Porkchop’s Horror Show, that creator knew the creator of Dialtown: Phone Dating Sim, which got streamed by the creator of Generation Loss which allowed me to be hired thanks to the luck of my hiring for Blood in the Bayou, and thanks to the right connections, allowing me to work on Generation Loss.
I started my portfolio in college, and I feel from my experience building your portfolio as early as possible and getting as many connections as you can from networking as possible is the way to go, My career started by sending a Direct Message to someone on DeviantArt, the creator for a Five Nights at Freddy’s fangame called The Joy of Creation when I was 15, having no idea it would get as popular as it has become to be picked up by the creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s himself soon allowing me to move away from fangames to original IPs. Don’t be embarrassed or afraid to work a second job, and do not make your music career the primary career unless you happen to be born with a lot of money and open opportunities already, it’s oversaturated and pays poorly, work a primary job to help fund your music career, and eventually with luck it may tip the scales where your music career becomes your primary career. This also applies to session musicians, I used to start by playing gigs in bars before jumping to music composition, and even now work Part Time as a composer, naturally, I won’t disclose my primary job but it helps pay the bills, keeping the lights on, while my music income pays for its own bills, and I hope over time I can buy a separate place to have as my own studio but I hindered myself from the start by putting all my eggs into one basket believing if I just funneled as much of my time, effort and money into it, it would simply work. I would class myself as an indie composer and I hope my work can inspire people, but I’m not at the stage where it’s 100% sustainable and it may not be for another 5 years, there still may be a point where I simply stop creating, I’d like to hope not, but it’s never a 0% chance.
The Clarion: Are you enjoying your career?
Hanover: I’d say so, but I can be pessimistic so I don’t have the brightest of outlooks, but that is mainly to do with my Anxiety and Depression which I suffer from, music can sometimes be an escape for me, and something I deeply enjoy thanks to my Autism.
The Clarion: Generation Loss has recently caused a lot of new people to become fans of your work. How has that affected you?
Hanover: It’s been exciting if I’m honest, I’ve always had a small following over the last 5-7 years or so, but this has been the biggest reaction I’ve had and I hope it continues after the release of the Generation Loss soundtrack. People joke about me simply appearing in comments and scaring them with my presence (which I find extremely funny it’s now become a little internet meme) I am just incredibly grateful for the support and attention, as you can probably tell from the previous 2 questions, under the online presence I’m not the brightest nor happiest of the bunch so it’s nice to see people genuinely enjoying the music enough to pay and help fund me as a creator. I hope it doesn’t sound greedy but it all helps go towards my progress and sustainability, I know money can be a taboo topic in the industry, everyone has to have some heartfelt reason as to why they do what they do, and I guess I do to…but money is also nice. It’s not talked about but it’s fundamental, if all my music income suddenly stopped, other than the passion, nothing else would fuel my creations and I don’t think the taxman or landlord would allow “passion” as a payment option, a lot of passion was used in those first 5 years building my portfolio and earning little to nothing in order to try and get myself off the ground.
The Clarion: What would you like the readers to know about you?
Hanover: One of my favorite colors is pink, and I have two cats, Milly (10), Myrtle (4) which you can see me post on my Twitter every so often, I firmly believe Trans rights are human rights! Happy Pride Month!
You can support Nathan Hanover’s music at:
Bandcamp: https://nhsynthonicorchestra.bandcamp.com/
Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/nhsynthonicorchestra
Website: https://nathanhanover.com/
LeAnne Marie McPherson
Creative Director