From God of War to Assassin's Creed: The Musical Journey of Winifred Phillips

Jeremy Soule. Nobuo Uematsu. Jesper Kyd. If you play video games regularly, you probably recognize these names in much the same way filmgoers know names like John Williams or Howard Shore.

Yet chances are you may not know the name Winifred Phillips, though you have probably heard her music: her work for the PlayStation 2 classic God of War was the composer’s first venture into video game music. It was a remarkable debut, though Phillips was hardly a neophyte musician. As any composer could tell you, major breakthroughs are almost always the result of many years of hard work and dedication, and Phillips started--as many musicians do--in public school. We caught up with Phillips recently, seeking insight into the process that took her from young music lover to professional video game composer.

Phillips' compositions did an excellent job of evoking Kratos' rage. Her work for Little Big Planet 2, on the other hand, couldn't be more charming.

“I always loved music, and I was lucky enough to go through the public school system when music programs were valued and well-funded,” begins Phillips. “I had so many wonderful music teachers. I definitely looked up to them, and I'd count the minutes until my next music class would begin. In middle school, my band teacher found out that I was a quick learner and got into the habit of giving me a new instrument to learn whenever there was a gap in one of his ensembles. I got to play all sorts of music and all different kinds of instruments.”

“Now, as a composer, I'm tremendously grateful to have had that experience when I was young. It taught me a lot of respect for the unique musicianship involved in coaxing music from the many different instruments of the orchestra. Plus, it was during that time that I first discovered I wasn't satisfied with performing music, but that I wanted to create it too. During rehearsals I kept itching to improvise, to stray from the notation and try new things. That impulse pushed me towards composing music of my own.”

Phillips found inspiration from many modern works over the years, and cites composer John Adams, best known for his postminimal orchestral work Short Ride in a Fast Machine, as a major influence. And she notes that Adams isn't the only musician whose creativity motivates her. “I find that kind of inventiveness really inspiring, and I've heard it in so many different kinds of composers and songwriters, from Ben Charest to Corvus Corax to Propellerheads. Since my projects have been so varied in terms of their musical style, I like to listen to all kinds of music, and I find that there are sparks of genius to be heard in every musical genre.”

"I think that changing things up on a regular basis has helped me keep growing as a composer."

Music was not the only source of entertainment in her life, however. “I’d been a gamer for as long as I could remember,” says Phillips. But she didn’t always intend to compose for games, and in fact, was working in an entirely different medium before that. “When the God of War project came along, I’d been working for a number of years as the composer for a drama series on National Public Radio. The Radio Tales series adapted classic stories and novels for the radio. Winnie Waldron, the series’ producer and script-editor, hired me to compose the music that would underscore the dramas from beginning to end. The programs were adaptations of stories like Beowulf, The Time Machine, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, so as a gamer and a lover of speculative fiction I felt right at home.”

Phillips loved the project, but she says it also felt like boot camp. “It was tough, unforgiving, and unrelenting--the deadlines were brutal, and the music had to carry most of the burden of telling the story and emotionally involving the audience. When I first started on that series, I hardly had any idea of what I was doing. By the last season of the series, I had a much better understanding of my job as a composer for media--the role the music needed to play, and how it could strongly enhance the effectiveness of a production. The learning process never really stops--with every project, I try to do my job better.”

Ultimately, Phillips’ hard work was recognized. The series won four Gracie awards, which honor programming created by and for women, as well as an International Radio Festivals WorldMedal. But Phillips had been thinking of expanding into video game music as a side project, and her demos had been circulating in the industry for a few years before her big break. She says, “When Sony Computer Entertainment America contacted me about God of War, the Radio Tales series was just winding up production. In 2004, I met with an SCEA music supervisor during E3 to talk about the team of composers that were being assembled for the project, and soon after that I was hired to compose music for God of War. I asked Winnie Waldron to make the leap into video games with me as my music producer, and we’ve worked together on every project since then.”

Phillips has won two Hollywood Music in Media Awards--one for Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, and one for Legends of the Guardian.

And thus Phillips' love for music and love for games merged, thrusting her down a new career path. But not every game can be as popular as God of War, and though she would lend her talents to other major franchises (she worked on Little Big Planet 2, for example), Phillips also contributed to lesser-known games like The Maw, and even to family-oriented games like Shrek the Third. These games couldn’t be more different from God of War, not just in how they play, but in how they sound. It’s hard not to wonder: is it difficult for a composer to quickly switch from one musical idiom to another?

“I try not to stretch myself too thin,” says Phillips, “but I do enjoy challenges. Switching from one musical genre to another is a great way to stay fresh and expand my skillset as a composer. I did Shrek the Third right after I composed the score for The Da Vinci Code video game, which was a very serious contemporary thriller with religious overtones. After the Shrek project I jumped right into the Speed Racer video game, which combined electronica with jazz, funk and guitar-driven rock. I think that it’s good for me to stay flexible and try to become knowledgeable in a lot of different musical styles. It keeps my day-to-day work continually interesting for me. I’ve had a chance to explore a lot of divergent musical genres in my game projects, from the world-fusion of Spore Hero to the epic orchestral fantasy of Legend of the Guardians. I think that changing things up on a regular basis has helped me keep growing as a composer.”