**From Burning a Pizza to Kicking a Tree, Everything Inspires Antonio Teoli’s Soundtracks**

A jump, a sound. The music becomes tense, and you know the boss is near. You start running, and the sounds speed up and become more frantic, giving you that adrenaline rush. We sometimes don't notice, but music plays an essential role in games. Creating music for these games is an art in itself. This is the work of Antonio Teoli, one of the pioneers of game music in Brazil, who left São Paulo to become the lead composer and sound designer at Samsung Game Team in Manaus.

Teoli is the composer behind the soundtracks of games and is responsible for all the musicality we find in them, from the sound a character makes when "jumping" to what plays when facing the dreaded villains. He is the mind behind Abracompers - the Brazilian Association of Game Composers, and has a portfolio that includes projects like Gamer Hero, Blood Gate - Age of Alchemy, and Invasion. His inspiration for creating sounds comes from everything, from burning a pizza to kicking a tree.

From a young age, around five or six, he was already addicted to games, but it was one specific game that led him to pursue a career: Sonic. The "rock'n'roll" character, as he describes it, who ran through the levels with fast soundtracks and grand arrangements (who remembers the boss music from the casino stage?), made Teoli want to become a musician. Later, he studied Game Design in his hometown of São Paulo and then started creating his own soundtracks.

Not only is he a composer and sound designer, but also a guitarist and orchestrator for the rock band Marmor, featuring alongside several renowned names in national and international metal. He has also sung in a choir, played tuba, classical guitar, and piano. We spoke with Teoli to understand how this creative process works and his "controversial" methods.

**Noisey:** What was the first game you composed for?

**Antonio Teoli:** I composed my first game at 16, not professionally, in 2002. It was an RPG-style game that never even had a name, as it was a very short project. Actually, a friend's father invested some money for us to start exploring this world of soundtracks and games. A year later, right when I started college, I was hired by Devworks to compose the soundtrack for an advertising game for Children's Day. I don't remember the name or have anything saved, but I was extremely nervous. Given my lack of experience at the time, I’m sure it turned out poorly.

**I know you love Sonic. How did the character influence your career?**

Sonic was the seed for everything that sparked my interest in composing for games. He was a rock'n'roll character with attitude. When I first played Sonic, around six or seven years old, I said to myself: I want to be a musician! At that point, I didn’t know I would become a game composer, but the love for music started there. I began studying piano and then moved on to guitar, which remains my main instrument to this day.

**Speaking of rock'n'roll, you’re a guitarist for the band Marmor, alongside several prominent names in national and international metal. How does being a headbanger influence your work in games?**

Musically speaking, these are worlds that coexist. Being a headbanger is about having attitude, and I think that attitude, applied to creative work, can create a fantastic edge for a game composer. In summary, be a headbanger in attitude but never confined to a single music style. I like sounds ranging from Dream Theater, Sepultura, Rush to Beethoven. Everything you listen to gets incorporated into what I call creative DNA.

**Let’s talk about soundtracks. The client has approached you. What are the next steps in composing the soundtrack?**

The first step in creation is, inevitably, the score. I compose and write note by note, instrument by instrument, layer by layer, articulation by articulation—literally one by one. Today, sound libraries, also known as samples, can simulate a real instrument very well and usually work excellently for their purposes. In the second step, I start recording some real instruments on top of the samples to add a human element and "trick" the listener into believing the music was recorded by a real orchestra. This blending technique is used by numerous AAA game studios and Hollywood films, of course, on different scales.

**And to "fit" the music into the game, how do you do it?**

After blending, I move on to mixing, where I need to eliminate and emphasize desired and/or unwanted frequencies. Balancing volumes, panning (left and right), reverbs, delays, compressions... Then comes mastering, the final step, where the work basically involves making the music sound uniform among other tracks and ensuring it plays as well as possible on as many speakers as possible.

Finally, the music is implemented in what we call middleware, where I add behavior functions in the game, making it play in various ways and respond to direct actions from players.

**We can't know what decision the player will make in the game. When you say the music responds to direct actions, does that mean there’s different music for each player action?**

We need to create various types of music that interact, communicate, and change to fit what happens in the game. For example, in Super Mario World, when Mario rides Yoshi, few people remember that a new audio track with bongos starts playing, indicating that Mario and Yoshi together become more "wild."

**What criteria do you use to start the composition process?**

It could be the story, a concept art, an animation, or even a conversation about the project idea. It's impossible to list all the elements involved, but I always ask about the main character's motivation, the world in which the game takes place, color palettes, dynamics (a fast or slower game), whether it's historical or not, and never, ever, references. I avoid references because I prefer to see what comes naturally from me. Sometimes references are sent, I listen naturally, and then I go back to the original conversation with the client to suggest what I think could be a more interesting direction.

**What’s the difference between composing for a hero and a villain?**

When it comes to a villain, conceptually, they usually represent the antithesis of the hero. So if the hero has major chords, the villain will have minor chords. If the hero has the trumpet as the main instrument, the villain might have a trombone, which is also a brass instrument but heavier.

**Where do you draw your greatest inspiration from when composing?**

Animals? Nature? Spirituality? My mother? Anything that reminds me of life, the pleasure of living, or the pleasure of creating serves as inspiration. I've had moments where I created, like every musician, within the studio, but I've also had moments where, during a show, an idea came to me and I was desperate to write it down before it disappeared. I’ve even composed music during a sexual encounter—and no, it wasn’t a romantic piece.

The music for the game Blood Gate, I composed while I was at home, preparing a pizza. Everything was going wrong, and the pizza started burning, which led me to hear those first notes that play in the battle music of this game. Another example is the music for the newly released game Finding Monsters, which was born while I was hitting trees and branches to create the sound for the character Harry Scary. Noticing a rhythmic pattern, I created the percussion part and then the violins.

**If you could choose a game to compose for, which would it be?**

Metal Gear! For me, it’s the perfect blend of film and game. The possibilities for sensitivity applied to music are endless. Players really connect with Snake and his story. I believe that in some scenarios, mixing Brazilian music with electronic percussion elements, characteristic of the series, wouldn’t hurt. Some guitars and typical Brazilian percussion mixed with the classic sound of an action game, as clearly used in Metal Gear. It might sound crazy, but in my head, it sounds great, and I'm sure people would be surprised! For instance, when I created the soundtrack for a game about an alien invasion, I used the berimbau to represent the big boss because I think it has an extremely alien sound. In another game, I composed a track for a chase within a samba school. I had to recreate a traditional chase music mixed with the samba that was playing in the background. In short, the Metal Gear score is perfect, but I’d love to test different sound elements.