Cooking up a New Composition for Cuphead – The Delicious Last Course

My office wall has a small collection on vinyl of videogame music. This collection includes some of my personal favorite songs, such as Grim Fandango, SkyrimAnd The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Here’s a sample of some recent music. Cuphead – The Delicious Last CourseThere is still a place for the upcoming collection.

Original CupheadThe soundtrack includes a mix of 1930s jazz and big band music. A barbershop quartet also joins Cuphead and Mugman as they travel across the Inkwell Isle. Kris Maddigan, the composer, has created a stunning new set of songs for his latest platforming adventure. It features themes that go back to the original and chart a course for Ms. Chalice, its newest protagonist.

We chatted to Kris Moldenhauer, Studio MDHR’s Creative Director Chad Moldenhauer and asked them about their creation. Cuphead, the challenges they faced recording music against the backdrop of a global pandemic and praising the many musicians who contributed to what’s destined to be another modern classic for everyone to enjoy.

Xbox Wire: Thank you for your time. I’m curious to know how challenging it was, creatively, coming back to Cuphead and creating a wholly new soundtrack that’s capturing both the spirit of the original game, while also charting a new path with the composition for Cuphead – The Delicious Last Course?

Kris Maddigan: I think considering this was originally supposed to be out in 2018, I didn’t really feel like I left the world for very long. I was kind of already brainstorming ideas for what I wanted to do on this next game and already sort of knew some of the musical areas that we didn’t explore the first time around. So, I feel like I haven’t left it in about 8 or 9 years now in a sense. Although it was easy to remain in the same realm, I was just able to expand my knowledge.

Xbox Wire – It was a difficult task to create the songs during the pandemic. All of this must have been difficult, I can imagine.

Kris MaddiganYes, the recording itself. Most people with the exception of our organ and harpsicord player who has a giant home organ rig, which is like, you know, a full size with manuals and stops and everything, which is not particularly portable, he recorded his stuff at his house and because we have some barbershop stuff, they were split up… So, two of those guys were recording in Buffalo because they couldn’t cross the border and two of the guys were here. But aside from that, we didn’t do any recording outside of the three local studios that we recorded at.

The challenges within that were there were certain rules, like we couldn’t have more than 10 people on a session at a time, and so we utilized the three sort of big major studios in Toronto: Canterbury, Noble, and Revolution Studios for solo stuff. At Canterbury, we had a big band rhythm section. Revolution had big band horns. Because of the space in the venue, they could be spread out more. The biggest challenge was logistically sorting all of that.

Huge, huge props go to Jeremy Darby, who was our recording engineer on this project, because he was kind of the one who did all the math for where everyone needs to be spaced, and where we’re doing this sessions, and this is where the mics need to be… If you watch the behind-the-scenes video that came out in December, the recording of the overture, there’s a part where you see all three strings sections layered on top of each other. And that’s three different sessions from the same camera angle. And you see how the chairs are all shifted so that the sound still sounds like it’s 30 people the way they would normally be spaced as opposed to 10, 10, and 10. This was the real deal. Trying to make that sound cohesive because that’s not a practical way to record, especially over that many different locations.

The other big challenge that we ended up running into was when you do something like that, say, if you’re going to record a 50-piece orchestra, you might book a concert hall and then you would do one session to record. Because we couldn’t do that, the 50-piece orchestra had to be done in five sessions, which at that point is five times the amount of mic tracks that is required for Pro Tools. I don’t remember the exact numbers that Jeremy had for the session data, but we had to procure, I think it was about $7,000, for a special HDX card, just so his very high end Pro Tools computer could actually handle all of the tracks that we were putting into it, which he’s never had to do before. Everyone in the audio industry who heard that we had to do that was in disbelief because that’s kind of unheard of, like just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tracks.

Without Jeremy we could not have achieved it. It was very organized and systematic in that setting. The result was a bunch of large groups of people broken into smaller groups. I think if you’ve heard it already or when people hear the soundtrack, you would never know that that’s how we had to record it either, unless you actually knew that.

Xbox Wire: When you’re going about composing the themes for both the returning characters and some of the new ones that you experience in Delicious Last CourseIs there any videogame music or soundtracks that you love?

Kris Maddigan: Yeah, I mean, I think the game itself is a lot of homages to things, and that’s kind of one of the things that the game does. And musically, there’s a lot of little video game quotes that are in there from other games that I like or things where Chad’s like, “You got to put this put this Golden Axe riff in there somewhere,” which I did. I had to like play with it a bit to make it work but…

Xbox Wire: On which track?

Kris Maddigan: That one is called, “Gnome Way Out.” I think it’s been surgically altered enough in order to make it fit. But there’s still quotes from the first game that no one has discovered yet, to my surprise.

Some of the classic game soundtracks I grew-up with are particularly inspiring to me. Final Fantasy 7It is so cliché to use the expression “,” It’s a great soundtrack, but that was really the one for me that’s arguably the most operatic of Nobuo Uematsu’s work, because of the thematic development and his use of themes and light motifs. Like, obviously there’s a lot of great soundtracks, but that is his most cohesive work, I think.

And so, I found that was something that inspired me on this because it’s a run ‘n gun game. It’s not really like hours and hours of story, but I was really trying to create a soundtrack that actually had sort of a narrative arc that goes through it. It’s “X-Files” episodes. You can just tape the lore episodes and watch all of those, and they’ll have a cohesive story experience, but it’s all the episodes which are standalone episodes also. You know the DLC has the lore soundtrack, and it’s also got the standalone tune. That should be obvious. If you sit down and listen to it start to finish, you’ll start to hear those themes and the development. The story will make sense if you’ve played the game. But I was trying to do something that I think was very challenging, which was create a cohesive narrative soundtrack for a run ‘n gun game.

Xbox Wire: Are there any instruments you rely on to create a certain mood, set a theme, or help you convey the story on the screen’s screen?

Kris Maddigan: Yeah, I think there’s a lot more orchestral instruments in this one than the last one. Hot Club of France, sound. That style inspired me to create more music. I believe that each instrument is its own character. Also, like when you hear those instruments, it’s sort of trying to make things coherent a bit more obviously. So, I mean, there’s a lot of guitar and violin on the soundtrack in that context.

A big church organ was something I had always wanted to play. Although it is somewhat cliché, I felt that I could do it in a way that would be so outrageous that nobody will want to ever use the instrument again. Whether I succeeded, I don’t know, but it was just more of a challenge to be like, “How can we really take these ideas and just really like make them huge?”

I knew of other instruments. I was also just trying to find more unique instruments that we hadn’t used before. There’s a strange, fairly uncommon saxophone called the Sea Melody Saxophone, which was popular in the ‘20s and ‘30s and then kind of fell out of favor. And there’s not very many of them lying around. They were only three. So, there’s one tune on here that has three Sea Melody Saxophones on it, which is a very strange sound. There’s a novachord on one tune, which is a very early Hammond organ, and you’ll hear that the first time you meet the Blue Fairy in “Pinocchio.” That’s the novachord, which is a very sort of otherworldly sound that they used in that soundtrack. This was another fascinating type of instrument.

You can find instruments that have their own personalities. They’re defining characters, but also just trying to find all of the other sort of obscure sounds and instruments that we didn’t use the first time around.

Xbox Wire: When you go about composing an original score for a boss fight, do you start collaborating with the team as they’re starting to illustrate the character, or do you approach them with a sample that in turn helps them draw the inspiration to create that character? What’s that back-and-forth relationship like?

Kris Maddigan: I mean, I think that I’m probably more inspired by the visuals than they are by the music in terms of creation, but this time around, much more so than the first. The first game, it was very much… I was just trying to put down as many ideas on paper as was possible because there was seemingly more and more work every day and more bosses.

So, it was just, I’m just trying to keep up with that and then often what would happen is Chad would say like, “Oh, this tune sounds like it would go good with this boss.” And then I might go back to it and then maybe tailor it a bit more to that particular boss, like “Phantom Express” is a good example of that, where it kind of had a good vibe. And then Chad was like, “oh, this could be the train boss.” And then we went back and added some train sounds to it and that kind of thing.

Some bosses in the first game were designed specifically. However, we had many of them working simultaneously, and mixed them together. The soundtrack for this game was almost all created specifically to suit specific bosses and specific areas. The art was shown to me very early in the process. I also saw some of it described to my by the artist. I believe that more effort was put into matching the music and visuals. However, I must say that I was inspired visually by a number of tracks.

Chad MoldenhauerUnbeknownst to our surprise, the first game was almost immediately followed. Street Fighter 2’s music happened. The composer is writing all the music, and as people were finishing the backgrounds and art they came in and said, “Oh, that’s going to match this background and this one’s going to match this fight!” The first game was so different because like Kris was saying, the scope was never actually clear and stuff was changing all the time to the point where we might have described a boss as a giant mining boss, that’s deep in the coals and Kris is working on some stuff. And we go, “Ah that boss was scrapped. It was changed into a genie.” Kris goes, “oh OK, cool.”

Kris Maddigan: I believe that the genie was made specifically for thegenie.

Xbox Wire: Delicious Last CourseWhat were some of the most memorable boss fights? How difficult was it or how natural did they come together?

Kris MaddiganYou know, some tunes were more difficult than others. The video for the Mortimer Freeze Snowcone Scuffle is up. It took me about 90% of the time to finish it and then it was getting the chords just right. It was difficult.

There’s another boss fight, a big bad boss fight that was the same. I won’t say which one, but you know there were a couple of tunes. The world map theme took forever for me to get it the right voice. The challenge of refining the theme and making it sound exactly as I desired was much greater. And sometimes that takes a long time and sometimes it doesn’t. I learned so much on the first game, but it doesn’t really make the composing process easier. You can just solve the problems faster, in a way. However, you will still need to know how to solve different problems.

Chad Moldenhauer: Yeah, and there’s a few places in the soundtrack where we cut from one track to the next, which brought its own challenges for how you were going to make it sound because it was never timed perfectly, it just kind of had to jump out.

Kris Maddigan: There’s some stuff like that too, and part of the challenge was even though everything was pretty locked in, just booking studio time during COVID was such a hassle, because again you have to book 5, 6, 7, 8 times as much time as you might normally have to do and that’s challenging and it takes a lot of scheduling and making sure everyone’s free and this and that. The majority of the recordings were made between May and August, according to my memory.

Part of what Chad’s talking about, like if that changes within that, well the music’s already done. So, we sort of have to be like, “OK well how do we finesse that now that it’s finished into something that works,” which is, I mean, that was maybe one of the only parts I think that was kind of an issue, I think. There’s definitely at least one part where the visuals had to be made to the music, I think.

But yeah, it would have been nice to maybe delay the recording a bit more, but we found ourselves with these windows where people were free, and it seems like we’re not at the top of some (COVID) wave, so it’s a bit safer and we’ll try and get everyone in in a couple of weeks. It was our intention to complete everything by May. It was going to record hell last May. Then we had to delay it because of the comfort factor. As if anyone blew air into an instruments, we had to put off. All of this was postponed until August, when we performed the big band brass as well orchestral brasses and winds.

It was just when vaccines were being introduced at the time we began. We were also trying to find out that. It comes down to if people are not comfortable being in the studio, they’re not going to play great. No one wanted to be sick. It’s amazing. It’s not amazing because we were very strict, and we had tested every day with the nurse and UV light and stuff. Although it was difficult to ensure everyone felt safe, people would feel much better by the end of the summer. Then also if you’re in a situation where you’re just not comfortable being there, you’re not going to do your best work, and we wanted to make sure that everyone also was comfortable being there.

Xbox Wire: Talking about your musicians, did you notice any performances that stood out to you during the creative process. For me, when I was listening to the sampling, whoever is on the xylophone for “Recipe for Miss Chalice” was amazing.

Kris Maddigan: However, it is possible to find footage of Michael Murphy on the xylophone during this interview. I’m just saying, that’s a hypothetical. We don’t know. But, it’s safe to say that each musician was there. This was the last time.CupheadOnce again we held rehearsals. This time, however, we felt that rehearsals would be just an additional problem. We’d need to arrange a location for the rehearsal and then conduct testing. Then we asked them to look carefully at their roles and come prepared. Everyone showed up and played every part. The recording and editing was made very easy by this, however there were some people that stood out.

Mike Murphy, I think you mean. Drew Jurecka, who you see on the “High-Noon Hoopla” video playing fiddle. His incredible ears and knowledge made him a valuable secret weapon for many of the tracks. He’s got all the answers. He is one of the greatest whistlers you could ever hear. Incredible whistler.

Sonia Eng also, she’s the harp player that you see on the overture video from December. I wrote a piece that features her, and I think when you listen to the soundtrack, you’ll figure out which one it is. But I didn’t think that it was really going be playable in one pass. We would need to separate it. Harp is a very challenging instrument to write for and there’s a lot of things you can’t do on harp, like, really chromatic things because of the way that the tuning works and someone like Ravel would write harp parts that sounded like one player, but they were two players because they would have to switch off every bar because of the pedaling.

Anyways, this particular track, I told Sonia we can break it up however you want, and we’ll do whatever sections that you want to do and then we can stop. Julian and I were also in the booth, so she performed the entire piece from beginning to end in one go. It was amazing. It was an incredible performance.

Sharon Lee is the concertmaster of the orchestra. She played the first violin and did many string bowings, string organizing, or anything similar. Her talent was an asset, and her voice is amazing. Stephen Boda was the one who recorded organ, harpsichord and piano from his home. It sounds amazing. So, there’s some standard performances, but every single player does some incredible playing on that thing.

Xbox Wire: If this is the last time we’re seeing Cuphead, Mugman, and Miss Chalice, what will you miss most about this experience with the game and its characters?

Kris MaddiganMDHR is a great company to have as a collaborator. I do hope that it will allow me to collaborate more often with them. I believe they created a unique sound, but gave me plenty of room to try out any expensive, wild or challenging ideas. The support from the studio made the recording process and the writing process very enjoyable because I felt that I didn’t really have certain limitations which would have been maybe frustrating to deal with, I guess. That I was able write that way and have the opportunity to study a variety of styles without worrying about cutting corners, is something I will miss going forward.

But obviously it’s also an incredible era for music across the board. So, it’s been a pleasure spending time there and really digging into it and I hope that people enjoy this soundtrack when they hear it. It’s been almost as long to write this one as the first one, maybe even longer so in theory, I hope that that shows in the final product.

Chad Moldenhauer: I think that, internally, we attempted to push this throughout the game. Cuphead DLC to our limits, since this 1930s era might be an era we don’t come back to for a very long time. So, our goal behind it was like let’s just push our limits to it and we may have pushed it too far and delayed the game a few times. It was the same with the music. Kris just leapt into it and made it bigger and better. Thank you to all the people who shared my joy. CupheadWill you see that this isn’t really a letter of love, but rather a goodbye farewell?

Kris Maddigan: Yeah, definitely. The first game sound is in there, but this is also its own sound world and I think it’s very extravagant and lush. Assuming that maybe we’re not going to be living in this world for you know how many more games to come, that was an impetus to really put a nice, proper bow on this whole experience.

Xbox Wire is Yes. It’s awesome. I’m really looking forward to playing the final game and hearing the final soundtrack because your work has been incredible. Both with the first game and then of the sampling that I’ve heard so far of Miss Chalice. I’m looking forward to it. There are many people like me, and I’d just like to express my gratitude for taking the time to share your experience here.

Kris Maddigan: Hello, thank you for your time.

Chad: Yeah. We are grateful for your presence. That was fantastic.

We are grateful to Kris and Chad that they took the time for us to speak. Pick up Cuphead – The Delicious Last CourseIt’s available for sale today via the Xbox Store at $7.99 It’s also available in the Cuphead & The Delicious Last CourseBundle for $26.99

Cuphead & The Delicious Last Course

Studio MDHR

☆☆☆☆☆
479

★★★★★

$26.99

Cuphead & The Delicious Last Course is a bundle containing the original Cuphead adventure, and the follow-up expansion The Delicious Last Course.

Cuphead lets players take on screen-filling bosses. It’s a fun run-and gun adventure inspired by the cartoons of 1930s. As Cuphead, or Mugman, you will explore new worlds and learn super moves. You’ll also need to repay your debt to the devil.

Cuphead, Mugman and Ms. Chalice join forces for The Delicious Last Course. This DLC adventure takes place on an island new to them! With new weapons, new charms, and Ms. Chalice’s brand new abilities, take on a new cast of wacky, transforming bosses to assist the jolly Chef Saltbaker in Cuphead’s final challenging quest.

Each title features audio and visuals that are authentic to the time they’re based upon, which includes traditional watercolor backgrounds as well as original jazz recordings and many hours of hand-drawn cel animation.

Notice: After completing the Cuphead original game, you can experience The Delicious Last Course. Ms. Chalice may be used as a character to play in any stage after being unlocked.