A Conversation With Dr. Allen Stroud
/I first met Allen after publishing a general call-out on twitter and facebook asking for possible soundtracks for The Dex Legacy audio drama. I had a number of interested parties respond, which was completely unexpected, among them this really nice guy who shared a love of audio drama in general, a penchant for Vangelis, and an academic angle into sci-fi and fantasy that was fascinating and refreshing in equal measure.
After myself and producer, Chris Gregory, agreed that Allen’s musical entry nailed the dark, driving rhythm of the drama, Allen emailed us his final version. When I noticed that the email signature carried the words: “Dr Allen Stroud, Chair of the British Science Fiction Association”, I almost spat out my tea.
It has been a mighty pleasure spending time chatting to Allen over the past months, discussing music, literature, home improvements, writing for video games and so much more. Here is a guy with so many strings to his bow it’s impossible to count.
So let’s start with the music!
Music seems to be very much a side quest for you. How did you get into composition and sound design?
It was the early 1990s. I was into keyboards at school. My music teacher decided I was really good and predicted me a high grade, but I’d never had piano lessons. The GCSE requirements were a shock and I had six weeks of emergency piano tutoring. In that time, I managed to do enough to get a C. It was my lowest GCSE grade, but the one I’m most proud of.
During that time my parents got me a keyboard with multi track recording and I started using it to make up music. Evenings would vanish with me in the back room trying to perfect each part.
A-Levels happened and I took Performing Arts. There was a music module and I had a bigger and better keyboard, a Technics KN1200, which I still use. I took the music module and was also acting in some local shows – part of a group who were adapting Terry Pratchett. That gave me an opportunity to write a bit more music for something.
I then went to university, studying Drama, Theatre and Television. We made videos for some assignments and other people on the course realised I could rustle up a track or two when needed. I’d also started working with samples and a computer as part of my process, but I’m not technically very good as a keyboard player. I have a piano grade 4 certificate here somewhere, so trying to write stuff within my limitations and the technical limitations of the equipment was quite hard.
I then put everything away for several years. When I lived in Derby, we didn’t have space for my music stuff. Around 2005, I think, I came back to it, and started buying new kit – or rather – old kit. The rest of the world had moved on, but that meant a lot of the synthesizer stuff I admired had become cheap. Gradually, I built and enhanced my process, upgrading sounds, samples, arrangers, mixers, etc every time I got back into working on music. That pretty much brings me to where I am today.
What instruments do you play? I know you play piano, but are there any others?
Nope. That’s it. Piano Grade 4. I’ve tried to learn other stuff. Some of my tracks have a little bit of live bongo drum playing, others have me singing made up words, but that kind of occasional messing around is very rare.
Do you see music ever becoming a primary quest?
I looked into PRS and the like some years ago. At the time, I was putting out some stuff people were really impressed by and I thought about going that way, but it meant I couldn’t work with my friends. So, I decided not to. I don’t think I write stuff that is mainstream enough to make a career, but I do like doing occasional projects.
I know you're a Vangelis fan, would you say he's your favourite composer? If not, who is?
I grew up on Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, Enigma (Michael Cretu), Jean Michel Jarre, and Harry Faltermeyer, with a little Tangerine Dream thrown in. At the moment, I love Thomas Bergersen and Hans Zimmer. What I like isn’t necessarily what I can make. I found that with my fiction writing as well.
I'm a game soundtrack nerd. The Zelda soundtracks are beautiful, Skyrim is haunting, Ori and the Blind Forest is magical... what's your favourite game soundtrack of all time? If different to the above, who's your favourite game composer?
The Guild Wars soundtrack left a massive impression on me as I realised I could write pieces like those. Homeworld was also an incredible moment. The use of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings in that game is amazing. They manage to get the same level of emotion you get from a Star Trek movie when we see the U. S. S. Enterprise for the first time. The way that music is used for the story is incredible.
Slightly left field, but I also had a bonus CD produced by TSR (The D&D people) back in the 1990s. It was a sample from Red Steel. Back then, they decided to do an audio CD to go with this new campaign source book. I loved those tracks.
That’s so cool. For me the 90s and early 00s were an era when you could get surprisingly decent games and music free with magazines and cereal packets and things like that. Totally bizarre. These days that never happens!
When you're composing for a project, do you search out musical influences you want to draw on or do you channel your own energy?
I like to have themes. If writers give me a kind of impression they are looking for, it helps. I tend to either a) assemble stuff and leave it half finished or b) pull together a whole piece from start to finish in one session. Time pressure helps (but doesn’t help my peace of mind!). I find some times audio producers are looking for bits and pieces they can use, so they can create their own impression, combining the actor performances, the soundtrack, etc.
A lot of the time I come back to tracks after they’ve been used for things and polish them up so they are finished pieces in their own right.
I know I gave you a brief for The Dex Legacy soundtrack, but you definitely put your own spin on it. Do you refer to the brief throughout, or read it once and use it as a springboard?
A little bit of both. I work in the attic with a couple of computers and an iPad. I kept your brief on the iPad and gradually assembled something I was happy with as a response to it.
For my own reference as much as anything, what makes a good brief for these things? What are the key things you need to know?
As mentioned, the theme. What kind of emotional impression are you trying to get out of the scene? Is it a tense moment? Is it wonder? Is it lonely? Etc. There’s a moment in Escape Velocity season 1 produced by the Radio Theatre Workshop which I did music for, where the main character sees space for the first time. The music is space. In that moment, my track is injected into your imagination and you see this vast expanse of stars. Brilliant work from Chris Jarvis, who listened to what I gave him and put it right there, making the track do the work in the scene. Good audio drama does that, it transcends being audio and paints a picture in your head.
With the writing and sound design skills down, would you ever consider making your own audio drama? If so, what would it be about?
I scripted something for Phoenix Point – a computer game I worked on between 2016-2019, but the big plans for continuing that story as a massive transmedia experience came to nothing. I’ve also scripted submissions for other production companies and never got past the boiler plate. If I wrote something that was right for audio, I’d do it, but, because I can do lots of things, I have a tendency to try and do all the things on a project, which probably isn’t the best way to go. I quite like dramatized readings – adding music to audio narration.
You're a lecturer, a writer, a composer, Chair of the British Sci-Fi Association, and I happen to know you're also very capable at DIY. How do you fit it all in?
I have learned to plod. You try to make sure you go to bed having achieved something that you can be proud of. Whether that’s a book chapter, a bookshelf, a piece of music, a painted model, anything that I can say I’ve managed to do. I take on too much, because my imposter syndrome tells me if I don’t do it now, eventually people will realise I’m some sort of fraud.
Oh I feel you there. People ask me how I keep going, and I say - fear - and a lot of it is fear of being “found out”!
Ok, so now let’s talk books and writing!
You've written fantasy, sci-fi, sci-fi-fantasy crossover... what's your favourite?
If any of my work got an audience, I always assumed it would be Fantasy as many of my natural inclinations for how things work fit with the classic Fantasy of Tolkien, Brooks, Gemmell, etc. But, my science fiction writing seems to be more popular. I’m not complaining about that in the slightest. I’m enjoying what I’m doing right now, which is writing science fiction and critical fiction (Fantasy). Perhaps I need to be out of my comfort zone to write better? Who knows.
Elite: Lave Revolution, Chaos Reborn: The Loremaster's Guide, story collections for Phoenix Point and Baldur's Gate III... you've done a lot of writing for and around video games. There's a lot to unpack here, I appreciate that, but can you tell us anything about the process of entering and forming a game world, and creating literature for it?
A massive topic. I’ve just finished an article for the BSFA’s writing magazine Focus about writing for games. Everyone’s pathway is different into that. Background and source material writing is something I started doing in live roleplaying for the biggest LARP game in the UK back in the late 90s, early 2000s. Many of the things I did there were things I brought to computer games, developing primer documents so others had something to work from. I’ve then progressed into the writing of the actual narrative, exposition in game, etc.
Two tips are:
get used to redundancy – writing stuff that no-one will read
learn to compress your writing, as the game screen is real estate and the developers would prefer more of it to be visuals than text
Ah, the hardest lesson for a writer (and especially a copywriter): the fewer words the better!
Your acclaimed Space Opera, Fearless, came out in 2020, the sequel, Resilient, is to be released this year... do I smell a trilogy?
Resilient is signed and agreed with Flame Tree. It’s scheduled for release at Easter in 2022. I’ve started on the next book. It won’t be a trilogy, it’ll be a series. We’ve just agreed the name, The Fractal Series. I do like that science fiction doesn’t quite have the same three-book obsession as Fantasy. I’ll keep writing about Captain Ellisa Shann until I don’t have any stories left to tell about her and her crew.
Do you have any other projects you'd like to share at this point?
I’ve just signed a contract with Rowman and Littlefield to produce the next edition of The Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature, which I should be delivering to them in July 2022.
Well that sounds like an immense and important task, which must be daunting. I’m sure I speak for the world in wishing you luck in that endeavour!
Right, important questions... what's your favourite movie?
A question that I struggle with every time it is asked. The metrics are difficult. Which do I admire most? Citizen Kane or Gladiator or The Lord of the Rings trilogy or Blade Runner. Which do I rewatch most? Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Rogue One, The Martian, Grosse Pointe Blank, Say Anything The Lord of the Rings trilogy or Blade Runner. Which would I consider guilty pleasures? Troy, King Arthur (yes the Clive Owen one), Pitch Perfect, Battleship, Say Anything, Vanilla Sky.
Okay, so if we’re down to features that appear in two categories:
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Blade Runner
Say Anything
I guess I’m going for The Lord of the Rings. But, if Say Anything is on TV, I stop everything!
What's your favourite game?
Computer games - I loved Medieval Total War 2. I love the whole Total War series, but I dropped out of playing it after M:TW2. I mean, I own them, but I haven’t done the time to relearn how to play. I struggle a bit with computer games in that I need to feel like my time is productive. Board games wise? Gloomhaven is pretty brilliant and great to play with friends.
I hear you there. I was thinking of starting a Twitch channel so I could make gaming “productive time” - but then it’s just another thing!
What is your all time favourite biscuit? The one and only biscuit you would choose above all others?
Shortbread. If you’d asked me as a child it would have been chocolate digestive or those thin ones with raisins in, but now, shortbread biscuits are the devil. There are four in the biscuit tin at the moment. I always know exactly how many we have in the house (its usually zero).
And if you’re me, you still visit regularly to see if the magical biscuit faerie has topped up the jar… which never happens. But you never know!
Right, well that seems like a good place to stop.
Thanks Allen!
If you want to find out more about Allen and his work you can visit his website: www.allenstroud.com
And you can click here to buy his book, Fearless
