The music plays an important role in the success of any video game. No matter how exciting the gameplay is, the player will be displeased if a soundtrack designed to immerse them deeper into the atmosphere is made by some “Ghost Composers” in a weekend and leaves approximately the same feeling as the squeak of the fingernails on a chalkboard. An illustrative example is the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, where the gameplay, graphic design and music have always had positive feedback. Alexey Omelchuk, the 36-year-old Ukrainian composer, had a hand in the soundtracks for “Clear Sky” and “Call of Pripyat”. He kindly agreed to do this interview for the GSC-Fan site.

[GSC-Fan]: When did you realize that music is your path?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: It's hard to say. I’ve always liked music ever since I can remember :) Everything I’ve done in my life has to do with the music in this or that form.

[GSC-Fan]: What did you do before being a composer?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: I did a lot of things. I was a DJ on the radio station, and I DJ’ed in the clubs for a long time. I was a concert sound engineer for some famous and not so famous Ukrainian performers. Later I was a concert director for the same performers. I worked as a music producer of the big show “Magia y Misterio 2000” in Mexico. Then, “upon returning home”, I went into business. I managed the sales at the Ukrainian office of Sony Music Entertainment and Sony BMG. For the last ten years I composed the music along with the main place of work. Now I’m doing this professionally.



[GSC-Fan]: It often happens that some famous artists and composers established in art are self-taught without proper education. Do you have it? Can you play any musical instruments?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: My musical education is the most ordinary. It’s a music school, the classical guitar. I finished it externally in a year and a half. I was about to go next, but we had a band at the time, we spent day after day at the rehearsal base and it seemed like that is what life’s about. Later the band broke up, but I was already fully working… Anyway, it didn’t work out with further education, which I regret now. I’m trying to compensate for it by active and tenacious self-education.

[GSC-Fan]: What resources should a composer have to compose quality music?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: I’m not that good of a master at giving advice, I have a lot to learn myself :)

I’ll be honest with you, the concept of “quality music” bewilders me. The samples can be quality, but not music itself. The plugins are processing the “qualitatively” recorded material, the material can be quality. But I think it’s very wrong to call the material itself “quality” or “poor quality”. You can do some technical things qualitatively, but how can you “compose the music qualitatively”? What are the standards of quality? The musical note content less than twenty per square centimeter is poor quality, twenty and more is quality? Or like this: C and D notes are quality, A and B notes are poor quality?

The main resource of a composer is skill to hear the music within yourself and transfer it to paper or sequencer losslessly. As old man Johann Sebastian Bach liked to say, “I don’t compose the music, I transcribe it only”. It’s secondary what a composer is using in this case: piano, sopilka, FruityLoops or Pro Tools HD. At least, you can buy these things for a price, but you can't buy skill. Many people think that they automatically produce only “quality music” by buying a set of expensive and quality equipment. I can assure you, they don’t.

[GSC-Fan]: Tell us, how did you started working with GSC Game World, please?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: I’ve never done this in public, but I would like to thank GSC as a whole and personally Dmitry Kuzmenko aka Kaos, Illya Tolmachov, Ruslan Didenko, Anton Bolshakov and everyone who worked on projects that I had the honor to take part in. Also those who I don’t know personally, and of course Sergiy Grygorovych for the high trust in me, sorry for grandiloquence. I was raised as a game composer by GSC, it’s literally true, and I’m grateful to the company, or rather people in the company, for that. It all started with “Alexander” (2004): I sent some tracks for “check it out” and to my big surprise and joy some of them have been taken to work. Of course, before these tracks were included in the game I had to work on them a lot, but I had so much enthusiasm that I was ready to work day and night. Actually, that’s how it was: I was on the main job during the day and composed the music at night :)

[GSC-Fan]: So, you’re invited to work on the game soundtrack. What are you going to use for inspiration: atmosphere, setting or gameplay? Or are all of these elements equal to you?


[Alexey Omelchuk]: It’s hard to give a universal answer. Just as there are no two identical tracks, so there are no two identical “recipes for making” :) Some themes appear by themselves without setting and gameplay, then successfully fall on the game and no one believes this music was composed “long before”. Other themes are composed to the finished video and eventually aren’t included in the game. Some themes are given birth as a result of the “rapid craft”, so to speak, other themes arise in repeated experiments, reworking, then experimenting again, then reworking again, then they are totally forgotten. Six months later these themes are “taken from a chest” and reworked again, converted and eventually… aren’t included in the game :)

I can say one thing for sure: it’s a thankless task to be inspired in a recording studio, because in a studio you have to work on well-formed ideas. I don’t know about others, but I get new ideas, thoughts, melodies beyond the studio more often than at it. Take a walk around an abandoned factory late at night, do you know how many ideas a-la dark ambient will come? And if the territory is secured then you’ll get inspired for action scenes :)

[GSC-Fan]: Some composers say that composing the soundtrack for strategies is much harder than for shooters. Do you agree with this opinion?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: If the next game on which I’ll work is a strategy, I’ll agree. If it’s a shooter, I’ll disagree :) It depends on who the composer is, what kind of strategy and shooter :)

Seriously, an orchestral soundtrack musically is definitely much more complex and manifold than dark ambient. But it was really hard personally for me to be rebuild myself while working on “Clear Sky” after three strategies (“Alexander”, “Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars” and “Heroes of Annihilated Empires”). It turned out that the seeming simplicity of the ambient makes it very difficult. I don’t know how else to explain it. In general, “all is not simple that seems simple, and all is not difficult that seems difficult”...


[GSC-Fan]: What GSC projects were the hardest to work for you? What nuances have you had to face?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: Every soundtrack (while working on it) seemed the hardest. No kidding. “Alexander” was hard because it was the first. I wanted to make “Cossacks II” much better than “Alexander”, so I “worked my fingers to the bone”. When I was composing “Heroes of Annihilated Empires”, for a long time all compositions turned out to be the “Cossacks 3” soundtrack, not fantasy. I wrote earlier about the move from strategies to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. In addition, every time trying to raise the quality bar. So it turns out that the hardest project is the one that is in the works at the moment.

[GSC-Fan]: Some S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans made such a remark, Omelchuck’s music doesn’t conform to the works of MoozE. The players reacted with particular uncertainty to combat related tracks.

What goals did you try to achieve when you started working on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? How do you rate the results of your work on the soundtracks?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: The last thing I wanted was that my works conform to the works of MoozE :) It’s not because I don’t like his works, quite the opposite. It’s because every composer wants to be individual and non-conforming to anyone :) Oscar Wilde said: “Art is impossible without individuality” and “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known”. So I wanted to show my individuality in my works and not “conform” to anyone else. Remember, as in Bulat Okudzhava:

Everyone writes what they hear
Everyone hears the way they breathe,
As they breathe, so they write
Not trying to please.
That's how nature wanted,
Why? — it's none of our business,
What for? — it's not for us to judge.

I’m always quite critical of my craft. If there were no such things as “deadlines”, I’d be still finishing up and reworking these three tracks for “Alexander”. As one smart person said, art is never finished, only abandoned, and it's true.

I’ll say this about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: nowadays I’d rework many things from “Clear Sky”, I wouldn’t change many things from “Call of Pripyat”, but… When you publish your works, it’s like a photo, you are as you are in it at the moment. You can’t retake that photo taken one year ago or even one second ago, you can just take a new one. Do you understand what I mean? At that point in time, at that stage of my growth I was like this, I’ve seen it like this and wrote music in conformity with my then vision (and suggestions of GSC).

What I wanted to achieve? Probably my main idea was to make the dark ambient more musical or something. As one forum user wrote, my works in “Call of Pripyat” have become more “humane”. He delicately pointed out, that’s true. However, he used it in the “bad” context. I see it as “good”.


Anyway, as strange as it may sound, I was incredibly happy to hear the fact that “Clear Sky” tracks have been criticized: the worst is when your work goes completely unnoticed, people don’t write bad or good about it.


[GSC-Fan]: Recently it became known that a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. TV series are in production. Do you want to join the project as a composer?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: Wow! Of course.

[GSC-Fan]: First of all you are known as a video game composer. Do you have interesting musical projects unrelated to the game industry?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: if advertising had credits, I’d be better known as an advertisement composer :) By the way, I have the winners of the advertising festivals in my portfolio.

Also everything to do with the television — intros, so called the “outfit” for TV shows — all this is up my alley too :) Game music is for the soul. That is why when choosing game projects I’m very selective and pursue a non-aggressive policy on the game market (I feel like working in advertising is affecting my vocabulary :)).

[GSC-Fan]: You recently together with Anthesteria took part in the recording of music for the Metro 2033 video game. What is different about this project from the previous projects? Have you used previous experience?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: Previous experience is always useful :) The game is wonderful, and the soundtrack (without false modesty) matches it too :) Maybe because the idea is strong, maybe because the team is good, maybe because the stars came together, who knows? All creativity is magic, in all this there is some voodoo. One melody of three notes became the masterpiece for centuries, the other melody doesn’t impress anyone, although the same notes were used. I often think about it and I don’t have a logical explanation for this. All this is magic… and a bit of diligence :)

By the way, I really liked Anthesteria’s tracks.

[GSC-Fan]: Does it happen that not all tracks for the game suit the customer? Why are they filtered out? Can you compose a track from the first try, without it needing further changes or rework?


[Alexey Omelchuk]: Of course it happens. The cooperation with the customer is a complex and manifold process.

Sometimes everything turns out good from the first try. Sometimes it can be really difficult for the customers to explain “on the fingers”, what they want from the music. Sometimes it can be easy for them to explain, but it’s hard for me to understand :) So a lot of tracks appear by “trial and error”. Like this? No. And how about this? No again? Well, maybe like this? Personally I don’t work like a "guest star — here’s a project, the main thing is that your name will be in the credits. First, I’m not a “star”, second, I’m not interested in this. I’d rather be a part of a creative team united by the general idea, the general goal. Someone comes up with a concept, someone makes this concept “visible”, then someone else makes it “audible”. Like I said, the composer, in fact, is a person who knows which buttons to push to hear what’s in his head. High flying is to know which buttons to push to hear what’s in the project leader's head :)

[GSC-Fan]: Do you often have to improvise when you compose the music?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: If you mean by improvisation “composing the music directly during the performance”, not really.

[GSC-Fan]: Now there is a trend where the international and Russian film companies are working together on potential blockbusters. Do you think there will come a day when Western companies will turn to Russian-speaking specialists?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: I hope this day will come. But we need to go a long way. There are many jobs in the West, but the competition there is very high, and the skill level of the international colleagues is really high. In order for “our people” to make their way into that place, they should not only give professionalism, but also be original, to do what no one has done before them, and that is starting to border candidacy for the title of a “genius”. People like this are very few. But can they be Russians or Ukrainians? Of course, they can.


[GSC-Fan]: Which composers have most influenced you and your music?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: Any composer whose music I ever listened to, in one way or another influenced me and my music. Even if I don’t realize that and I listen to a lot of different music. So I could go on and on listing them for a very long time…

Sometimes Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard Wagner, Igor Stravinsky… Sometimes AC/DC, Stereophonics and Thirty Seconds to Mars… Sometimes Corinne Bailey Rae, Depeche Mode and Coldplay… Sometimes David Darling, Pat Metheny and Zakir Hussain… A lot of music from the films, a lot of music from the games… It depends on my mood.

Perhaps, the most influential composers are those whom I’m listening to more often, but it will be difficult for me to sort my playlist by frequency of listening :)

[GSC-Fan]: Alexey, is there anything you would like to tell our site visitors and those who are planning to become a composer?

[Alexey Omelchuk]: I’m not that good of a master for people to listen to my suggestions… :)

From experience I can tell to compose as much as possible and as often as possible. Compose anything, on anything, about anything. Practice is a great thing. However, don’t forget to experiment and don’t dwell. Versatility, curiosity, universality and adventurism (within reasonable limits) are good, as for me. The narrow focus, in my opinion, is not very good.

If earlier a composer wrote the melody, an arranger or orchestrator laid it out on instruments, musicians performed, one sound engineer recorded, another sound engineer mixed, third sound engineer mastered, now one person does it all. In dance music this person is called “producer”, and that’s right: this is not a composer, an arranger, a sound engineer, this is a universal soldier “all in one”. So if you choose this path, you will not have free time and fixed working hours, and the hobby will not be too. When my friends ask me “what I’m doing in my free time”, I’m thinking hard, because the line between “work” and “not work” is almost non-existent. And when you’ll be running with a dictaphone into the bath at 3:00 AM to “moo” a melody arriving in your dream, you’re unlikely to think: “It’s non-working hours now, I’m resting…”.

Also don’t worry and don’t be afraid that someone doesn’t like your masterpieces and someone will “trample them completely”. Creativity is subjective. Some people like it, some don’t. The main thing is that you enjoy the process and you like it. Then there is a chance that anyone else would enjoy it except you. There never was a composer that everyone liked in all of history…

Also don’t worry when you compare your works with works of “masters”: they went a long way to become what they have become, and you have taken only the first steps. So don’t stop and remember that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.

I got carried away a bit… :)

The author thanks Maeda K. and Kaitlyn Keller for help with English translation.

Join SlavaR Blog to get notifications for new articles about S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro and other iconic Ukrainian video games.