Film Music Interactive Happy Hour Presents Lawrence Schwedler

Join the City of Seattle’s Office of Film + Music for the monthly Film Music Interactive Happy Hour  on Wednesday, June 24th, with featured presenter Lawrence Schwedler, a video game audio director, composer, and sound designer for over twenty years and currently director of the new Music and Sound Design programs at the DigiPen Institute in Redmond. With the rise of the video game industry and its promise of new work for composers, many trained in traditional methods of composition have had to rethink the basic tenets of their craft. Film and television music follows a timeline predetermined by the final cut, but the video game composer is unable to predict the future with anywhere near the same precision. Video game music must adapt to a timeline that changes each time the game is played. How can music underscore drama effectively without knowing exactly when the heroine will confront the lurking villain, and how do composers deal with this loss of control over time, one of the most fundamental aspect of music?

Lawrence Schwedler has worked in the video game industry as audio director, composer, and sound designer for twenty years. In 1993 he graduated from UCLA with a Master of Fine Arts degree in classical guitar and electronic music, where he was a founding member of the Modern Arts Guitar Quartet. From 1999 to 2012 he served as audio director for Nintendo Software Technology, where he co-authored two U.S. patents for adaptive music and sound effects. In 2012 he left Nintendo to design and direct two new undergraduate degree programs in music, sound design, and audio programming at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond.

Game credit highlights
Rhythm Heaven Fever (Nintendo Wii 2012)
Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem (Nintendo DS 2010)
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Nintendo DS 2006)
Metroid Prime: Hunters (Nintendo DS 2006)
1080° Avalanche (Nintendo Game Cube 2003)
Wave Race Blue Storm (Nintendo Game Cube 2001)
Pokémon Puzzle League (Nintendo 64 2000)
Ridge Racer 64 (Nintendo 64 2000)
Bionic Commando: Elite Forces (Nintendo Game Boy Color 2000)