Grand Theft Auto V Soundtrack News

Grand Theft Auto V Soundtrack News is now online, so listen up!

Readers of Electronic Musician, one of the most respected industry magazines in the world of modern music production, will be pleased to learn that their current March issue cover story offers an in-depth look behind the scenes of the making of the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack. It features interviews with Rockstar as well as with score composers Woody Jackson, Alchemist and Oh No alongside some of the artists who created original songs specifically for the in-game radio stations like Flying Lotus and Chain Gang of 1974, their 6-page piece (“Grand Theft Auto V: Crafting Epic Game Music from Soundtrack to Score”) goes deep into the process behind every aspect of creating the game’s music.

“Composers were assigned to each of the game protagonists to create their signature scores. Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese created De Santa’s score, Alchemist and Oh No for Clinton’s score, and [Woody] Jackson created Philips’ score. But the music heard at any point during the course of the game or on The Score disc is an amalgamation of the composers’ sounds in a true collaboration. The score kicks in when a mission starts; it is delineated from the radio station music by shifts in action such as getting out of the car and having a conversation with another character. The score reacts to gameplay throughout the mission: Eight music stems function as tracks within a song…

‘Oh No and I were trying to wrap our heads around how this is going to work’ says The Alchemist. ‘Each time you play the game, things are going to happen differently. It wasn’t so much about the automation of it, but about creating stems that were interesting… It was different from making your own album because as an artist, being stubborn, it’s got to go one way or you can’t deal with it. It was good to have a task. You just have to deal with it. In the end, it was a trust thing.”

Both Grand Theft Auto fans and serious music junkies will find the full article (which is only available on newsstands) has got tons of detail on everything from the studio band whose jam session recordings were sourced to create original electronic orchestration, to a specific list of instruments and production tools that were used, and from composition to radio station track selection, right down to the technique behind DJ Shadow’s work producing songs for the final score album.

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Tyler the Creator and Woody Jackson from
the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack and score recording sessions, above.

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Musical Score updates for GTA Online

Rockstar are also adding to the massive original musical score, heard exclusively Online, as part of the ongoing content updates and evolution of the GTA Online experience. Modes such as Survival, Deathmatch as well as your own custom-made Creator Jobs will all be complemented with an updated range of never-before-heard unreleased instrumental music from the original scoring sessions by Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, Alchemist and Oh No.

Check out a special preview of just a bit of the new instrumentation you can expect to hear that will be added to the game next month.

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New music from Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack artists

Rockstar also wanted to give a special shout to some of the GTAV soundtrack’s alumni who’ve recently put out brand new music worth checking out.

The gentlemen of Favored Nations (“The Set Up”) have a brand new single and video out entitled “Regular Pussy ” that’s, as you’d expect, an ode to the joys of having a loyal housecat.

Alchemist and Prodigy have recently released the deluxe ‘P=MC²’ edition of their acclaimed Albert Einstein album with four new tracks added to the hard-edged and dark 2013 masterpiece.

Chain Gang of 1974 (who are also interviewed in the above Electronic Musician article about the making of their original soundtrack tune “Sleepwalking”) have released their new album entitled Daydream Forever. The album includes as a digital bonus a ‘reimagined’ Dawn Golden Remix of “Sleepwalking”.

And Freddie Gibbs (heard on Radio Los Santos with his “Still Livin'” and also on BJ the Chicago Kid’s “Smokin’ and Ridin'”) and renowned producer Madlib have just released their new collaborative album, Pinata. You may have caught Freddie live on the Rockstar Twitch stream last weekend as he took part in a special edition GTA Online Crew Battle against Hot 97’s Hip Hop Gamer – if you missed it, you can catch an archive here. Rockstar also gave away signed copies of Pinata to some lucky Twitter followers along with GTAV tees and stickers. Definitely keep an eye out throughout the spring and summer for more live-streaming GTA Online Crew Battles featuring GTAV soundtrack members and other special guests.