Jason Graves on the Moog Model D

Classically trained composer and world percussionist Jason Graves has been writing music for film and TV for almost three decades. About 25 years ago he also began composing for games and has since created original music soundtracks and soundscapes for well over 100 titles, including No Rest For The Wicked, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Warzone, The Dark Pictures Anthology, Moss 1 & 2, Tomb Raider, Far Cry Primal, Until Dawn, The Order: 1886 and the Dead Space trilogy. A longtime Moog synth and drum machine owner and a North Carolina resident, Graves recently visited the Moog factory in Asheville for the first time to pick up a reissued Minimoog Model D.

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How has your experience as a trained classical musician informed what you’re doing now?

I think that I’m probably the exact same person I was 25 years ago. Inside I feel like that 17-year-old kid who’s still taking piano lessons, learning to play the marimba, teaching myself guitar, taking bass guitar lessons and playing drums in a band. But now I’m doing it on a much larger scale with more friends. My band director in high school showed me a synthesizer, because he was playing in a pop band. He played a string patch, a slap bass patch, a drum set, then an electric piano sound. I said, whatever that is, that’s everything that I want to do.

I went to college with all those things kind of mixed up in my brain. My music composition professor was also the percussion professor, and also taught the electronic music ensemble, the steel band, and the African, Middle-Eastern and Irish music ensembles. I did all of those things — and, essentially, that’s what I’m still doing now. I’ve got keyboards, drums and stringed instruments everywhere and what I really love doing is playing them to the best of my ability, and hiring people who are better than I am when I need to do other things.

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