You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
In May 2014, the video game company Ubisoft released Watch Dogs about a vigilante hacker.
Here's how the game's described on their website.
You play as Aiden Pierce,
a brilliant hacker and former thug whose criminal past led to a violent family tragedy.
While seeking justice for those events, you'll monitor and hack those around you.
It sold over 4 million copies in its first week of release.
The music for the game was made by Brian Reitzel,
who played drums in the bands Air and Red Cross before becoming a composer and music supervisor for films like Lost in Translation and Beginners.
He also creates the music for the NBC TV show Hannibal.
Coming up, Brian talks about the unique challenges posed by scoring video games,
where players control what happens on screen and, as a result, what happens in the music.
He'll break down a piece called Donovan, which he wrote for a chase sequence within the game.
He'll also describe the instrument that he created from a 100-year-old piano.
This episode is presented in conjunction with Polygon.
My name is Brian Reitzel, and I am a film and TV and sometimes video game composer.
I was asked by Ubisoft.
They had an idea to approach their video game like a film.