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Pixelated Harmony Ep 3 - Marty O'Donnell
12 Plays2 months ago
In this episode of Pixelated Harmony I sit down with legendary composer Marty O'Donnell who helped to shape the iconic sounds and music of Halo and Destiny, we talk about the work he did after Bungie and his new found political calling.
Website: martyforcongress.com | Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themartyodonnell | Twitter: https://x.com/MartyTheElder
Pixelated Harmony Youtube: https://youtube.com/@pixelated-harmony | Twitter: https://x.com/smitty2447
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Transcript
Introduction to Marty O'Donnell
00:00:08
Speaker
And welcome to another episode of Pixelated Harmony, the voices behind video game music. I am super pumped to introduce my next guest. He is an absolute legend and the man behind the music that shaped Halo and Destiny.
00:00:26
Speaker
Marty O'Donnell joins us. How are you doing, my friend? Thank you so much for taking the time and joining the show. Well, thanks Ryan. I really appreciate that was a great introduction. i wasn't expecting that is lot more exciting than I thought. That's great. i mean I'm doing well.
00:00:43
Speaker
Good. No, we are definitely here to bring the vibes and talk about the music again. Like I said, that that have just shaped not only video games and in that genre, but so many
Clarifying Misconceptions
00:00:54
Speaker
lives. So I want to jump right into it. And before we talk about the halo, the destiny, all that stuff,
00:01:01
Speaker
I want to take it back a little bit and and go kind of, not necessarily from the beginning, beginning, but kind of where did your passion for music come from leading into, I know that you worked on Little Shop of Horrors.
00:01:16
Speaker
Again, another iconic classic film. So please tell us about that. No, that's actually, I never worked on Little Shop of Horrors. Oh, no. no Yeah, there was somebody else that has my name, and it shows up, I think, on IMDb or something. IMDb, yes. Yeah, and I can't get it removed. There's a poor other Martin O'Donnell who did sound effects or something on that.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's a sound engineer. was like, oh, no, I had no idea. No, I never did that. I don't know who that was, but no, I did not work on that. Although I gotta say that the, the grave mind in Halo 2 and Halo 3, looked a little bit like the, the big giant plant from Little
Early Musical Influences
00:02:00
Speaker
Shop of Horrors. So there might be a slight connection there. I don't know.
00:02:04
Speaker
ah No, if you you know, I was probably four years old. My mom was a piano teacher and we had a little, you know, we had an upright piano in my house when I was four and I'd always, you know, play it when I, I'd walk through the living room and I'd reach up to play the piano and,
00:02:20
Speaker
um She taught me very easily different things. Every time I went to the piano, she would teach me a little something. And then when I was seven, I started taking real piano lessons from a a normal teacher. And and that and then my dad was ah my dad actually started off as a disc jockey and then he was ah a film director.
00:02:39
Speaker
And, you know, he had he he worked a lot with music and, um you know, i watched how that worked and he and I would watch movies together. And i think there was a movie called Ben-Hur that was made in whatever, 1959. And I heard that score when I was just a, you know, teeny little kid. And my dad brought home the the soundtrack album, which at that point was a big vinyl album. And I just remember falling in love with that, thinking that would be cool to do.
00:03:07
Speaker
um But rather than go, a couple of things happened when I was nine. I know you said don't go all the way back, but I'll go back this far. I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
00:03:20
Speaker
Nice. and you know, just like everybody else in the in the United States and the world, basically, but especially the United States, we all just were changed at that moment. The British invasion, i was like, that's it. I want to be a rock star.
00:03:32
Speaker
I want to be Paul McCartney. um which is funny because fast forward many many many years later i actually got to work with paul mccartney yes and that was you know like a full circle it's totally full circle but to that same year i also saw on tv i saw barry goldwater introduced to the political landscape by ronald reagan and i was nine and i decided i think i'm a republican conservative and uh But the Beatles were a bigger influence, so I went into music rather than politics. And now in my my retirement years, i'm sort I'm sort of dipping back into politics. So it's pretty funny.
00:04:11
Speaker
that is That is awesome. I love that. And again, that that is like multiple full circle moments yeah that have happened, which is which is absolutely fantastic. um you know and and And speaking of that and kind of having that influence on from your parents and then getting into more of your formative years.
00:04:31
Speaker
um You know, what was it that kind of drove you to continue with that passion and and exploration within music? Well, you know, I...
00:04:44
Speaker
it played piano all the way through grade school, junior high, high school. I was in a couple of bands, but it was always playing other
Discovering a Passion for Composing
00:04:52
Speaker
people's music. And then when I got to college, I was actually a piano major at ah at a conservatory of music. And I was a piano performance major.
00:04:59
Speaker
And I thought I was just gonna go down the road of of playing the piano and learning piano literature and history and pedagogy and all of this stuff, very serious. But I also had a sort of a fusion ah progressive rock band that I started while I was in college.
00:05:17
Speaker
And we covered all sorts of like really complex stuff. And the drummer one day said, hey, you're good at you know you teach us all the different parts. like I would be the one who figured out all the parts to some of these more complex songs. And he says, you have a really good ear, but you know why don't you ever write music? And I was like, I didn't know that that was a, do i have permission to write music? It was really kind of a shock to me that somebody said you could write music. And so- yeah I stopped what I was doing. I literally went up the stairs because we the band rehearsed in my parents' basement.
00:05:52
Speaker
I went up the stairs to the piano. I wrote a piece ah with the guys in the band in mind. Like, you know, Larry's going to play this part and Walt will play this and Bill will play that and Tim will play this.
00:06:04
Speaker
Anyway, I brought it back down to the guys and they loved it. And I i just loved writing music. And so at that point, I thought, well, maybe... you know i i spent a little more time with the band and I was writing music for the band and had some so you know local success, I would say. nothing it didn Nothing went crazy, but people seemed to like what we were doing and they liked the music I wrote. and i I liked writing music more than performing as a piano major just sitting on the stage with a spotlight on and at the grand piano having to do this thing from memory that just drove me crazy and i'm like why do i want to do something that i'm is torturing me why should i should i want to be in a band i i was able to remember back to my nine-year-old days where i like i want to be a rock star so yeah i chose to be a progressive rock star which is like
00:06:58
Speaker
There aren't many of those. Let's just say progressive rock had its day, but ah it it was, you know, yes was big and Jethro Tull was big and King Crimson was big.
00:07:11
Speaker
And those were, those were my heroes. So, you know, that's the stuff I was emulating. um But, you know, I never even thought about making a living.
Career Beginnings in Chicago
00:07:20
Speaker
you know truly making a living.
00:07:22
Speaker
But I went to grad school um you know after i got my master I got my undergraduate degree in music composition. Then I got a master's from USC in music composition.
00:07:33
Speaker
And then i went I moved back to Chicago from from Los Angeles. And started, I hooked up with my friend of mine, Mike Salvatore, built a little 8-track studio in his house.
00:07:48
Speaker
And i you know, I got a gig. i said, hey, Mike, I'll split the money with you. Let's do this thing. You know, I had no equipment. He had the equipment. I had the connections. And, you know, we were partners for a million years after that. So it's pretty fun.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, that is that is absolutely that is amazing. So are you are you originally from the Chicago area? yeah i you know I grew up in Chicago, went to school, undergrad in Chicago, and then I moved to u s to Los Angeles to go to grad school. we were there about three and a half years. My daughter was born there. And then we moved back to Chicago. I thought I was going to get a i was actually going to get a job.
00:08:27
Speaker
at the American Conservatory of Music in downtown Chicago, and then that fell through. But while while it was while I still thought I was going to get that job, I was gripping on a movie set for a couple of directors and in Chicago because I knew how to grip. you know Like I said, my dad had been a director, so I had sort of grown up on movie sets, and I was able to do some of that stuff.
00:08:51
Speaker
And the director came to me one day and said, you know I'll give you 500 bucks if you score this film that we're doing. And I'm like, absolutely. That's it's great. Let's do it. Like, yes, please. Yes.
00:09:05
Speaker
I've been waiting for this moment. Well, actually, let me just say the funny part was the producer actually had talked to me the day before. And she said, Marty, you have a you know you have a master's degree in music composition. Why aren't you doing music for film and television here in Chicago?
00:09:20
Speaker
And I said, well, I don't want to prostitute my art.
00:09:28
Speaker
So literally the next day, the director said, I'll give you 500 bucks. And I'm like, yes, that's the way to do it. I just didn't what my press was. Apparently I do want to prostitute my art. Exactly right.
00:09:39
Speaker
That is fantastic. And was it kind of like from there that like, where then, where was that, that kind of introduction into video games was there something was that something that you had already like been interested in or had heard about or just something that you just kind of stumbled upon Well, you know, it's, I had actually, my introduction to video games goes back into the seventies when, you know, Pong first came for
Recognizing the Potential of Video Game Music
00:10:11
Speaker
home.
00:10:11
Speaker
You could play Pong at home, you know, on the Magnavox, whatever, with the two joysticks. And then, you know, you you stuck something on your screen and turn it turned into a hockey game, even though everything was the same. Right.
00:10:24
Speaker
yeah um So that was fascinating. And then a friend of mine introduced me to some text adventure games, Zorik, that I could play on this mainframe that he had.
00:10:36
Speaker
He had a little remote keyboard and a modem, and we logged into this mainframe and started playing... this weird text adventure game uh it wasn't even at the time it wasn't called zork i think it was called dungeon and uh it was a shareware thing and it you know it's it has this class anybody who knows text adventures knows what i'm talking about but it had the classic start where it says you're standing in front of a White House, there's a mailbox there.
00:11:02
Speaker
And, you know, I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do? and he goes, well, what do you want to do? And I'm like, open mailbox. He says, type that in. He goes i saw ah open mailbox, you know, and the text goes across and says, you've opened the mailbox. There's a letter there. And I'm like, wow, this is so cool. So I was hooked immediately, um but was never interested in actually making them or there was, you know, if you could think about the,
00:11:27
Speaker
fidelity of audio and music and, you know, everything else, video, you know, video was later. ah But the fidelity of all that stuff was so low, low res and, you know, 8-bit by the time the Nintendo, first Nintendo console came out.
00:11:45
Speaker
You know, the early Atari consoles were, the and and some of those, I forget what they were, but you know, Commodore or whatever. I mean, some of that stuff just looks so bad. Yeah. Yeah. yeah But by the time, ah you know, I got hooked on the Nintendo, the first Nintendo, and I played Zelda and Mario, and and I had a lot of fun with it. I thought it was great, but it never occurred to me that, you know,
00:12:10
Speaker
the fidelity of the music and sound and and acting and all those things that I was doing in films and television would ever catch up.
00:12:21
Speaker
And it, you know, I was, I had my company that did film and television jingles and and film scores for
00:12:31
Speaker
Let's see, we worked from like 1982 through 1993 exclusively in film and television. And it was around 1993 that I saw, um i had a friend who whose son was working on this game called Myst.
00:12:48
Speaker
And he brought the beta version of Myst to my house. He was a young guy, he was 18 and he showed it to me and I was like, oh my gosh, I missed it. I missed, missed, right?
00:13:00
Speaker
um But I thought I had i thought i had really kind of like I thought the train had gone by me. I'm like, I wasn't paying attention. And suddenly there was like, you know what?
00:13:10
Speaker
It felt like cinematic ah um music and cinematic sound design and and voice acting. It was all starting to come together in Myst. And now of course, Myst seems very primitive, but I saw the potential in Myst. So i I said to this kid, like, you gotta introduce me to those guys who are making this game.
00:13:30
Speaker
And he did, it was Robin and Rand Miller. There's two brothers who lived in Spokane, Washington. And I ah weaseled my way in to to get to know them and and figure out how to.
00:13:41
Speaker
And i i was the, you know, the audio lead on Riven, the sequel Myst, which came out in 97. And that was my first ah first game that I worked on was Riven.
00:13:52
Speaker
So I was pretty happy with that. And at the same time and was working on Riven, there was a company in Chicago ah You know, it was weird because there weren't many companies in Chicago working on cool video games, but the guys at Cyan who were making Riven in Spokane were playing a game called Marathon.
00:14:12
Speaker
which I saw them play. And I'm like, who are these guys? And it was like, there's this company in Chicago. and I'm like, well, I'm in Chicago. like yeah So I met those guys, the Bungie guys, and they hired me to do their next game, which was um Myth of Fallen Lords.
00:14:27
Speaker
And the rest is history. So that's how that worked out.
Creating the Iconic Halo Theme
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, no, that is that is insane. And just, I mean, being able to see that perspective too, where you're playing the games and, and you know, like you said, the sound was very primitive and and basic.
00:14:44
Speaker
And just to see that, wait a second, now all of a sudden we're we're seeing, or or not seeing, but rather hearing cinematic scores and yeah and just, you know, how much music has evolved in video games has been fascinating and the fact that you have been on the ground floor of that evolution um and you know obviously we've got it we've got to go into starting off with halo i mean or i'm a person now and i'm gonna i'm gonna be completely candid i have only beaten the first halo okay um
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, I never had an Xbox or anything like that growing up. So finally having a PC, I was able to get Game Pass. It's the collections on Game Pass. i was like, I've got to. This is a must on the list. So it's that. Okay, cool. Gears of War.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I'm experiencing it for the first time now. and And it's just, it's so iconic. Even back, you know, when when that was was out, that that is something that I've known that like you hear that and you're just like, oh, Halo. You know, it's so,
00:15:56
Speaker
Oh, chills. Absolute chills. Well, that's me singing too. I'm singing with my four. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was, like goodness I wrote that in the car on the way to the studio. I'm like, okay, I need to have something that feels really ancient. And then the monk chant, I'm like, I'll write a Gregorian chant, you know, ah in in Dorian mode. And I wrote that on the way to the studio and I sang it for Mike. He goes, okay, yeah, let's do that.
00:16:22
Speaker
So the next day, you know, we were in the studio and I had my, My other male singers that I hired, like I would have, they had three guys I wanted to hire because like in in the union, you the cheapest group you can hire is called group three.
00:16:38
Speaker
So you hire three good singers and then you mult yourselves. You like you know you ah layer yourselves a few times to make it sound bigger. And these were guys who had probably the week before come to the studio to sing, Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, because we did Mr. Clean commercials.
00:16:53
Speaker
That is amazing. Yeah, the Mr. Clean guys came over and and I said, okay, we got to do this Gregorian monk chant. And i'm like, oh, that's cool. So that's what we did. And it was, you know, me and Mike and and three, you know, jingle singers doing the the Halo theme at that point. Nobody thought it was going to be, you know,
00:17:12
Speaker
iconic. We weren't thinking iconic. We were just thinking, let's get this thing done. And that's how we did it. Yeah. So, and obviously going through something, no one can have the foresight to be like, Oh, this is going to be something that's absolutely amazing and span generations.
00:17:28
Speaker
um he thought i mean Well, I certainly never thought I'd be talking about it 26 years later. six years later So it was that we did the first music and and you know It had the monk chant at the beginning and then the cellos, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, and all that whole thing. So it was it was it sounded pretty good and it still sounds good. um But that's something I knew how to write for orchestra and choirs and record and do professional sounding stuff.
00:17:57
Speaker
It just was such a fun opportunity get to do that quality of music for a video game ah that hadn't been done a lot up to that point. so And I didn't even know at the time we were doing it for to show the video game, the early version of Halo at Macworld in New York with Steve Jobs. So I thought it was just going to be a one and done.
00:18:20
Speaker
We'll show Halo will be a you know big audience in New York and Steve Jobs introduces it and we play this music while it while the cool thing is happening. And maybe that'll be the only time.
00:18:32
Speaker
Well, actually. Because I'm a jingle guy, I thought, you know, I'm going to make it hooky. So I'm going to make this, there's going to be a hook in here. So they're going to have to use it again if people like it. But um I was thinking maybe this will, you know, show up one or two more times.
00:18:48
Speaker
But I certainly never thought I'd be still talking about it 26 years later into the future. Yeah, and you know, this what what did that process, I guess, look like in terms of being able to craft the sound?
00:19:03
Speaker
Was it something that they were like, hey, here's our vision of this, or did they show you guys videos? Did that did they give you guys hands-on? What did that look like when it came to crafting not only you know the the soundtrack of it, but like you know going as deep as the sound design into you know what the lasers are going to sound like, the right the aliens, all that stuff?
00:19:27
Speaker
Well, the we had ah done Myth of Fallen Lords, and then we did Myth 2 Soulblighter, the sequel. And um I knew the guys at Bungie really well, and I knew that the new thing they were working on was was you know this, I think you know we had the code name was Monkey Nuts.
00:19:46
Speaker
And then Jason Jones, the guy who started the company, he didn't want his mom to know that he was working on something called Monkey Nuts, so we changed it to... we changed it to blam and then so i was working on it when it was called blam and i was just doing nothing but sound design i was like working on okay how does the rocket launcher sound how do the you know the plasma pistols and and yeah we were just working on on weapons and some of the vehicles the warthog um and it was you it was coming together pretty good but it was very much just sort of a technical demo that looked really cool and played really fun but we didn't have a concept of
00:20:25
Speaker
at the beginning we didn't even have the concept of the halo ring we didn't know that's what we were we're just going to be this big open world environment um and When we had the opportunity in 1999 to show what we were doing with some new graphic hardware, um which was OpenGL that Steve Jobs was running on the Mac. So he wanted to show off OpenGL and show that he had just come back to Apple.
00:20:53
Speaker
He had only been there a year. And he was trying to show the public that he was serious about pushing, you know, Macintosh into the future and bringing games back to the Mac because there weren't many games on the Mac.
00:21:08
Speaker
So when we had this opportunity to show that, um the problem was we had been developing everything on the PC. So we had no sound engine on the Mac at that point. So we were gonna show this thing off. It looked really pretty.
00:21:22
Speaker
The guys had ported the code to work on this new graphic of hardware on the Mac and it looked great, but it had no sound at all. And we had no time to develop a sound engine for the Mac that would support all the sound design that I had done up to that point.
00:21:41
Speaker
So I said, look, let me just, you know, if we're going to do a scripted demo live on stage with the Mac actually playing the actual game itself live, let's just have a music score that goes behind it And we'll just play it off of a CD. Somebody will hit start on the CD and play it simultaneously.
00:22:01
Speaker
So that's what we did. So, um, I, I had, you know, I saw what they were doing because I was working with them all the time, working on sound design on the PC. And, you know, I'd already done, I've shipped a couple of games with them.
00:22:14
Speaker
So, um, That part was, you know you know, I was very deeply embedded in the team. I wasn't an employee yet of Bungie. That happened a year later, a little more than, yeah.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, about a year later it happened. So that's how that that's how that worked out. It was just like, you know, I knew what they were doing and... ah It was like the best thing to do is to show ah show the graphics and have a music score playing in the background. And I thought, let me do a big blown out cinematic strings and percussion and, and you know, singers and and just blow everybody away and see what happens.
00:22:55
Speaker
So that's how we did that. I love that. And and again, it... It's taken something that I feel like wasn't really, you know, it was kind of an afterthought almost.
00:23:09
Speaker
And it really brought that to not only the the forefront, but it almost becomes a character within the game itself. it's There's an expectation to have that. It is synonymous, ah you know, with character.
00:23:25
Speaker
uh you know master chief in this story and and everything that's going on in terms of that so i just love the fact that that you were able to not only but you were right from the jump off um just very deeply embedded with what was going on being able to get a feel and understanding as to how the music's going to relate to the story and vice versa.
00:23:49
Speaker
And I feel like it it really shows. And then, you know, of course, that through the years, we've we've had, it there's been iterations of it and whatnot into where, and I know that you worked on the music as well for, or I don't know if it was like a direct work,
00:24:05
Speaker
working with them for the TV show. I think it was on Peacock. I want to say, um here i was on, uh, Paramount, Paramount, Paramount. And then, yeah, I'm not sure if it's moved over to something else.
00:24:19
Speaker
Uh, yeah, they did two seasons. I, I didn't work with anybody over there, but they, they, uh, you know, they rearranged the themes and they did the same music. They, they had couple different composers, uh, work on the TV shows.
00:24:33
Speaker
Um, And we got you know we got name credit at the end. So I'm like, OK, great. You're still using the my melodies. So there you go. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, as long as that check cash is in the mail, we good. so There you go. No problem.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, kind of shifting a little bit for me, especially, i am a huge Destiny fan.
Collaborating on Destiny's Music
00:25:00
Speaker
um It is something that for me anyway, it's personal because that's when I really started getting into into playing multiplayer games, playing with with people I had never known, turning into where I've met these people in real life from a clan that i was a part of. And this came from Destiny. I was i played during the beta.
00:25:23
Speaker
um like I was an early, early adopter of Destiny and I was waiting for it. This was my first chance to be able to play a game from Bungie.
00:25:34
Speaker
You know, I was always watching people enjoy Halo and be like, I don't have it. It looks like fun. I played a little bit of it. I'd love to be able to, but I can't. and and And then there's Destiny. It's like, yes, I'm in. I'm i'm all for it.
00:25:47
Speaker
Did you start on the PS3 or did you get a PS4? I had it on PS4. had it on PS4. Yes. All right. Yep. So I had it on PS4 and it just it just changed everything for me and in terms of gaming and how I interact with people and how I saw just how people were socializing now in this in this time.
00:26:11
Speaker
And I will be, you know, um I'm going to be completely real. Your music has made me cry, sir. Your music has made me cry. There's so many moments. um and and And the music, it plays such an integral part within that. Please tell me, what what was that process like?
00:26:29
Speaker
Them kind of laying that on you, what the expectations were, and then kind of crafting out what is the glory of of the Destiny in Destiny 2?
00:26:40
Speaker
Well, this goes back to, I mean, we, ah the last game we did for Halo was Halo Reach. We shipped that in 2010, and then we all shifted over. We knew we were going to start working on Destiny.
00:26:54
Speaker
And we had 10 years, we had a full decade of Halo. ah So there was 10 years worth of Halo music. I mean, you called Bungie and you got Halo music on your hold call. right music like so um And suddenly I'm like, hey, we have to throw all this music away in terms of what we're doing. We got to come up with all brand new stuff.
00:27:14
Speaker
And I'm the kind of composer that's inspired by the story, by graphics, by gameplay, you know by game design. like i want I want it to be super integrated.
00:27:25
Speaker
But we were really early um in development, 2010 and 2011. We were sort of behind. Destiny wasn't as as advanced as it needed to be.
00:27:36
Speaker
We had some really beautiful concept art, but it was like all over the place. There was fantasy elements. There were... um We didn't know exactly what it was going to be. So there was a lot of discussion.
00:27:47
Speaker
And at one point, ah some of the leads in the studio were like, you know, Marty, we really love listening to your music and your music inspires us to do things. And I'm like, well, I don't get inspired to do music unless I see the stuff you guys are doing. So which comes first? Like, how am I supposed to do this?
00:28:05
Speaker
So we talked about it and we knew that there was going to be the traveler. We knew it was going to be in our solar system. We knew the sort of cool story. And somebody came up with this just general concept. It's like, Ronnie, what if you wrote a, what if you did a a prequel album, like music that's the prequel to Destiny? Like it doesn't have to be related to anything specific.
00:28:28
Speaker
And that's when I came up with the idea of doing this thing called Music of the Spheres. So it's, yeah. I had, I worked on that Music of the Spheres prequel album for almost two years.
00:28:40
Speaker
The very first thing I did was some of that sort of really kind of spacey ambient music um that you get when you're in the main menu. But I did that first just to get a new flavor ah that was not halo, it was this new thing.
00:28:56
Speaker
And then I was like, okay, now I'm gonna write a concept album called Music of the Spheres. And planned eight movements and you know each one, the first seven movements all ah symbolized each one of the planets in our solar system.
00:29:11
Speaker
And then I thought the last movement would be the hope, I called it the hope. um And it was based on the fact that the traveler was sitting over the last safe city on Earth.
00:29:23
Speaker
And so I had the seven planets and then I had the hope, which was the traveler. And i ended up somehow convincing Paul McCartney to join in on writing the music and working on it with me. And we had this great two year relationship.
00:29:42
Speaker
So I got Mike to leave Chicago and he came out to Seattle and I showed him my plan. I showed him my the themes I was working on. So Mike and I were working close on it. And then we got Paul McCartney to work with us. And,
00:29:57
Speaker
We did this thing, ah big session in Abbey Road with 120 piece orchestra and 40 horse choir and a boys choir. It was just great. So all the music in Destiny 1 comes, almost all the music in Destiny 1 comes from that work we did on the prequel album called Music of the Spheres.
00:30:17
Speaker
um So like all the all the major themes come from that and and the and the orchestral recordings. ah So that was really amazing. It was a blast because I had so much freedom just to think about writing music um based on concepts and stories and ideas rather than specific moments in the gameplay or cinematics or anything like that. And that was really fun.
00:30:46
Speaker
unfortunately my part didn't last as long as i was hoping there was some controversy and i don't know how much you know about this but like they ended up letting me go i was fired about a month before halo or before destiny um shipped um And that that's a long story. It has to do with mostly business reasons. it was wasn't There was some creative differences because I wasn't happy with...
00:31:17
Speaker
some of the influence of Activision over Bungie process on Destiny. I didn't like some of how the story got changed and there were some things I just disagreed on.
00:31:29
Speaker
And so we parted ways, but Mike stayed with them and thankfully he got all the music in the game. So like it's still in there. Yes.
00:31:40
Speaker
No, excuse me. And i I remember, too, and and and just kind of going back a little bit as well and and making that transition.
00:31:51
Speaker
i Was that is that something difficult to do, especially the fact that, you know, Halo, Halo is a story obviously that has taken place in space. You've got something similar with Destiny as well.
00:32:05
Speaker
kind of, you know, being able to, you've got something that, again, with so much iconic music and and and sound design and stuff like that, to be able to then shift over to a completely new IP, something that's that' different, you know, is that something that's challenging for you to do, to be able to make
Musical Project Approaches
00:32:26
Speaker
that shift? Or is that something that you kind of like take some of what you've you've done in the past and use maybe some of that as inspiration?
00:32:35
Speaker
I don't, I can't help, you know, whatever stylistic things, like people go, well that sounds like something you would write. I'm like, oh, okay. You know, like I don't think about it that way, but I do, I like to start like with the Halo universe, you know, that first instinct to say, okay, there's something very ancient about Halo.
00:32:58
Speaker
ah There's these ancient races, there's religious connotations. So I'm going to use Gregorian chant And that, um in order to sound like Gregorian chant, you use one of the you know old church modes, which is not major or minor. It's it's a mode. So I used Dorian mode.
00:33:17
Speaker
And so believe it or not, as I went along, we we did... that kind of music for Halo 1, 2, and 3. And then we did this other game in the Halo universe called ODST.
00:33:28
Speaker
And that was going to be a whole different story without Master Chief. It was taking place on Earth. It was you know humans who are ODST soldiers. um And it was going to be like a cool film noir detective novel.
00:33:43
Speaker
And, you know, the idea was like, what if we did like cool jazzy stuff? And I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. So then now now I'm working with jazz. So I didn't have to worry that much about the Dorian mode anymore.
00:33:57
Speaker
And then for Reach, I thought, well, Reach is happening. on That was the fifth game we did in the Halo series. And ah once again i was looking at the story and it's you know there's this planet called reach that was uh settled by hungarian you know eastern european settlers who like went out and settled this planet and i thought okay eastern european i'm going to use the phrygian mode which always sounds just a little bit um
00:34:28
Speaker
but you know, ethnic, it has a slightly ethnic feel to it. It's got a, it's hard to describe for people who are not, um you know, versed in music theory. Okay. Like, and I'm not like, just, Hey, look at the music theory. I know it's just, it's a good starting place for me.
00:34:46
Speaker
So Frigid gives me this sort of gypsy Eastern European feel. So I, I did a lot of stuff in that area. And then when we got to Destiny, I'm like, okay, I gotta do something. Believe it or not, there was a point at which we were working on early destiny concepts at the same time i was doing reach and odst and so that was hard to like come up with three distinct areas of music in my own brain that would stay separate so i you know odst's jazz uh reaches halo but phrygian and then i thought okay i gotta come up with a new mode for destiny so uh i came up with this i was playing around and there's this
00:35:28
Speaker
it's a It's a famous mode. It's sort of a... impressionistic mode, right? It comes from Dave, you see in Ravel and it's a Lydian mode.
00:35:43
Speaker
So it has a sharp fourth degree of the scale and then a flat seventh degree of the scale. And it sort of has, so it has more a major sound with this like really kind of cool, magical raised fourth, but with the flat seven. So it's just a really beautiful mode.
00:35:59
Speaker
And so once you sort of figure out And I'm not saying we were strict to those modes. It's just like it's so sort of a nice place to start. Right. Right. Melodies and chord progressions that like are hinting around that that that modal area.
00:36:13
Speaker
And you know immediately it's almost like saying this is going to be green and this other thing is going to be red and this thing is going to be blue. It's just like it doesn't mean everything in it is blue, but it's like overall that's the the color palette is going to be in the cool blues.
00:36:32
Speaker
And, you know, that could be in the jazz color palette and the Fridgin color palette and then this Lydian flat four color palette. And that was I was able to sort of separate everything that way.
00:36:43
Speaker
And I'm sorry, but I probably just we probably just lost half your audience because they're like, oh, think this is fantastic. OK, you know, i think this is fantastic, especially when you get into this and and.
00:36:54
Speaker
You know, being able to see or or at least hear about the you know how you break it down and from a technical aspect. yeah And I and because I was going to go a little deeper and and say because you're saying a mode.
00:37:08
Speaker
What does that mean? Can you give us a little context in terms of sure what that means? Yeah. Yeah, um well, in in music theory, um there most people know that there's the major scale and the minor scale. They know stuff, something's major or something's minor.
00:37:24
Speaker
And those are the two just sort of normal common practice modes. um and But then there are more ancient ways of doing a scale. And a scale in Western music is basically eight notes in a row. da da da da da da da da That's a major scale.
00:37:41
Speaker
da da da da da da that's like a natural minor scale. So if you change the intervals in any of these scales by one half step, it becomes a different, it causes different harmonies to occur.
00:37:57
Speaker
um And so the modes are what, um they go all the way back in terms of the modes that we know about to the middle ages, believe it or not. And they're just different scales um that that each scale has you know a slightly different ah whole step, half step um pattern.
00:38:19
Speaker
So like the major scale, what we're used to is whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. and And it goes up the eight degrees.
00:38:30
Speaker
It's like the the distance between each pitch is whole steps and half steps. And that's what makes it a major scale. But if you go whole step, half step, now you that's a minor third instead of whole step, whole step, which is a major third.
00:38:46
Speaker
I'm still, I'm probably not explaining this well, but I mean, it's just has to do with the, there's a scale that underlies how you write melodies and how you find your harmonies and most.
00:38:58
Speaker
Especially self-taught musicians, just they're not thinking about it necessarily, but a lot of guitar players understand the modes because modes are just something that you put your hand in a position and you learn how to play scales up and down the fretboard.
00:39:12
Speaker
And you will learn, yeah I'm going to play major, going to play minor, I'm going to play Dorian, I'm going to play Mixolydian. um ah Believe it or not, most rock and roll, like 90% of rock and roll is in the mode Mixolydian, which is, it's just, it's basically, it's a major scale with what we would, you know, compared to the normal major scale, instead of T-do, which is a half step, going back home, coming home, it's da-da, it's a whole step.
00:39:43
Speaker
da na na na da du da na ah but that's it like and that's it but if it was da da da da that da da that's kind of uh that's sound wimpy but du you know like that's a whole step you know it's a lowered seventh moving to the to the tonic which is your home pitch um so something as simple as mixolydian You know, that's what rock and roll sounds like.
00:40:11
Speaker
And compared to jazz and compared to classical music, rock and roll sits in a different spot um sort of emotionally and creatively because of this one small difference in the scale.
00:40:25
Speaker
So the what you choose as your um scale to sort of dictate how you write music is really can change things quite a bit.
00:40:36
Speaker
So and there's also just the chromatic scale, which is all half steps and, you know, lush, thick, romantic orchestra music from the late 19th century is very chromatic.
00:40:48
Speaker
And a lot of movie scores are very chromatic. And um I tend to like things that are not super, um chromatic. I like the simplicity of major scales, minor scales, and the modal scales. So it's a discipline. You sort of like say to yourself, what what can I write using you know a smaller palette of colors essentially from a musical standpoint?
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense in terms of, yeah, like, what you mean in terms of modes and how they kind of change and, like, how the harmony change and you just get different feels even though it's, you know, yeah, that that totally makes sense to me. And it's,
00:41:38
Speaker
That's a lot. That would be a lot to manage, like going back and being like, all right, i'm we're working on Destiny. What was it again that I'm like, do you like do you have like a notebook or something? I do. I did have notebook sketches in it. And, you know, like, i you know, I work with a digital audio workstation. So a lot of times I'll improvise into it. And then, you know, i'm like, OK, what was I doing again? i hit play on something. OK, yeah, now I'm back into it. So.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, I rely on all those things to make sure I don't, and didn't I didn't mix jazz into my so destiny score if I can help it. This is odd. This seems like it's out of left field, but I'm kind feeling
00:42:19
Speaker
Exactly. That would be fantastic. is it and and And let me ask too, are you currently, do you play the
Gaming Experiences and VR Ventures
00:42:30
Speaker
games?
00:42:30
Speaker
Have you, is that something that you were into or for you, was it more about just kind of, hey, I've got this this story that's evolving and and and it's so robust you know to to be able to play in?
00:42:46
Speaker
Well, with the Halo, I was super involved and I ended up playing every, I played every version of Halo and i've beaten it at Legendary. So every version of Halo is Legendary.
00:43:00
Speaker
Working on Destiny, I was very involved. until I got to the point where we were having some of these creative differences. And then that was sort of painful enough as, as a, you know, ah as a break, I really didn't, I just really didn't play destiny. I didn't get to do on destiny, the sort of final polish that I wanted to do because I was, you know, gone.
00:43:23
Speaker
So I didn't really, i didn't play destiny. So I never got, I mean, that's a 10 year game and, and i know how, you know, how much people love the game and have played it heavily, but I just didn't, I just sort of didn't get into it.
00:43:38
Speaker
I started another game company and we made a couple of other products that you know, were nowhere as near as successful, but they were small teams and ah you know, had a really good time with that. But in terms of the games that I, you know, enjoy playing even to this day, i you know,
00:43:54
Speaker
when you know When I saw the new Zelda come out, Breath of the Wild, I love i loved it. And then I played Tears of the Kingdom. and And um those those are the kind of games. I still love those games. So, you know, I played some Elden Ring.
00:44:09
Speaker
Probably didn't go stay in it as long as I wanted to. I'm probably not putting the same kind of hours in games that I used to. yeah But I totally get it. Games are amazing. Video games can be truly, truly amazing. And some of the scores... Now, I'm... ah I'm thinking that I might need to go ahead and pick up a PS5. I don't have a PS5 yet, so I don't have the latest greatest.
00:44:30
Speaker
I haven't gotten the the you know the Switch 2. um I'm not sure why I would, but I'm sure if there's some Zelda product that I want real bad, I'll get a Switch 2. Yeah, yeah. It's still early on, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But ah there's this game called Claire Obscure, is- Oh, Yes.
00:44:50
Speaker
in whatever, to Expedition 33. and All the people that I really respect in the game industry, they're saying, Marty, you gotta play this game. the composed The music is amazing. The game is amazing. The acting's amazing.
00:45:02
Speaker
So many people have told me that. I'm like, okay, well, I can't miss out on this game. I'm gonna have to get it and play it. So I haven't done that yet, but I will. i'm I'm right there with you. I still haven't played it. I totally have because have Game Pass.
00:45:15
Speaker
yeah Oh, good. and Game Pass. Yeah. So it's like, I know I've heard nothing but good things about it. Yeah. Like tremendous things. Yeah, so it's definitely very high on my list. It's hard. There's a lot of great games that are out right now. Yeah, and it's like, there's only so much time in a day. You've got to be a person.
00:45:33
Speaker
You know, some of have kids. like like Kids and jobs and grandkids. and yeah Yeah, yeah, exactly. he's like, look, let me I try to sneak in a few hours late at night. The kids are in bed. Everybody's in bed. Like, let me get a little bit time in, and then we're good. Yeah.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yeah, it it is. and And what is that? So I know that, um you know, since then, um is there any other like projects that you've worked on ah since, you know, music wise? I know therere that you've also, I'll say semi-retired and we'll get to that here in a few.
00:46:11
Speaker
But yeah, what about what about projects, you know, since then and things that you've been working on? Well, let's see, i I started this game company called High Wire Games and we made we worked for quite a while at the early stages of VR. And then we ended up being at the early stages of the PlayStation VR, PSVR. And that was really, really interesting. And we made a game called Golem and and the music for that um I released as a soundtrack album is called Echoes of the First Dreamer.
00:46:42
Speaker
And I really love it. I think there's some really great music on it. But the game was difficult and it was hard for people to play. Not a lot of people bought a PSVR and half of the people who did, you know, put it on and threw up because it makes everybody sick. Oh, no.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, VR is really tough. it's that you Your audience. Yeah, there you go. So yeah, that's us working. That's our studio and in Seattle. There's Jared.
00:47:09
Speaker
So we were working. That's Jamie. he's my other Those are my two business partners. So we worked on Golem, it was called. And it was I think it was a really cool game. and I would love to see somebody or us, if if it's possible, port that to an Oculus and and get a, just be able to like maybe come up with a new control scheme to help people play it more easily. it was a difficult game.
00:47:36
Speaker
I think it had a great score. It had beautiful art. um And then after that, we started working on a game called Six Days in Fallujah. And yeah and and then so that went quite a long ways.
00:47:48
Speaker
I sort of left um a little bit before they got to the open beta. So um I helped, you know, establish the studio. Six Days in Fallujah is a very different kind of game. It's, it's, it's a real, you know, squad based tactical shooter game where you're playing as Marines um modeled after Fallujah. And it's it's a, it's a pretty amazing game. Uh, and so the sound design and, and the early music for that was something I worked on and, uh, very proud of it. And they, they have taken it, you know, this is, this is, this is a trailer I worked on, um, with this actual gameplay from the game. Um, and it's pretty intense. It's a very intense. yeah
00:48:38
Speaker
It's not forgiving. It's not, it's, it's sort of like the difference between, uh, um this is ah this is a game that's based on what what it's like to be in war, not what it's like to do a war ah um war movie, you know?
00:48:54
Speaker
So this is not, you're not being John Wayne, you are actually trying to be tactical and breaching doors the way you have to, and you could get blown up by an IED at any time. um And it's it's, you have to really understand.
00:49:08
Speaker
And this is the other thing we have, the actual Marines who fought in Fallujah, There are advisors. We have documentary footage of them talking about it. And, you know, the thing, it it got a little bit controversial because people, that's a controversial war, but we weren't trying to take a, you know, ah hardcore political position about the Iraq war. We were trying to say, hey, this is what it was like to be a Marine in this conflict.
00:49:34
Speaker
And here's here's a little slice of it if you play on ah a video game. Um, and it was pretty cool because one of the things that that game has is, um, you'll see it here coming up. Yeah. See this, it changes constantly. So every time you die every and you respawn, if you fail, ah you respawn and everything changes. So you can't learn the layout. You can't learn all the, you know, the, the bad guys behind the couch. And when i open the door, he's going to jump up. No, it changes. The AI changes every time.
00:50:09
Speaker
The layout changes, the buildings change. They're all extremely accurate to what it was like in Fallujah, but they you can never learn. You have to learn your tactics based on what you see in front of you all the time.
00:50:22
Speaker
Right. You can't learn the loop. You can't learn it. Right. You can't learn the loop is right. That is, yeah, that is, that so what, like, how did you end up getting into, you know, into and I know you were talking about first, I believe it was Gollum, and just it being a was that a PSVR exclusive game? Or was that open, okay. Yeah.
00:50:48
Speaker
And so I imagine, and like you were saying too, because the PSVR had, not only did it have its issues, but then it being locked to just PlayStation, it really limits then the audience that, you know, is able to access and play the game.
00:51:06
Speaker
Right. You know, you know, well, it was something that Sony, ah you know, Sony knew that, you they needed to sort of pay us and pay other developers to develop for that product because right the user base was so tiny. First of all, you had to have a good you know PlayStation, and then you had to go out and buy the PlayStation VR.
00:51:29
Speaker
And with us, you had to play the PlayStation VR and play with the the move controllers, those sticks. Or one, I think you only, in our game, you only use the one move controller, but... um Yeah, it just was one of those things where it's it just technically and from a hardware standpoint, it was very the market was small.
00:51:49
Speaker
And so we were hoping you know the PSVR would would hit it big, but it just really kind of didn't. Now the Oculus is doing ah much better as a of virtual reality device, um whatever the new Oculus is. What's it called?
00:52:07
Speaker
ah think the Rift. riff Yeah, yeah, that's the Rift, right. It's Rift 3 now, whatever it is. So this is, you know, we're talking the PSVR was almost 10 years ago. right So it's it's been quite a while. and There's a lot of been advancement that has happened since then.
00:52:23
Speaker
And it's hard to know if um Golem was a traditional, fully explorable fantasy world.
00:52:35
Speaker
ah that you moved around and went in any direction you wanted to. And it was a lot of movement and that caused nausea for a lot of people. right But that was the choice that we had made. We wanted it to be like a traditional story-driven world-building game where you're in this really big world.
00:52:53
Speaker
And the the most successful VR games tend to be things where you're in one place, or maybe you you know you you teleport to one other place and then you stay there and you look around, but you don't go you don't move through an environment which causes motion sickness. so It's one of those things where what was fun about VR is that we were all, everybody who was developing for VR back then was experimenting with what is the best way to move through spaces.
00:53:22
Speaker
So as you see, like, this is great on video. you're You know, you got this giant sword and you're moving up and you're seeing cool things. and And, you know, it we could probably port this as a... um
00:53:37
Speaker
you know, just a regular old PC game that's not in VR. Right. If we changed all the control scheme, but the whole thing was made for virtual reality and ah the combat was virtual. So youre you're holding a move controller, which is your spear or your sword.
00:53:54
Speaker
But when you have to block, when ah a bad guy comes up and starts wanting to hit you and kill you you have to block it by putting your sword up literally above your head okay like people who just think you just make small movements like right here they get killed they actually have to like really swing in there it's one-to-one combat when you're swinging it's really like this guy here like he's he's so you have to like have It's pretty intense.
00:54:21
Speaker
That would be intense. Yeah. It's a shame that we didn't get that, you know, and one of these days I'd love to see this ported to the new rifts and see if we can come up with a control scheme where you have as much fun, but you don't have motion sickness.
00:54:36
Speaker
Right. Well, and the technology, I mean, like you said to the technology has changed drastically. I mean, 10 years, especially in technology terms, It's a lifetime, you know, so yeah I think something like this, it would be way more viable. And I think, you know, especially within the VR space, I think they need more games or actual games, not just like tech demo things or a lot of those games.
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah, if they felt like tech demos or they were sort of cool music games that you know, like you had to like do a rhythm thing or slash things and rhythm and stuff. And that's cool. Those are all fun. But um ah we wanted to make a traditional like fantasy game that was like scary and cool. And like you had to do real stuff and and move around and beat these guys up. And they were tough.
00:55:29
Speaker
These guys are hard to beat. As you can see, they're like, you know have to learn their moves. You know, Jamie is a designer and he's a he's sort of a Dark Souls fan. So okay he wanted you to like, okay, you know, you have to this guy's going to hit you three times and then he's going to give an opening. So you have to sort of learn by getting killed yeah out of yeah certain enemies. Yeah, the punishment way. Yeah. yeah but it was fun like you could be in the you could be in different you know cinematics where you're always in control of what you're looking at so even if you're like know in a wagon that's moving or you're you know under the house or whatever it is you can just look any place you want and and uh that's fun so even and during the cinematic moments um you could you could look at any place you wanted to the camera was always in your control by just by just looking
00:56:23
Speaker
you know you're looking around in your environment, you could like turn around in in your chair and look behind you and it works. um which Which is sort of the magic of VR, um which is why I still think someday vr is going to be a thing. It is. been predicted We've been predicting VR in the game business for like 20 years and it just doesn't ever quite...
00:56:46
Speaker
It's just a cat. Yeah. I don't know what it is. It always turns into more of a novelty than something that like, hey, here's my main thing that I'm going to go and do.
00:57:00
Speaker
and And I mean, we see it now with Apple. When Apple came out with their Pro, was like, you guys are insane. Number one, that is a super niche audience. The price point isn't even close to consumer friendly.
00:57:13
Speaker
i was like, all right, we'll see how it goes. Well, so, you know, I got convinced by watching their, you know, their demo of it and the and the movie, you know, that they made. Here's what it's going to be.
00:57:24
Speaker
watched that and I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to get one of those. I'm going to be an early adopter. It's so great. And then I talked to one of my friends who who knew the Apple guys forever. He's like, you know, Marty, you might want to just wait a little bit on that. And yeah, yeah sure enough, it just...
00:57:39
Speaker
it wasn't it It couldn't live up to the hype. it just you know And I started reading what people's experiences were really like, and I'm like, no, it's not. I don't know what it's doing now. i But i you know what?
00:57:51
Speaker
There's gonna be a point. It's just like, you know if you look at the Apple Newton,
00:58:01
Speaker
You know, everything about it was was almost right, but it was horrible, right? You know, and now everybody in the world has an iPhone and, you know, there we are So they did get it right eventually. But like, yeah, maybe sometimes the, you know, the first iteration of something is not the one, so.
00:58:20
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't even know necessarily if it's a technology. I just think it's a very niche group of people that could actually utilize the technology and what it can do. and what it can do and And it's something that they could do, i would say. i was like, if I couldn't use this every single day in my daily life and it is not for something that I am potentially making money from, don't have that kind of money to just be like, yeah, let's go ahead and get this.
00:58:50
Speaker
Yeah, and once you get to you know the third or fourth iteration, the price comes down and maybe people can afford it. But I mean, still, if you think about how the how expensive the iPhone still is, but it's so ubiquitous. Everybody has it.
00:59:03
Speaker
And it's I forget who it was who came up with this idea, but it's like once once if you could make a device that you will turn the car around and go back home if you forgot it You know, if you're 20 minutes down the road and you're like, I forgot my iPhone, you'll actually turn around and go back to get your iPhone.
00:59:21
Speaker
yeah And that means you've hit it. You've hit the kind of necessity ah device. And yeah yeah, no VR devices even come close to that sort of idea.
00:59:34
Speaker
I know. And there might be some people who leave their, you know, Steam Deck or their Twitch at home before they go to the airplane and then they'll they'll turn around and go back to get it because they need it on the plane. but um yeah is you know vr and the sort of the augmented reality devices that the the apple is trying to do and and and you know whatever all those different reality things that they were talking about there none of that seems to have really become necessary yet but your iphone everybody needs their their mobile phone right i mean you've got an android or an iphone everybody has one of the two right absolutely
01:00:13
Speaker
Absolutely. That that is 100% correct. So I know we've kind of we've kind of gotten a little bit off path here and I don't want to eat up too much of your time.
Political Aspirations and Vision for Nevada
01:00:23
Speaker
um You know, again, let let's just very quickly, I know that you said, you know, you've you've kind of semi-retired and we've talked about the full circle moment yeah where, you know,
01:00:36
Speaker
You are and you have here, i believe it was 2024. um You came in, you ran for the, i believe it was Congressional District 3 on the Republican primary side.
01:00:49
Speaker
You know, tell me a little bit or tell us a little bit about what that experience is. I know that you are again running a lot more time because you came in like with three months before the primary last time. now you've got some breathing room you can you can fully form a campaign let us know what's going on there well um you know i never ever thought at this stage in my life i would do something as drastic as like run for congress but uh talked to some people my daughter is got a um a 501c3 you know a charitable organization called uh foster kinship
01:01:23
Speaker
And she had come to me and you know we we've been helping her for 16 years with this ah foundation with this charitable organization. And it's it's just an amazing thing.
01:01:34
Speaker
So i when we moved to Las Vegas, I'm like, how can I help here? And she said, there's a guy running for a state assembly. He's a really cool guy. I think you'd like him. um ah My daughter is relatively apolitical. she's She's very down the middle. She can't take sides really.
01:01:52
Speaker
But she thought I would like this one guy. So I met him and then he said, let me introduce you to some people I'm working with. And then these people are are Joe Lombardo's people.
01:02:03
Speaker
And they said, why don't you run for Congress? And I was like, that's crazy. Why would I do that? And... They basically just really didn't like anybody else who was running in that district. So they I said, okay, so I'm sort of the Hail Mary guy. like And, you know, the political consultant said, Marty, it's really hard to find good people to run for office. And I thought, well, that's probably why there's so many rotten people in Congress. Right.
01:02:30
Speaker
Good people tend to say, I'm not going to do something crazy, stupid like that. So I thought it was just going to be sort of this interesting learning experience. I took it very seriously. I ran. There were four main candidates. There was a bunch of people in the race, but four of us sort of split the vote.
01:02:46
Speaker
um I did not come in first. And I realized very quickly that you've got to be in it a little bit longer than three months. You've, you've got to really hit the ground and meet everybody in the district. And that's a lot of, that's a lot of work, but I didn't think I would do this again. So i it was like one and done, but, um,
01:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, I am a fan of, I'm a conservative Republican and I i believe in, you know, strong borders and strong families. And i believe in a lot of things that I see um as part of the administration's plan. And so I was very happy to see Donald Trump win. And,
01:03:25
Speaker
and um I went to the inauguration and when I was there, I was in Washington, DC. Some of the people there were like, you should run again. And this time it's a different thing rather than sort of running.
01:03:39
Speaker
um I'm running to to to make sure that that the Trump administration has ah majority in the house and doesn't lose the majority. I think Trump deserves to have four solid years.
01:03:50
Speaker
of of getting his agenda going instead of two because if he if he loses the majority and halfway, the the last two years of his term are gonna be impeachments and lawfare and just nothingness.
01:04:07
Speaker
So I think he deserves to have, um to keep the majority. And so I i feel pretty strongly that I wanna try to take this district The other three people who I ran against last time, they're not in the race. So I'm like, okay, I think I got a shot this time.
01:04:22
Speaker
and so There's some new people that I don't know very well, but, um, I'm taking it very seriously. I'm, you know, I was in Winnemucca over the weekend.
01:04:33
Speaker
Okay, I've got, yeah, I've got family up there. Oh, do you really? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so are you in that area? Okay, are you a longtime Nevada person? I'm not actually. It's it's my it's my partner. My partner, her ah parents live up in that area.
01:04:50
Speaker
Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, they're actually headed up there here like this weekend. Oh, interesting. Well, that's quite a drive, by the way. and you You start to realize when you're doing this, like, well, luckily, District 3 is all contained in Clark County.
01:05:04
Speaker
It does go out to the California border, but it goes all the way down to the Arizona border where Laughlin is. So there's still a pretty good area that I have to, you know, get to know and get to know the people.
01:05:16
Speaker
um But, you know, there's two big counties in in in Nevada. There's Washaw County, which has, you know, Tahoe and and Carson City and Reno, which is up north.
01:05:27
Speaker
And then there's Clark County, which is where most of the people are. But there's 15 other counties which are considered rural counties and they're huge. I mean, they're not heavily populated, but they're beautiful desert mountains, you know, and the expanse is just amazing. So to fly into Reno and then drive all the way to Winnemucca was really quite the experience. I realized this state is gigantic.
01:05:54
Speaker
yeah And, you you know, when you don't when you drive for like an hour and you don't see another human being, you're like, this is amazing. yeah Like there's no, you know, there's so much land and so much of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government, which is ah thing. Right. I think we need to.
01:06:13
Speaker
We need to have a discussion about that. Should the federal government really own this much land? Can't we do something? So, um yeah, there's a lot of very specific Nevada issues that I but i want to not only get accustomed to, you know,
01:06:28
Speaker
educated about, but I want to come up with some plans that are are good for us here in Nevada. All three of my grandsons were born in my district. um My two daughters are living here now. where they're We're all within five minutes of each other. And I really care about you know, the future of my kids and grandkids.
01:06:49
Speaker
And I don't like the current Congresswoman. um I don't think, I think she's just a rubber stamp for policies that I don't agree with. um And I wanna, you know, I wanna change that. So I'm running for Congress again and go to martyforcongress.vote or martyforcongress.com, either one works.
01:07:12
Speaker
And you can see my website and, and go, what in the world is the halo guy doing running for Congress? Well, and and Governor Lombardo also on in 2024 had endorsed you as well, like you said. Yeah, yeah.
01:07:28
Speaker
So yeah, I'm looking for, you know, this time I'm sort of saying, look, you know, I I think this this a district is is important enough, and it's it's what's known as a, it's not just a swing district, it's a district that voted for Trump in the presidency, but voted for the Democrat in for Congress. right and and And there's 535 districts in the United States, and only 13 of them did that happen.
01:07:58
Speaker
And so those 13 districts are being targeted by the Democrats and Republicans as you know districts that could be flipped ah from Democrat to Republican.
01:08:09
Speaker
And of course, there are you know districts that could be flipped Republican to Democrat. So the the political fight is very, very intense. There's going to be a lot of money spent in Las Vegas yeah and Nevada ah around this specific situation.
01:08:25
Speaker
uh race and i just believe i need thought well if i'm going to do this i got to get in early i got to start raising a lot of money i'm going to i kicked in a lot of my own money um these things are very expensive and you're going to have national people and small dollar of donations coming in from all over the place. And it's, it's a very, very different way to spend your time thinking about politics and, and running for office.
01:08:55
Speaker
It's not something that was on my bucket list. I gotta tell you. ah But I'm, it's, it's a fascinating thing to do. i feel strongly that, uh,
01:09:07
Speaker
this is an important thing to do. So I'm, I'm putting a hundred percent of my effort into this right now. And I think that, The Trump administration, from a tactical standpoint, has to come in and say, just like Lombardo did last time, ah you know, I think Trump and that administration needs to say, this is the person we want to have in Congress in this district.
01:09:30
Speaker
And I've made the commitment that, like, whoever he says, this is who I want. um If he says me, great. If he doesn't say me, then I'll say, OK, then I won't. I won't fight. I won't have a bloody primary battle.
01:09:43
Speaker
but If Trump chooses somebody else, I'm going to say, okay, then I'm behind that person. So I'll just i'll i'll get out. But i'm I'm going forward at this moment as though I'm the anointed one.
01:09:54
Speaker
We'll see what happens. Well, definitely wishing you the best of luck. Definitely keeping an eye and all that stuff as well. Like you said, please, ah Marty, I don't want to take up too much of your time. Lay it on us.
01:10:08
Speaker
Let everybody know where they can go find out more information about that stuff and then just more information in general, what you have going on and all that. Well, this is the main thing I have going on. I do have a podcast. You can watch my podcast ah at, you know, Marty O'Donnell, po the Marty O'Donnell Show podcast. on You can get it on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:10:31
Speaker
I've had a lot of fun people, especially I'll have some political people on, but I've also had a lot of people who were part of the podcast. original Bungie Halo team, just talking about the good old days, making the games and making music and and playing games and stuff.
01:10:46
Speaker
So it's a fun podcast to watch. You can watch it. It's on my YouTube channel, Marty O'Donnell. um And then ah you you know you can follow me on Twitter. Oh, there we go. There's there's me with my podcast.
01:10:59
Speaker
Wow, you're prepared. I like this. Good job. And this is a podcast. This is my most recent podcast of me in this place I'm sitting in right now talking to a guy who's a congressman from Indiana. So that was pretty interesting. Talk to a fellow Midwesterner, find out what his story was all about.
01:11:16
Speaker
But the one before this one was Ed Freeze, who was the guy who bought Bungie, um from Chicago back in 2000 and moved us all out to Redmond, Washington. so So, you know, my podcast is all over the place.
01:11:31
Speaker
But if you really want to know about my political positions and you want to support me, go to martyforcongress.com. And you might be able to put that up on the screen. I don't know. But it's martyforcongress.com.
01:11:43
Speaker
And... ah There it is. It's like you can you can go there and learn everything you want to to learn about me and learn about my positions and communicate with me. You can contact me. You can ask me questions and I'll answer them. you'll um My updates will be there. There we go. There we go.
01:12:03
Speaker
There it is. Ooh, it's looking nice. um Fighting for an affordable America. See, I think, you know, here's my thing. I'm going to tell you one of my main things is, I grew up in a time where one good job was enough.
01:12:19
Speaker
If you had one good job, you could raise a family. You could buy a home, raise a family. Your kids could get educated and have clothes and food and go out to the movies and maybe take a vacation.
01:12:31
Speaker
And that that has stopped. It doesn't work as easy and as it used to. And I think we've got to get back to understanding what are the reasons why we have so much trouble um and people need you know two jobs and the in the husband and wife both have to work and they have to work multiple jobs. And there's so much struggle. And that's just there there are reasons for that. And I think we can we can.
01:12:56
Speaker
you know, make one good job great again. So ah I really think there is a way to do it. And I think it's there's political solutions that that we have to look at. And there they go across the aisle, right? yeah It's not only the Republicans, but everybody wants that to come back. um Family is still super important and having a good job and raising your kids and grandkids. Like these are the, this is what most normal common sense people want.
01:13:27
Speaker
And I, for some reason we've drifted away from this and I think it's time to get back to common sense. So that's where I'm at. Absolutely. Marty, but again, thank you so much just for taking the time jibber jabbing with us, letting us know and kind of getting some insight on to, you know, musically what you've been doing, but then kind of sharing to where you are here and and just what you're trying to bring here to the state of Nevada as well. So again, thank you so much.
01:13:59
Speaker
Well, thanks Ryan. ah I think Nevada is an amazingly great state. I had never in my life thought I would end up living here. We've been here almost five years. We've been visiting here to my daughter for 16 years.
01:14:10
Speaker
And I love the state. I love the West. I love being here. And I really wanna just see this this place thrive. And it's great meeting other you know Las Vegas people. you know will We'll stay in touch, Ryan. This has been great.
01:14:27
Speaker
absolutely thank you again marty and thank you guys so much for listening again you can check us out over on youtube at pixelated dash harmony of course we also have itty bitty gaming news going on that's every monday through friday uh just two minutes video game news we've got the cfg gamecast that live streams every Sunday at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Of course, those episodes come out on Mondays as well.
01:14:58
Speaker
Again, thank you guys so much for listening. You can find me over at Smitty2447 on most social platforms. I hope you guys have an amazing month.
01:15:09
Speaker
We love your faces, and we'll see you next time. Thanks.