In addition to his collaboration with Velasco on games including Dark Messiah, Splinter Cell 4, Beowulf, Haze and Hellgate: London, Sascha has worked on a variety of other games, most notably Quake II, Quake III Arena and James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies. He is also recognized as an innovative and successful music producer in the recording industry. Enjoy…
Amazon.com/games: Growing up in Germany, what were your musical influences?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Back into the 80s, bands like New Order, Devo, Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk shaped my interest in electronic music. Later on we had a lot of great industrial bands coming out of Germany which helped to shape my sound into what it is today as well.
Amazon.com/games: When did you get into video games and which ones did you play?
Sascha Dikiciyan: I got into games really early on. I think my dad had one of those Pong machines which were released in the 70s. Then later we had the famous Atari 2600 and I think I've been addicted ever since.
Amazon.com/games: Your love of video games led to the creation of the song "Methods of Destruction" for the original Quake. How did that opportunity come about?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Actually that isn't quite the way it happened. I worked on Quake II and Quake III Arena. "Methods of Destruction" was a CD I produced myself in 1996 out of my bedroom. At that point it was a fan made product, but it led to me getting the Quake II scoring job.
Amazon.com/games: How do you pick the projects that you commit to?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Usually the game pitch has to spark something. We always look for the challenge to create something new. That's not always easy, but our hybrid sound of electronics and orchestra is what producers want the most. Regardless, it’s always nice to be able to find that one project where they just let us do our thing.
Amazon.com/games: What would be your "dream" project?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Good question. I’ve always been a fan of the old school adventure games. The so called "click and point" adventure games. To this day, Indy and the fate of Atlantis from Lucasarts is still one of my favorite games of all the time. Unfortunately, the genre has almost died out. However I would love to score a really cool, dark adventure game one of these days. That would be awesome!
Amazon.com/games: How would you describe your musical style?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Well I would just call it cinematic with an edge. People have told me they know immediately that it's me, so I guess having your own style is the ultimate goal for any musician.
Amazon.com/games: How do you prepare? What type of equipment do you use?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Well, we do a lot of research before writing a single note. We have lots of meetings with the producers and audio directors. Then I will spend a good amount of time creating custom sounds or fx that will define the score. It's an important process. I use everything you can imagine. My main workstation consists of a super fast PC running Cubase 5 and tons of plugins. I also use a proprietary sound design workstation called "kyma" a lot. I also collect a lot of weird distortion pedals and use a lot of older, actual synthesizers like the Juno 106 or the MS2000 from Korg.
Amazon.com/games: In addition to creating music on your own, you also work with fellow composer Cris Velasco. How did you two meet?
Sascha Dikiciyan: A few years back I wanted to expand my sound so I was looking for an orchestral composer. I wasn’t sure where to start so I posted a job search on some music websites. I got a lot of demo reels but Cris' stood out. Besides the fact that Cris also lives in LA, it turns out we have the same agent. So it was a good fit. The rest is history really.
Amazon.com/games: Your collaborations together include Dark Messiah, Splinter Cell 4, Beowulf, Haze, Hellgate: London and Prototype. What other games are you currently working on?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Yes, Cris and myself work on most games together. This year we have Prototype and GI joe coming out. Those are two huge titles for us. Prototype was also recorded at Skywalker Ranch and features some unique musical sound design. At the moment, I just finished music for a new Ubisoft title, am working on a huge game for Sony and am working with Cris on music for a gearbox title. Sorry I can’t really name them all yet. 
Amazon.com/games: Last fall I was fortunate to spend some time with you at Skywalker Sound. At that time you were working on G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra. What was it like working on such a well know franchise? Did you watch the show as a child?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Well, we were super excited. Yes I watched the show as a kid and of course had some of the toys. Overall it’s always fun and exciting to be part of something that’s already established, however there’s a lot of pressure to do something cool and live up to it. For this particular title, it was an awesome experience since the whole EA team was very supportive of our work, including our music supervisor J.P. Walton. Big thanks to them!
Amazon.com/games: Who is your favorite character?
Sascha Dikiciyan: I would say the Cobra Commander because the cues we wrote for him are my favorite ones. 
Amazon.com/games: Since there was already music for the TV series, did it change the way you approached making music for the game?
Sascha Dikiciyan: Well the original music was cool for its time, but we obviously had to develop it to be more contemporary and edgy. Even though we wrote a remix of the original theme, all the music in the game is new and original.
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Many thanks to Sascha talking with us. You can read more about him, his past projects and collaborations and keep tabs on some of those hush-hush projects he mentioned by visiting the bio page at Sonicmayhem.com.
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