The Hardest Working Man in Virtual Showbiz – An Interview with Darren Korb

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Unwinnable: What are some of your favorite games in terms of soundtracks and sound design?

Darren: My favorite soundtrack is probably Marble Madness for the NES. I love that game – it’s so good and the soundtrack is just wonderful. I think that’s one of my favorite uses of the Nintendo synth – the sounds are just so good in that score. And when you hear the arcade version it’s totally different; it doesn’t sound nearly as cool because it has all this FM synth instead of the crazy 8-bit synth.

Another score that I love because I played the game for like 10 years is Diablo 2, so I also had that in my brain. I really like Plants vs. Zombies in terms of sound design. When I was approaching the design for Bastion, I was really looking at a lot of PopCap Games, first and foremost for how I wanted to approach the sound design. It’s really elegant, really informative, simple, doesn’t clutter things – there’s just really good sound design on their games like Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies.

Unwinnable: It definitely is a “less is more” kind of approach.

Darren: Totally. I never feel like I need a sound for something that there isn’t a sound for, and in a PopCap Game I’m always happy with the amount of audio feedback I’m given.

Unwinnable: Tell me about Marry Me!

Darren: This is a power pop bromance musical that I wrote with my brother a couple years ago and now we are in the New York Musical Theatre Festival. On October 13th, we have two readings at 1 p.m. and at 5 p.m. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We are in rehearsals now and it’s coming together. It’s exciting to see it up on its feet finally.

Unwinnable: With everybody saying how the music industry is on the verge of death, it also seems like the musical industry is on the verge of a new Golden Age. The Book of Mormon, Evil Dead: The Musical, Green Day’s American Idiot and The Toxic Avenger musical are just a few examples that seem directly marketed to people in their 30s (or rather, children of the ’80s). Why do you think there is a renewed interest in musicals?

Darren: It’s interesting. I think musicals are one of the few American cultural inventions. We don’t have many – we have musicals, jazz and fast food – [laughs] not too many other things.

I think musicals still have room to grow. Jazz has definitely seen a lot of permutations and fast food as well; it’s as saturated as it can be at this point. I think there was a point in the ’70s, somewhere around that time, when popular music and the songs that people

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wrote for musicals were the same genre of music. I think what’s happened since then is that the music for musicals has stayed there and become some weird side thing that people aren’t interested in hearing anymore. In general, I mean – obviously there are tons of exceptions to this.

That was my feeling when I started writing a musical. I wanted to write something that I would be totally happy to listen to out of context as just a song that I would enjoy. My big influences while writing this were Ozma, early Weezer and Nada Surf – stuff that I thought was kind of cool power pop and indie rock.

I thought that I hadn’t really heard a musical like that. Even rock musicals today sound like songs that are written for a musical that are then played in a rock arrangement. I wanted to try and write a song that was a rock song that could then serve a purpose in a musical.

Unwinnable: How and where can people see Marry Me!?

Darren: It’s going to be at the Signature Theatre in the Peter Norton Space on 42nd Street. To get tickets, go to Marrymemusical.com for instructions. Then just send an email to marrymethemusical@gmail.com and you can say how many tickets you want. It’s free, actually. There will be a couple readings and I’m going to be playing in the band.

Unwinnable: What new stuff do you have in store for 2012?

Darren: I got a new band going, and we’ve been churning out a bunch of material – we should be playing out in the next couple months, maybe late fall. It’s a project where everybody plays everything and we all write and we all sing and we all switch instruments, and it’s really cool. I’m also working on another project with Supergiant that I can’t really talk about.

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Someday George would like to write a musical about procrastination. Watch him put it off @GeorgeCollazo.
Keep up to date on all of Darren’s projects on Twitter @darrenkorb and at facebook.com/darren.korb.