How ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man’ Harmonized Web-Swinging With Music

Swinging through New York was one of Marvel’s Spider-Man’s most enjoyable mechanics, one that wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining without the music that accompanied it.

The game is filled with tracks that fits different moods throughout the movie-like story, and the web-swinging segments are no different. While the normal hustle and bustle of New York is heard when walking on the ground and on rooftops, those sounds are accompanied with a rush of music when Spider-Man goes airborne that captures what it should feel like to swing through the city as Spider-Man. It’s heroic, powerful, and the rise and fall of the sounds personifies Spider-Man’s movement through the city. The music ends once you hit the ground or reach your destination, but it’s a part of the web-swinging experience that makes you want to get back into the air again.

John Paesano, composer for Marvel’s Spider-Man, was responsible for that web-swinging music that fits the mechanic so well. We asked Paesano how he harmonized web-swinging with his music, a challenge that he said was first approached by separating gameplay music from the cinematic score.

“One of the big things, one of the big challenges I think for us and one of the goals that I really set out in the beginning to try and achieve was, I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a huge discrepancy between the cinematic music and the gameplay music,” Paesano told ComicBook.com. “Because those are the two kinds of things we’re always faced with as composers in this format is that you have cinematic, which are the moments of the game that play like a movie, the cut scenes and things like that, and then you have, obviously, the gameplay music where you are swinging around the city.”

He continued to say that people often emphasize the cinematic music, but said that the most important music was heard during the gameplay since it’s what players are immersed in throughout the whole game. Hoping to avoid a discrepancy between the two kinds of music, he wanted to be sure the thematic material was strong in both.

“I wanted to make sure that there was thematic content that people could go, ‘Oh, there’s a Spider-Man theme as he jumps off the building and starts his web-slinging.’ And, ‘Oh, there’s the …’” Paesano said. “In musical terms, we call it a ostinato, which is basically the propulsive motor that happens underneath the main theme.”

“So, then I just wanted to make sure there was all this DNA from the main theme in the gameplay music and in the general music when he’s swinging around,” he added. “And that way, when it does come up in the cinematic scenes, it feels familiar, it feels connected. And there was just kind of, like I said, that DNA kind of strung throughout the whole entire gameplay. So, it just didn’t feel like it was too separate types of music, but it was all very relative or relevant and connected.”

Marvel’s Spider-Man is now available on the PlayStation 4.