Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Composer Reveals How Game Score Stands Out

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales' composer revealed how the game's score stands out from the previous game. A lot has been made of the transition from Peter Parker to the Ultimate Spider-Man in the PS5 launch title. But, there's another layer of difference dancing below the surface. John Paesano is one of the men behind the beats in the game, but it turns out he had some high-profile help. In a conversation with io9, he talked about how hip-hop royalty Boi-1da stepped in to bridge the gap between a cinematic approach and the more orchestral roots of the superhero genre. Miles is definitely in love with the culture that raised him. From hip-hop to Afro-Caribbean live recordings, it's all there in the text of the film. With the collaboration featuring an urban production heavyweight, their approach forced both parties to embrace things outside of their normal toolbox.

"I'm a film composer by trade and grew up, you know, listening to John Williams. Boi-1da was instrumental in making sure that we got this orchestral sound down that incorporated hip hop correctly," Paesano explained. "He wasn't just making beats, but in a few cases, he was a co-producer in many senses to make sure that everything was playing together. It's funny because when we wrote the score, there's a lot of odd time signatures and syncopated stuff that's not very straightforward, but hip-hop can be so much more direct, musically, and it was so fun to work with him because we both kind of brought each other outside of our comfort zones, which yielded just a really cool mesh of sounds and worlds."

"We're not just being true to this idea we have of the "superhero sound," but also to the complex fabric of Miles' musical tastes that's part of where he comes from," he continued. "His father's African American, and his mother's Puerto Rican, and we wanted him to have a wide palette in terms of musical influences because our Miles is young and hip, but he's also this old soul we imagined listening to music that your regular 17-year-old might not necessarily be into."

Peter Ramsey, director of Into the Spider-Verse talked about the movie's soundtrack during a Twitter Q+A earlier this summer.

"Thanks! It was a group effort, all us directors, producers, and music folk," Ramsey said. "We weighed in on which artists/songs we liked, all driven by the idea that we were reflecting Miles' life and character through the music; we wanted it to feel as if MILES was scoring the movie."

How do you feel about the music in Miles Morales? Let us know down in the comments!