You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

In May 2014, the video game company Ubisoft released watch dogs about a vigilante hacker.

Here's how the games described on their website.

You play as Aiden Pierce, a brilliant hacker and former thug whose criminal past led to a violent family tragedy.

While seeking justice for those events, you'll monitor and hack those around you.

It sold over 4 million copies in its first week of release.

The music for the game was made by Brian Ritesle, who played drums in the band's air and red cross

before becoming a composer and music supervisor for films like Lost in Translation and Beginners.

He also creates music for the NBC TV show Hannibal.

Coming up, Brian talks about the unique challenges posed by scoring video games,

where players control what happens on screen and as a result what happens in the music.

He'll break down a piece called Donovan, which he wrote for a chase sequence within the game.

He'll also describe the instrument that he created from a 100-year-old piano.

This episode is presented in conjunction with Polygon.

My name is Brian Ritesle, and I am a film and TV and sometimes video game composer.

I was asked by Ubisoft.

They had an idea to approach their video game like a film.

They were looking for a film guy instead of a video game guy.

I'm not really sure they knew what they were going to get from me,

but I had done a video game previously called Red Faction Armageddon.

And that was quite a challenge for me.

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