Hey! I'm back with game music!
If you didn't see,
I recently posted a game for our Spooky Month game jam.
And as with any new song, I just want to do an unnecessarily long write up about the process, so grab a coffee and maybe a snack, and allow me to indulge myself for a bit.
In the beginning:
I actually didn't want to write an original song for the game jam, assuming I just wouldn't have enough time, as often I tend to hit brick walls (foreshadowing) that slow down my writing process often taking a month or more at times to finish a song.
However, I had this particular “mysterious” arpeggio circling in my head, and I wondered what I could do with it.
So…I decided I'd give a try.
Theming the song:
I already knew what I wanted the game jam to be about. I knew it was going to be a “delve into my mind”, so I wanted to make something that captured the turbulence of emotions that might be swirling within someone's head.
I wanted to create something that felt unsettling, but not through dissonance and creepy-crawly ways, but unsettling in how manic it felt. The main chords the arpeggio wanders through move from tense to peaceful repetitively throughout the song, all while maintaining a mysterious air to them.
The song structure itself further explores this “manic expression”. The song never settles on a main melody, and each exploring a different emotion, with a frustrated cello, a relaxing piano, and a sad violin.
The Arrangement:
There are other fun features to enhance this “psychological” theming I was going for as well.
You may notice that the drums are rather peculiar too. This was done deliberately as I felt a standard drum kit didn't meet the strangeness the song was aiming for. The drums are an 8 inch diameter aluminum pot, hit with a drum stick in a variety of articulations. Though, a pot by itself wasn't particularly interesting. I wanted a little more rattle to it. After playing with a variety of loose objects in the pot, I never found a result I was happy with, especially because items in the pot limited how I could hold and hit the pot (like, if I hold it upside, obviously everything is going to fall out). I eventually found just clipping a couple of binder clips just added a small rattle. It was perfect!
But the recording doesn't stop there!
There are a variety of vocal samples I made as well, from whispers to facilitate the "in the head" mood, to hushes, and my most favorite..
The scream.
I really apologize to my neighbors for this one!
It took quite a few attempts to get the “right sounding” scream. I wanted something that sounded like legitimate anger. Then, through the washed out reverb, it makes it so that it creeps in first as just noise before hauntingly the scream breaks through the noise. I absolutely loved this part.
There is also a bassy rumble that goes along with the scream.
Well…what do angry people do if not get a little physical? This bassy sound was actually me pounding on my desk. (Again, I'm really sorry neighbors, thank you for putting up with my noise. No wonder why you called the cops on me.)
The Unfinished part:
Yeah...so actually, I did wind up hitting that brick wall at the very end.
But rather than give myself the time to let itself work out - which is usually the part of my process that can take a really long time - I just said "yeet" and called it done.
Would anybody be able to tell if I hadn't mentioned this? Probably not, but I just wanted to explain the whole creative process here.
Overall, I just think this is a really cool song.
So what am I going to do with it? Game jam games are kind of 1-and-done, so it doesn't give this cool song a lot of life.
Well, considering it doesn't really fit into my album music, nor does it fit into my main game project, I figured I will release it as an asset for the community to use in their own games.
After the game jam ends, I'll post my own resource thread with this song included. I plan to make a few variations; without whispers, without all vocals, and without drums. I'll also include the special loop I made of the arpeggio that I used in the menu of my game jam game. Look forward to that when it gets released!
