This week I have been working on developing a lot of different sounds for our game: Ambient pressure. The audio I am expected to compose is the one for: The monster fish, repellent power up, guiding arrow power up, a common sound for when all power ups are picked up and last but not least the menu music. Since I am only supposed to write about one certain artefact I will not explain the process behind all the mentioned features, except of course, as the title suggests, the Menu soundtrack.
The menu music is played when the game is started, thus it is the first thing that the player hears when the game is launched. Since this music is one of the first features of the game, it is very important that it conveys the right feeling, that has to match our aesthetic goals.
The music is a suggestive lump of darkness and eighties synth. At the beginning of the process I did not have a clue in what direction I went. The brainstorming was not as effective as the last time and I did not find any inspiration at all. At first I tried to look at some other under water scenarios in movies and games to see what type of music they used. But that did not work either.
And from out of nowhere it struck me, JAZZ, of course! There is nothing more creepy than jazz. I started to play some jazz scales by using a midi synth plugin from Waves. Little did I know that this was the first piece of mass added to my suggestive-eighties lump.
The song consists of ten different audio tracks. The fundamental instruments are the “Resonant bass” and the “Detorioration” (see picture). These are the ones that decides the tempo and tune through the whole track.
Every audio track here is custom made by me, the synths are adjusted by in program panels and external plugins. Every sound is picked from different softwares than the program that I work in (Logic Pro X). The only actual percussion that I used in this track is the VEC3 base sample that one can here in the beginning.
The delinquent tracks are: Underwater noise (hear beginning), alien harp, wobbly carpet, bass drop and string movements. All the melodic sounds are written on a midi keyboard by me.
The reason why I got satisfied with this song was that it really, according to me, conveyed the feeling of the game in an “unusual” way. The classic portrait of underwater environments are often by using instruments like marimba and soft synths. I took use of the opposite.
Here it is:
Samuelehnberg 