I don’t think I’ve ever gone into specific detail about music in a postmortem, except to say things like ‘I liked this’ or ‘this was hopelessly derivative’… I generally talk about my feelings, but not the music. So I suppose it’s time to start talking about specifics.
I’m not real sure how to talk about this. I can’t even read sheet music, and my musical vocabulary is somewhat limited.
But here’s what I’ve got:
A moody, haunted ship type thing that’s more ambience than music.
A somewhat happier, out-to-sea theme.
(Sadly, the 30 second clips above are not, like, samples of larger works. 30 seconds is all I’ve got.)
Anyway.
You were suppose to be on a spaceship. Can you tell?
Ok, not really. But it was supposed to be a spaceship. With, like consoles and windows into space and blinky lights. So I wanted something that sounded like a haunted ship.
When you were in an unlit area, the first theme would play; when you were in a lit area, it would fade to the other theme. I’ll just talk about the two separately.
the moody ambient thing
Generally, I like it, but I can’t really take credit for how it sounds. I’m using a software package called Garritan Instant Orchestra that includes pre-made instrument combos you can use, and while most are symphonic textures with names like ‘Splatty Ostinatos’ or ‘Sweeping Melodies’, some are more ambient…
…like the combo called ‘Ghost Ship’. I just opened it up and started pressing random keys. That worked well enough, but I certainly could have used it in a more interesting way.
Logically, the next step is for me to take manual control of what Instant Orchestra and my random-keys approach were doing for me automatically. If I want, Instant Orchestra allows me to play individually the instruments each pre-made combo is made of.
Ghost Ship is actually made of four unique instruments. At first glance, most seem to be drum kits, which means that they’re not playable, melodic instruments so much as collections of sound effects, each effect being tied to a different key on your piano. One key on a standard drum kit might be a big floor drum, while another key would be a cymbal crash.
So I should look at each kit, one by one, and listen to the effects, one by one, and try to think of interesting things you could do if you were controlling each kit independently, making the exact sounds you wanted, exactly when you wanted them. I should really get to know these kits, and the other kits Instant Orchestra has to offer.
the more melodic thing
When I think ‘nautical’, I think of music whose volume or pitch (or probably both) rises and falls in a gentle, rocking sort of way. I really don’t know if that would qualify as a musical cliche, but even if it does, I suppose it’s a cliche I really like.
I tried to do that with the arpeggios, trying to go for something like bubbling water there. Sadly, the arpeggios are a little hard to hear. Probably could have emphasized those more and the melody less.
As for the melody, it occurs to me just now that I probably want an instrument with a slow attack and release — meaning that when you press a key on your piano, the volume would start off really soft; as you hold the key down it gets louder, and when you release the key, the note doesn’t stop instantly, but fades out slowly.
Again, this is something I can manually control, though I tend not to.
Luckily, I think I’m kinda close to this already, but I don’t think I was consciously thinking about that whole gentle rocking thing when picking an appropriate sounding instrument.
The melody is a little slow and plodding; lots of whole notes. That goes with the whole slow rocking thing I guess, but I feel like there should be something more dynamic, too. And again, maybe emphasizing the arpeggios over the melody could help with that. I could also play arpeggios for a while, and then have it grow into a full-fledged theme with a more complex rhythm played on the same instrument.
Side note: In general, I think I try too hard to fill up all the space in my music. In visual design terms, there’s no whitespace; there are fine details, but when viewed from a distance, everything looks like the same boring grey.
If I’m having trouble making clips more than 30 seconds long, perhaps it is because I am so focused on the fine details, without a larger-scale framework in which to place them.
Good article Brian! And I agree that it can be very difficult to write about and clearly describe musical elements. Even with a Masters in music I still struggle with this from time to time. I really like that you are talking about the music however, and I think both of these tracks are interesting, enjoyable to listen to, and fit very well with your awesomely rendered ship. I didn’t realize that you don’t read music and I think you have great intuition when it comes to composing. I firmly believe that while music literacy is extremely helpful for composition, anyone with determination and vision for a piece, can compose a piece of amazing music. I’d like to make a couple of general suggestions, not as a specific critique of the tracks you posted, but just as pointers for future work.
1. Start with a single musical element, and let the piece grow organically from there. It could be an instrument’s timbre, a short melody, a chord progression, a rhythm pattern, etc… From that seed, more elements can connect to form a cohesive whole. That being said…
2. Try to plan the big picture of your work. Writing an entire piece note by note, chord by chord can be very difficult because it’s hard to know exactly where the end point might be. Figure out about how long you want it to be, and how many thematic sections you want. Maybe you only have one main melody, and loop it with slight changes each time (like One Tiny Piece) or maybe you have an ‘A’ section, and follow it up with a complimentary sounding, but contrasting ‘B’ section. But you can plan your piece based on the amount of repetition and contrast you want to include.
3. Don’t shy away from silence and simplicity. When I first started seriously composing music back in 2011, I had a tendency to try to shove as many musical ideas as I could into a given piece and listening to that work now sounds, to my ear, very cluttered. I don’t think the tracks you posted sound cluttered, but allowing spaces for silence or instrumental sparseness is just another way to provide interesting contrast in a work.
I’m going to write a post-mortem of my own hopefully tonight that talks more about these kinds of things and how they relate to the GGJ music I wrote, but hopefully this is helpful and not rambling. You did a great job with the game design, concept, and music. I’d love to see what you come out with in the coming year.
Thank you Ian! All of your comments were very helpful. In particular, something sort of clicked in my head when I read #2 here; I guess I do try to do things note by note, and planning out structure in advance definitely sounds like something I need to try. I never considered doing that.
Looking forward to reading your post-mortem.