The second floor is done!
Not only its music is complete, but it is even implemented, tested and approved! That was pretty fast, for once. I'm glad I've finally had so much time dedicated to this project. Now, there is a ton of content to introduce. Last time I've shown you Room 1, now it's time for Room 2.
Animals Room
Room 2 is just a room with animal skeletons. Yeah, I wanted to have some fun. Each instrument in there represents an animal. The room itself have a deep vegetation, making it look like a jungle. Not sure there is much furniture there actually.
So, jungle ambiance! It's… Pretty hard to make actually. Firstly because I needed a lot of tribal percussion, with instruments whose names are mystery to me. Tough search for samples. And secondly… Well, making a decent rhythmic can be pretty challenging! It took me some time to find the correct beat. My main inspirations here was Henry Mancini's Sounds of Hatari, Donkey Kong Country soundtrack, and (obviously) Toto's Africa.
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1iE0isKbf4r
This is probably the music I'm the most satisfied with. While it is a bit cliché, it manages to convey the atmosphere I intended, and bring different emotion with each extra instruments.
Before we move on to Room 3, we there is a little special room we have to visit:
Portraits Room
A small tower with only portraits of skeletons, as well as skulls inside glass domes. The player can there listen to what the skulls have to say.
Here I wanted to go back to jazz. More precisely, some kind of gypsy jazz with a bit of harpsichord. I had difficulties not making it sound like country (I do not like country), but adding some violin magically turned it into a nice swing.
https://vocaroo.com/i/s09zrd9lcWGy
However this room turned out to be pretty challenging! The reason being that I wanted to add… scat singing. Yup, each skull should have had their own voice, with some cuts and effects to make them sound strange and surreal.
So I started recording myself… And well, it turned out singing is hard! Even for two little measures. I also tried to do some beat-box, but it was just as pathetic. Huh, that should have been expected. I tried applying effects, cutting only the parts that sounded almost correctly, but it was no use: it still sounded like crap. And making cuts and shifting each of them, like Pogo does, was way too fastidious.
So… Plan B. If I wasn't able to sing properly, I could maybe use my voice to build a home-made vocaloid? So I recorded several syllabes while singing an A4, with different voices and intonation. Then I imported them separately in LMMS, written a melody… And soon realized my mistake. See, each syllabe was an instrument. If I wanted the singing to alternate between several syllabes… I had to make sure each instrument played only one single note at a time of the same melody! After four notes, it was already a nightmare. Sure it could be done, but it was ridiculously fastidious! Doing only one melody would need to take an entire day, and I needed four!
Time for plan B's plan B. If I couldn't use several syllabes at a time, well, maybe one would be enough. It's sounds a bit like Banjo-Kazooie voices (does those things have a name? In French we have the term “yogurt voice”, but I'm not sure it actually exists in English). Eh, it's always back to Grant Kirkhope, isn't it?
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0T4L0qFDeJI
Well, it makes the skulls sounds a bit “video-gamish”, but eh, at least the result is fun, and hopefully still surprising.
Okay, let's move on to Room 3!
Costumes Room
Room 3 looks like a backstage, with groups of skeletons in costumes rehearsing or just fooling around. It even has a curtain hiding a mysterious audience.
For this room, I decided to make a bit of rock. I initially wanted electric guitars, but I stated earlier that they sounded terrible. So I added Rhodes (yay) and an organ to blend it nicely. On top of that, I wanted to try ternary rhythm. It swings nicely, let's experiment and take some risks! Hey, I even use a C major, and no E minor. It's cheating, but it just sounds great with A major!
The result… Sounded like country (I still do not like country!). Well, jazz percussions and a clearer melody saved it a bit.
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0ujfTfpmqya
Nice. But you know what? I wanted to break even more rules! See, in each room, examining elements just add extra instruments. But here, I decided that looking at a group of skeleton would actually change the music's feeling by removing and adding instruments. Yes, I can do that. Let's use our power to their maximum! Here is an example:
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0SpuakDzO0x
Um, well, I still have a good excuse: there is a bit of meta in this room. The skeletons disguise themselves for a play, witha little insinuation for the player that they are in a play themselves. So, for each group, their own story, their own game… Eh, okay, fine, I just like to change the rules and now and then.
Though I maybe went too far with this one. It sounds great, but blend poorly with the other rooms. Mostly because of the ternary rhythmic: the fading is super weird! Also, we barely hear the motif. In most rooms, I tried to let it in the background, to avoid it being too annoying. But here it's really hidden. There are other rooms with sharp transitions, but this one is the most flagrant one. Still I'll keep it like that, because despite all this I find it sounds great.
We can now enter Room 4! Well, “entering”, so to speak…
Bay Room
There is a peaceful bay inside Room 4. With a night sky, a lighthouse in the distance, and the sea stretching toward the horizon. If the game wasn't dream-like already, this should do the trick.
This room should be peaceful and a bit atmospheric. I took inspiration from one particular track of David Kanaga's game Oikospiel, Menu Hotel Elegy. Its slow rhythm evokes waves, and I love how the drum is used in it.
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0XTIpEpU5sw
Not as close as I wish, especially with the drums. To my surprise though, the flute playing the motif somehow took the lead, and give to the music all its consistency! The result is melancholic, but with a pleasant dream aspect. I like it.
Finally, there is one last room to visit.
Library
It wouldn't be a haunted manor without a library. Actually, there's also some kind of church in it. My plan thus was to write a kind of modern jazz, with a lot of electro. Maybe something close to Jaga Jazist?
But first, there is a little room between Room 3 and the library. Its presence is mostly narrative: it cover the eventual noise from the room (and giving it is the costume room, boy is that needed). I also wanted it to be a musical transition between the two, but giving what I said earlier, you already know it didn't work out. Well, at least it makes the manor even more labyrinthine.
I used the same reasoning than with the first floor second's corridor: two chords, one from both the rooms. Given that they don't share any one, this was needed! So it was back to good ol' A major and E minor. This time reversed, to change a bit. There is also a window in this room, and I used the same technique than in room 3: removed some instruments and add other, to create a different mood.
Anyway, back to the library. I had some difficulty finding out what I wanted to create. It was supposed to be mysterious and quiet, but maybe not too far away from jazz and the game's global tone. Finally, I decided I should go with drums close to the ones from the Binding of Isaac. From that I added some kind of organ to make it church-like, harp, and a synth to play the motif… But then it sounded mostly electro, and I completely lost the jazz aspect! Fortunately, adding some brass and a sax magically fixed it. Now it's closer to electro-swing, with a pleasantly dark atmosphere.
https://vocaroo.com/i/s089CQiWjmOD
And that was second floor! Here is a map of how it is supposed to look like:
To be honest, while the compositions here are richer, I'm less satisfied on how they blend together. They might have to much personality on their own. Well, I guess one of this project's goal was to experiment anyway.
Now, we're nearly finished! The only missing piece is the Basement, where the end of the game takes place. After that, there will be some technical details to take care of (finally, some code!). Then, I'll guess the game will be good to ship! We're pretty close to the release here. This is exciting! See you next week.