game music

The cherry on top was to try to write and produce my first ever song, performed by the amazing Bianka Soukupová, whose magical voice is all over the score. We did multiple recording sessions with Bianka for vocals in order to capture both written-out phrases and a dozen improvised lines. I created a simple VST containing these ad-libs so that I could easily add them to different spots. It was even more interesting to have them in the “wrong” key, as using pitch and formant shifting became one of the signature techniques to corrupt and alienate both vocals and, occasionally, the live instruments as well.

The main theme is stated in it’s entirety only once - in the main screen menu music, The Chapter Of Eternity. Melodically, it’s based on Hijaz – an Arabic maqam. The core motif is a leap up followed by two steps down, almost as if attempting to rise but inevitably falling back down. The main theme – and sometimes just the core motif – undergoes a whole array of variations, inversions, and recontextualization. Something worth mentioning is that, although there are some character-tied themes, the main theme does not really represent only our main character, Asher, or the Duat realm, but more generally the whole situation we find ourselves in.​ I really like to play with the “function” of a motif. A variation of the main theme is for example used not only as the backbone of a lead melody, but its core motif also appears in the accompaniment.

Not easily heard, but certainly adding to the character, there are textures, percussion and background elements created from found sounds, foley recordings or vocals, directly drawing from the environment of given level. For example the desert level music has pads and textures made from recordings of sand, sandstorm, wind, and snakes, while the sarcophagus level has swells made from recordings of dragging a heavy stone.

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An example of drawing from outside-of-music influences is for example a stabby synth lead carrying Thoth’s theme in Thoth's Laboratory. Thoth is often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis and therefore the synth sound is actually a resynthetized call of the African Sacred Ibis.

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Big theme in the game is corruption. Emitted by god Apep (and god Set), the corruption not only affects the minds and bodies of other gods and characters, it also appears as physical distortion of the world. This is gradually represented in the music itself. Using heavy autotune, formant and pitch shifting, distortion of many kinds, bitcrushing, both vocals and instruments become infected by the corruption.

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There are two categories of bosses in the game (not counting the final one). Although there are many, beautifully designed, personality-filled bosses throughout the game, time and budget only allowed for one track for lesser bosses and one for the greater ones. Bianka on horn, father on cello, and me on an array of instruments, we certainly had a lot of fun recording this high-energy music. I always gravitate towards battle music that has a dance-like quality. For the greater bosses, the music is a bit more hulky and heavy, yet still active and dance-like, mostly thanks to frequently changing time signatures. Shout-out to my fiancée Emily, who keeps adding the battle motif to the end of whatever she happens to be singing on a whim.

Something we decided to include in the music was both quoting and loosely using various texts from The Book Of The Dead and other sources that would coincide with our story. ​​​​​​​​