How I composed and structured the music in my upcoming game, Reproduction Man.
So I did the basic music for the game. I'll embed the tracks at the bottom of the post, if you're interested in hearing them.
I used Logic Pro to do the music, since it's the environment I'm most familiar with at this point. It's got some decent synths, and the sequencer isn't too bad.
I knew I wanted at least two themes: one for the menu, and at least one (probably two) for the main game. The following were my constraints:
I wanted a flavor of retro without going all-out retro.
I wanted something that had a light mood without being Mario-y.
I wanted the menu theme to "go with" the main theme(s).
I didn't want to use percussion. It's good for some games, but it can be weirdly distracting in a way that it isn't when you're just listening to music.
The music had to be able to loop without the loop point being super obvious.
I met constraint #1 by using one patch that had a retro-ish, low-res feel to it, and using that sound as a lead-in and "backbone". This sound recedes - and even disappears - at times, and it's not the melodic lead, but all the other parts are built around it. There's probably a name for this techinque, but I don't know what it is.
I met constraint #2 by just playing around until I found something I liked. The retro sound made this fairly easy to do.
I met constraint #3 in a couple of very simple but satisfying ways. First, both themes are in the same key. Pretty obvious. Second, I used the same set of intrument patches for both themes. So it is as though the songs are played by the same octet, where each member's instrument is some weird thing that doesn't really exist as an actual instrument. The menu theme has a slightly faster tempo (120bpm bs 100 for the main theme), but it has the same feel to it as the main theme.
I met constraint #4 by not using percussion. Well, it's not quite as simple as that, because I wanted a sense of a rhythm in the music. So I chose a particularly percussive bass patch and used a few bell-like sounds as well. I also did a lot of arpeggiating.
I met constraint #5 by using a fun technique that I'd eventually like to do procedurally in a game. I basically composed the songs so that each instrument has a simple, repeating part. Then I have the various parts come in for a while and then go back out. You can get a sense of "building" by adding in one part, waiting a few bars, then adding in another. You can then get back to the beginning by subtracting parts out, one by one. If you subtract them out in a different order than you added them, you can get a lot of different feels throughout the song. If you start with one part (in my case, the retro bit) and subtract back to that, you've got a loop that isn't jarring to the player when it flips back to the beginning.
The main theme also has a bridge part, so that it's not too incredibly repetitive.
I would like to do a second "main" theme, but I need to figure out the logic of it. If I play it back-to-back with the first main theme, I'd need to make it loop correctly with that. I was also thinking of using different themes for different levels in the game, but I don't think that would work well. Right now, the game switches between menu music and the main theme as you navigate, but it doesn't start over from the beginning. It remembers where you were in each song and fades in at that point.
Hopefully I'll get the octet back together before the game is done ;).
Anyway - this is the menu theme:
And this is the main theme:
[Also posted at dkilmer.com]
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