[September 21, 2023]

Producing the music and establishing a theme is one of the first step for our game's direction. Before making one of our own, we gathered a lot of inspiration from listening to different bands/artists from different eras. Ranging from the early rise of Punk, Pop Punk, Punk Rock, Rock, Alt Rock, Grunge, Emo, and other subgenres. Bands such as Ramones, Greenday, Blink 182, Paramore, The Strokes, Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, and etc. With this in mind, we managed to put together the first soundtrack for the game and aesthetics came after basing it on the music made.

Music Production - Roann Cordova
Rough Drafts

One of the biggest challenge that I have encountered was to pick a specific tone that we would like for our soundtrack. "Should we make it slow? Complex? A lot of chord progression? Agressive?" These questions always float around my head as I was making the first draft. Initially, I started practicing and getting the hang of music production by remaking some existing songs and mimicking each sounds to understand their depth and intentions with each sound produced.

The first recreated music was Reptillia by The Strokes, then Brianstorm by Arctic Monkeys, then a common Greenday chord progression.

Once the foundation has been solidified, I decided to go with a progression that resonates with both Arctic Monkeys and Greenday.

Music Theory + Game Design

The chord progression, tempo, and key for the soundtrack is already sounding great, for a just being a music itself. One thing that I have to consider is to how to make the music playable." Is the music going to provide a smooth gameplay when playing along with the beat? Is the rhythm distinguishable and consistent? Does the music reflect the chosen tone of the game?" All of these questions have been heavily considered after hearing the first draft, where I made the music more made for the game rather than being just the music itself alone. I do not want to take away the fact that the music itself sounds good whether it is designed for a rhythm game, but a good sounding music would not suffice for a good gameplay experience.

Leitmotivs + Sound Design/Mechanics

Another additional feature in the game regarding the music, are the subtle details such as music theories applied when doing a Call-and-Response interaction with the game. Some sounds are designed to be really obvious for the players to understand that these sounds that has been played are cues for either a warning, identification, or basic interaction (attack, defend, foot step). A good indicator to keep the player's concentration on the audio and making the sound stand out but not too much as if it was contradicting to the base soundtrack.