Freitag, 11. Dezember 2015

Soundtrack for game "(PL)ANT LIFE" - Indie Speed Run 2015

A good friend of mine developes games (http://theshoemaker.de/) and asked me to participate in and create music and sound for a game jam called "Indie Speed Run 2015". It's one of the bigger ones, where you can win 4000$ along with great public exposure. In game jams you often get certain keywords - in this particular case an element and a theme - on which the game has to be based. We got the theme "rebuild" and the element "ants". After a bit of brainstorming we came up with the idea to play a flower, which has to rebuild itself (branches, leaves, roots etc.) and defend itself from natural enemies (ants). Because we had a time limit of 48h things became a little hectic and not everything we thought of was implemented, but with 9 other games we've made it to the finals (you can play it here)!
With this flowery mood going on I immediately thought the soundtrack had to be some chill-out bossa nova kind of style. So I first programmed a typical bossa beat in my DAW and jammed over it for a while. I love jazz, but instrumentally I'm not that much of a jazzcat (at least on melody instruments), so I oriented myself to a standard II-V-I jazz progression in - well, guess what - C-Major. To create a more authentic feel, I approached the main functions chromatically with kicks on the upbeat as well as a modulation in part b.
As it is common in jazz, I created a theme, which is played over two parts with one repitition. I tried to find a catchy, but still jazzy melody and I hope I did. After I found the melody I jammed over it again and recorded two solos, one on guitar and one on keys. Not only recording the solos, but also composing and recording the accompaniment for the song on guitar and keys was a great challenge for me, but this is what I love about projects like these. I love to play other instruments than drums and I definitely always love to learn some new chops on bass/guitar/keys.
So I think I came up with music, that is beneficial for the game itself, because it implements itself into the world so well (the flower even dances to the music). A quick word about the title: I wanted to give it an easy, relaxing but also grand and maybe "notorious" kind of connotation. That is why I came up with "Nighttime in San Francisco" (I think, subconsciously I thought of "Friday Night in San Francisco" by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia).
I also made the sounddesign for the game, which was a first for me and I think that's something that is very different from writing music. Athough I also produce electronic music it was very difficult to come up with good sounds. Still, it was a fun thing to do and I would do it again!
You can listen to the song in the player below and please do us a favor and play the game here!