ludomusoetme

[ludomusoetme]

Through the Corridors of Time

Blog for Introduction to digital music final.

Hello again and welcome to my process diary for creating yet another composition for digital music.

For this task I decided to take a section of music from a popular game and create a piece of music that expands upon the original. My artistic vision was to create an electro-acoustic fantasia on a theme that would carry across the feelings and impressions that a player would experience when they play through the scene or level in the game itself. I wanted the music to transcend the simple musical material provided and instead convey environmental, contextual, emotional and narrative connotations.

I wanted to ensure the theme I selected came from a source that used basic midi tracks in its design. This would allow interesting flexibility in  instrumental choices as well as provide a rich dichotomy between the source material and my own work. I also wanted to ensure that whilst my piece remains faithful to the core concepts of the theme, it would not just be an arrangement of the original with new instruments. I wanted to synthesise new parts, combine themes and motifs from other areas of a game that related to each other, and overall create something experiential that builds upon the original and is not a derivative of it.

I was originally tossing up between some of the older Zelda games, but decided to forgo that series as I was far too familiar with the music of that series and was originally inspired to this concept by the artist “Theophany” who creates exceptional recreations and adaptations of the music from “Majora’s Mask”. I saw Theophany’s work as a guidepost for the general kind of piece I was aiming for, one that can take very basic themes and expand upon them in interesting ways.

Eventually I settled upon the game “Chrono Trigger” (1995). “Chrono Trigger” is a game that involves many different characters traversing portals through time to try and prevent the end of the world through an apocalypse. This force was known as Lavos, and is referred to in the game before it is revealed as “The Black Wind”. The game features many unique characters that have interwoven stories and themes that are perfect for me to play with and draw inspiration from. The game fit my criteria of beautiful sound design and great use of themes that resurface throughout in a traditional leitmotif style, yet also worked with extremely simple midi sounds to create the audio palette. My favourite song from the game is a piece of music called “Corridors of Time”, which is the music for the level in the game called “12.000 B.C.”.

In this level, the players’ party of characters have escaped from certain death through a portal in time into the frozen past. Upon arrival the characters find themselves on a barren stretch of land with no one in sight and only icy tundra to greet them. After travelling for a short time however, the party stumbles upon a temple that teleports the group to a set of floating islands in the sky that are lush and highly advanced through the use of magi-tech. This is where the music begins and is the setting of Corridors of time, a location and song that has always amazed me with its depiction of a fantastical world and a very memorable soundtrack.

Corridors of time features heavy use of an ostinato that repeats throughout the entire track. The musical material is quite simple and can be broken down into just a few fragments: 1. Piano Ostinato, 2. Sitar melody. 3. Bass, 4. Percussion, 5 choral “Aahs”. These instruments all fit together in a very simple AB structure that is repeated Ad Nauseam for the entire duration of the level. Thankfully the ostinato is catchy and the melody compelling enough that I can (and have) listened to versions of this song for honestly hundreds of hours over my life. 

The difficult part when working with this material was how to seperate it from its original. Ostinato’s by their nature do NOT like to be interfered with, and the frankly minuscule amount of musical information makes it particular hard to work in variations. There isn’t even a variation of a theme in this piece, just a simple theme stated as the A section, and then a choral chordal-movement B section before repeating. 

In order to capture the contextual and environmental aspects of the level, I decided I needed to begin in the frozen lands below and ascend to the islands above. As such I begin with a sample of a blizzard being played. I used extensive panning in this section to make the wind feel like it is howling around the player as they trudge through the snow. Before the we hear any hint of the Corridors theme, I wanted to pay homage to the main theme of the game itself, what I will call the “Chrono Theme”.

To evoke the sensation of traveling through these frozen mountains I recorded myself playing the Chrono Theme on the trumpet and mixed it using space designer with a very large room size and a lengthy tail. I also made sure that the sound was wetter than it was dry so it felt like it was coming from a long way away and echoing across the mountains.

So far we have provided environmental information (blizzard), context regarding the source material (Chrono theme), and are ready to introduce the listener to the contextual information regarding what we should be experiencing. For this I added footsteps trudging through snow. To simulate the experience of walking into the temple I made use of automation on the reverb for both the blizzard and the footsteps. I cross-faded the dry sound of the blizzard into the wet sound of a cave-style space, along with dramatically reducing the dry sound so it reduces in intensity. Concurrently I had the footsteps move from a relatively short reverb space outside (347 ms) to a longer (2.96s), wetter and larger cave-style reverb space that I used with the blizzard as well. This gives the feeling of leaving the blizzard behind as you head indoors.

This then leads into the teleportation sound to take us above to the floating islands and the introduction of the Corridors theme.

Initially I just used a combination of Alchemy’s “Laser Canon” in a few different configurations to try and simulate the purely high pitched sound effect used in the original game. After feedback however I combined this with some “Aftershock Rumble” to get the ascending rise but also a low rumble to make it feel intense. I also used a reversed cymbal crash to build toward the crest so we can feel a sense of resolution as the music begins.

The introduction to the Corridors theme begins with a descending strum on a vintage organ and, the primary solo instrument, a Chinese Ruan Moon Guitar. I wanted to create a spacey and ethereal feel and used a stereo delay so that the fragment echoes throughout the space. This descending strum is almost a repeating touchpoint for the piece as it heralds shifts between sections. For the ostinato I initially wanted to retain the simplicity of the original, however trying to create a standalone piece of music is very different to a backing track for a game and requires interest, flexibility and tension and release. As such, I set up multiple iterations to provide variation throughout the piece. In order to provide a pulsing interest the ostinato is always paired between two versions of the same instrument. These different lines are constantly shifting their panning in alternating directions so they cross over each other. To ensure that there was still a clearly distinct main instrument, one is significantly louder than the other. Further to this, the softer track is a single semi-quaver behind the main part of the ostinato which evokes an echoing sense of stereo delay. The initial introduction of the ostinato is the “main version” of it, and makes use of LABS “Soft Piano”. I particularly liked the sample as it was gentle and with some reverb has this spacious tone that I felt fit the mood I was aiming for. It also has the barest hints of the actual keys being pressed which gives a rhythmic counterpoint to the melodic information. Initially I went pretty hard on the ostinato by combining a few instruments together so it was packed full of interesting sounds! However this gave the piece very little room to grow and as such I stripped it down to just the piano by itself and saved some of the other instruments for later iterations.

In order to give the Ruan guitar more gravitas when it comes in with the melody line, I wanted an instrument with a similar yet more gentle tone to introduce a variant on the Corridors main theme. I decided a Celtic Harp carried the same plucked string vibe but was subtler than the Ruan. The song is written in F#m and this variation gave me the ability to set up the overall vibe of the piece and hint at some of the melodic contours that are to come.

The percussion joins at this point and makes use of a high Timbale, as well as a Conga line. I also wanted to have an homage to the original choral “aahs” before I replaced them with something else, so we have a single introduction of the choral section at the beginning just as a callback for those familiar with the original song.

I use an upright jazz bass for the bass line and played with its ADSR so that it had a punchy attack and crisp release. Replacing the Choral sections are LABS string ensembles. I found the original choral movements to be taking up too much of the layer cake orchestration with their density, so I chopped up the line into short, sharp string stabs, juxtaposed with longer descending movements.

This brings us to our first statement of the Corridors theme, what I’ll call A1. I use the texture of A1 as a base point for building density in the piece and try to vary it around that touchpoint. This featured essentially all of the information of the original song but in a different format. We have the melody line on the Ruan Guitar, Piano Ostinato, moving bass, percussion and then short string stabs taking over for the choral “Aahs”.

The first iteration of the B section reduces the material to a sparser variation. The bass holds long notes as opposed to its plodding lines before. The percussion becomes just a Tamborine, and the ostinato is fragmented into an extended variation as well as moved to a muted plucked guitar-harmonic instrument.

In order to soften some of the shaper sounds like the tambourine, I applied a plate filter to mellow out some of the harsher frequencies, which also left room for the choral section to fit into a higher pitched dulcimer sound. None of the original instruments are carried across from A1 to B1, yet the overall tone feels similar due to instrumental choices. It feels like a relaxing rather than a massive change.

The A2 variant returns with our roving bass line and percussive elements yet reduces the high Timbale so that it feels sparser. I wanted this section to have a similar textural density to A1 yet feel like it is building towards something. To this end I changed the ostinato to a plucked guitar version that is far more sprightly than the piano. The Ruan guitar I also elevated by adding variations to the main theme as well as playing with its articulation so we had some tremolo notes.

It is at this point we are introduced to the saxophone. It is difficult to find a “good” sax sample out there, but I was able to create something workable by using logic’s studio horns with some decent reverb through space designer and an almost invisible echo that gives it some added lift. You can barely hear it when the echo is on, yet it adds some much needed richness to the sound. 

The saxophone needed to be introduced now so it can become a focus in the upcoming bridge section without feeling like it came out of nowhere. In order to do this I slowly introduce it with fragments of the Chrono theme. The original Chrono theme is in G#m, so thankfully it is just a simple transposition to get it to mesh with the Corridors theme. The sax builds at the end of A2 towards our bridge section.

For the bridge section I wanted to really break away from the literal sense of this track and instead bring in narrative and emotional connections. The bridge section makes heavy use of themes scattered throughout the game and weave together in a dialogue between characters.

To understanding the bridge, we really need to take a step back and understanding some context for the game… So strap in for exposition time! In the middle of this level, the party encounters a small child named “Janus” who tells them that “The Black Wind howls… one among you will shortly perish”. This is both a premonition and a callback to a previous encounter earlier in the game, for little does the player know that the small boy Janus they meet is in fact the younger version of Magus, a foe whom they have spent much time struggling against. For the first half of the game, the nemesis of the party is this “Magus” character. The journey to fight and best him takes up a solid 50% of the game and he is foreshadowed as the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) for much of the establishing segment of the game. When the player finally enters combat with him, before the fight starts he states “Again, the bitter Black Wind begins to howl”. 

Magus’ main theme is the theme stated at the beginning of my bridge section. The original Magus Theme proved tricky to adapt and fit into my piece. The song is written in 3/4 with segments in E Phrygian that do not translate well with the F#m tonality. Thankfully the chorus section is in Am and after some extensive rewriting I managed to make it fit with a 4/4 backing time and not sound out of place. This introduction of Magus’ theme functions as a representation of meeting Janus halfway through the level, whilst also foreshadowing the reveal that he is in fact Magus’ younger self.

The second iteration of the bridge features “Frog’s Theme”, which is stated by the trumpet. Frog is Magus’ arch nemesis who joins the party to try and bring Magus’ to justice for his crimes. Frog’s brother was slain by Magus, who proceeded to turn him into an anthropomorphic frog just to provide even more cause for vengeance against Magus. Frog’s theme is written in G#m and 6/8 time signature. With a quick transposition and some rewrites I managed to get it also situated to work in the 4/4 timeframe. The fact that both Frog’s and Magus’ themes both now sound with a triplet feel to them makes them feel related in a way.

Getting two melody lines to sound out without feeling like they were clashing took quite a lot of work. The initial statement of Magus’ theme on the sax was mixed in the centre and placed low to give other instruments room to move. When I added in Frog’s theme I placed it on the trumpet and transposed it quite high. The two different themes thankfully occupy different pitches in the scale for their opening phrases. Magus’ chorus theme begins on the dominant and moves around the tonic without actually settling there until the end of its movement. It also has a large degree of melodic motion. Frog’s theme on the other hand has an AB structure. The B section is also focused around the dominant and features large melodic movements, but thankfully the A section begins on the tonic and remains close to it. By combining the chorus of Magus’ theme with the A section of Frog’s theme the two parts occupy different melodic positions in the scale and therefore do not clash or interrupt each others themes. To further seperate the individual themes I ensured I mixed them so their frequencies were separated, as well as panned Frog’s theme in the trumpet to the right and Magus’ theme on the sax to the left. This becomes a metaphorical duel between Magus and Frog as they battle for supremacy. 

As the third iteration of the bridge begins, we have 4 doubled recorded trumpets that reinforce Magus’s theme on the left side, whilst a variant of the Chrono theme is stated in the centre, played on the harp. The harp also occupies the middle ground in regards to register (C#4) between the trumpet (F#4) and the sax (C#3). The trumpet sample I used is sufficiently sharper than the real trumpets and through some panning the real trumpets just act as a doubling to the sax playing Magus’ theme. I needed to ensure that adding a third melodic fragment wouldn’t muddy the already complex interwoven lines of Magus and Frog’s battles. I resolved this eventually through contrasting instrumental choice and using short and sharp plucked tones of the harp to cut straight through the bell tones of the horns so that it is still clearly audible despite the duelling themes in the background. This is symbolic of the main character, Chrono, who's eventual death forces Frog and Magus to work together as allies.

Finally we take our metaphorical battle and return it to the scene from which it came by introducing a variant of the Corridors theme on the Ruan Guitar with heavy use of tremolo so that its textural form would cut through the mix again without displacing the other sounds.

This required quite a bit of work as the tremolo on the Ruan only goes for 1 beat and nothing I could do would extend it further. What I eventually did was create a second Ruan line that would hocket between the original to extend tremolo notes for the longer duration I wanted. It took some time to make them mesh smoothly and not sound like 2 distinct instruments

This bridge section is the climax of the piece and took a lot of work to make it fit without clashing or sounding muddy, but I think each of the parts sings out its own phrases and when you understand the context between each of the melodic lines and how they joust it becomes not just interesting musically, but an emotional section that plays with the understanding of the greater narrative and the motifs utilised within.

After the battle that was just resolved we need pathway back to lower tension. For this B2 section we introduce our ostinato back with a bit of a pep in its step. The piano is joined with the plucked guitar quietly above it to add some lift to the quieter section. The trumpet accompanies the chordal line being played in strings and plucked on the harp.

Following this descent through the Corridors B section, I juxtapose a variant of the Chrono Theme on top of the ostinato backing of the Corridors theme. This variant morphs into a statement of the Corridors theme and functions as a recapitulation to the opening motif connecting back to the Corridors theme.

I wanted the end of the piece to mirror how the actual level finishes. The players find themselves stymied by a mysterious hooded prophet (Magus in disguise, who has travelled back in time), and are banished from the time zone. The next time they return, the main character is slain when encountering the evil power of Lavos (the Black Wind) for the first time. As such I wanted to include a combination quote from adult Magus/child Janus that heralds what is to come. 

As this happens I start to reduce the density of the orchestration, there is no epic battle the first time you leave 12,000 B.C., simply an anticlimactic dismissal. The ostinato begins to reduce and the repeating form is discarded. As we close to the final iteration the ostinato fragments even more, like it is running out of power. The final iteration of the Corridors theme features the Ruan guitar and harp playing together as they play a quieter version of the main theme that stutters out in the end. The very end of the song features the time portal sample from the original game signalling the player being forced to leave the time zone.

I feel like the artistic vision I set out to achieve is encapsulated in this piece. It guides the listener through an environmental setting that ties many disparate themes and ideas together and tells a story not just of the notes themselves, but of what each theme represents and how it connects within the greater scheme of the game and the motivic representations.

[ludomusoetme]

Blog posts for Introduction to digital music

Blog Posts:

Version 1.0

Greetings everyone, and welcome to the blog relating my adventures in writing music!

It’s been about 5 years since I’ve last composed something… so this should be interesting.

Pretty much all of my previous work has been paired with something, generally moving image or game. This is the first time  i’m writing something just for the point of listening, and especially in an electronic style. Almost everything I have written before has been for acoustic or live performance (and generally limited by my own performing prowess).

In order to get started I first needed to figure out what kind of style I wanted to write in. I had recently acquired a playstation VR and was very tempted to write a song in the style of “Beat Sabre”, which is a music game where you slide notes with lightsabers, very worthwhile if anyone has a VR device.

Whilst this was incredibly tempting as the music was generally electronic, fast paced and energetic, I decided to challenge myself and do something that ISN’T intended for a game/screen for once.

Because of this I decided to try writing in a style I have never done nor even attempted before: Chill/Lo-fi beat. The idea of a chill groove where the focus is not on melodic or emotional representation, but on the overall feel of the piece really gelled with me. I must admit I was inspired by the liturgy of Lo-fi Zelda beats I sometimes listen to for relaxation purposes…

Whilst I wasn’t so keen on making it super Lo-Fi as that would limit my mixing design, I still found this inspirational enough to get started and begin working on a project.

My goal for this was to have a chill groove that was laid back, yet still dance-like. I decided straight away I wasn’t going to go with a slow tempo. A lot of these songs have beats at around 90BPM but I found this too slow. I wanted something that was chill, yet made you want to bop your head along.

As such I settled on a 130BPM tempo, but was going to be focusing on a half-time groove the entire way through.

I started taking a look at different loops for in logic’s loop library to see if I could find anything I liked. (There are so many loops there… and so few that hit what I wanted!)

I decided to look at instead organising some plugins. Having never used plugins like this before, I did some research and received great acclaim for Spitfire audio’s LABS plugin. I grabbed it and enjoyed the soft and electric piano sounds.

Version 1.1

Trying to wrap my head around writing lo-fi beats with particularly hard for me, I ended up watching a lot of YouTube videos regarding drum patterns and mixing. For me drums are something I have never done before. Usually I have worked with either just a bass drum or percussion separately, sometimes timpani, but never electronic drum patterns usually. I find the idea of setting drums up very difficult.

After attempting to just cue up a Midi track and manually write in drum sounds, it really wasn’t working when I tried to write out the pattern and feel that I wanted.

Instead I decided to start with the melodic/harmonic inspiration and then work on drums later.

To start my melodic process I had a look through logic’s loop library again to find some inspiration and get a base sample I wanted to build upon. I eventually found a series of midi samples called “House baby piano” which fit the mood I was going for.

After laying these out, I decided to work on getting the drum pattern in, mixing could come later, for now I needed to feel how my song is supposed to ‘feel’. 

I tried finding a drum pattern in the loop library, but couldn’t find anything I liked. Turns out its hard to find a “half-time, chill drum pattern”. Instead I decided to foray into writing drums using logic’s ultrabeat drum synthesiser. There was a preset called “lofi glitch” that had a decent starting palette, and from there I used the ultra beat to try and position notes until I found a pattern I liked. After this I still wanted some more manual control than what the Ultrabeat would offer me, so I penciled in just the bass and snare sounds. I would come back to adding more variety and interest once I had the core feel down.

Once I had figured out a style I liked using the Ultrabeats, I attempted to EQ the individual parts such as the bass drum, but couldn’t find a way to do so in the Ultrabeat under a single channel. Instead I decided to transcribe my beat into its component parts and then write them in midi all on seperate tracks so I could have more control over the specifics of the sound.

By transcribing the beat out, I also had more than 32 subdivisions to work with, and this allowed me to create more variety and interest from the ground up. It allows for less basic repetition and therefore more human feeling. I was also able to slightly shift certain notes if I wanted to.

I wanted to have a constant beat on the high hat when it was present, but found that it was filling up far too much of the higher register of my song. It also had a harsh sound because of this. What I did to counter this was apply a harsh rolloff on both the upper register and lower frequencies. This allowed me to get an accompaniment for my bass drum that still carries the tempo and fills some space in my drums along the time axis, without filling up too much across my overall frequency composition of the mix.

Whilst EQ-ing my snare, I actually found I much preferred the sound if I boosted it around the 3rd harmonic (around 1k), as it developed a nice crisp snap that was hidden before hand.

Once had I had the basis for my drum beat down. I began to play with my sample, the House baby piano. Whilst I liked the vibe, it could stand to be improved a bit, as such I added in/tweaked a lot of the sample to create some more interest. I found the velocity indications very useful for creating human sounding tracks. Sadly my electric piano broke when I moved house a month ago, so I had no midi controller to use to actually play in note velocity, as such I was setting most of them individually.

Version 1.2

After playing with the groove for a bit I decided to go back to basics, pull out the structure map, and see about making a song that captures the same trajectory as “Cataplexy” with a different style and feel. Instantly I encountered an issue… Up to this point, I don’t actually have a “melody” to work with. Currently my melodic interest is the baby house loop I used earlier, it carries a nice tune and fits the chill vibe I wanted. I don’t specifically want an overly catchy melody as that would detract from the overall vibe I am striving for. As such I am happy with something a bit more chordal, however there isn’t enough room to play between timbre and instruments if all the musical information in one instrument section.

Instead I decided to take the house baby sample and split it amongst a few different instruments to give me more room to alter the sound profile and create different “Melody” lines like Cataplexy. This way I can have a “spooky” sections and a “bells” section just by changing which instrument is playing.

I ended up doing a lot of transformation to find a sound I liked. Firstly I took the original instrument sound (Trem EP) and decided I liked it as the “Bells version”. For my “Reflective Version” I ended up using LABS (Electric piano). Finally my “Spooky Version” was taken by Alchemy’s (Mellow Chimes).

After sorting out the different melodic versions, it was time to create some interest. I wanted the “reflective version” to be at a higher pitch than the normal sample, but also wanted to add some interesting pan and echo effects. I ended up making 3 different LABS (Electric Piano) lines, each with a different echo effect, and was able to split the sample up between octaves and between these tracks to provide some interest.

I decided the top line would focus on the final notes in the sample that are leading notes back to the first beat of the next bar. This would have no tremolo or echo effects and instead focus on a re-centre-ing of the main sample.

The middle line was going to have a 1/4 note echo effect as well as heavy tremolo also set up to pulse on these echoes. As such the sound would move across the listeners perception of space as each note was played out. I only wanted the first, long notes, to fit in this category.

The bottom line contained the notes before the extended pause in the sample. So I could add some interest into this part, I added a 1/2 echo effect as well as the tremolo. This turned a simple sample into a varied and interested melodic/harmonic movement.

For a bass line, I isolated the bottom line of the “House Baby Piano” sample and moved into a (Smooth and Gentle) Retro synth. I doubled this line, panned hard L/R, and then set up a Phaser and stereo delay that were slightly out of synch to give some interesting musical effects. I didn’t want the bass to be overly prominent as then it would clash with the bass drum and the bottom of the piano line. I also transposed the notes down an octave to give it some free space.

Whilst EQing the bass I made sure it wasn’t clashing with the bass drum frequency too much. Thankfully the root note has a  fundamental that sits at 100hz with the first fundamental at 200hz, so there was very little interaction negatively. 

Version 1.3

After implementing feedback I finally managed to find a way to get the velocity of the kick drum to read properly. The ultra beat had a very tiny window between what it accepted as velocity for the softest and loudest note and it took a while to find which part of the software controlled that particular setting.

(Nice and easily laid out isn’t it….!?)

Version 1.4

Ahh bass drum, we meet again…

I found the bass drum to definitely require some humanising, as well as adding some harmonic distortion so it sounds less perfect and robotic. The Tube EQ plugin allowed me to add some low boost and drive to my drums in general with a bit more intensity to make them feel like they have well… drive, to the beat. It really added something that was missing in the overall mix by having this slightly bite-ier sound.

I also thought my B section was a bit simple. Whilst this was good I decided to add some extra flavour by playing with the Remix FX and adding some downsampling and subtle filter automation during the B section.

Version 1.5

Final release time! Did a last minute mix and decided to actually unplug my headphones and play it through my sound system (a Bose Soundbar). Whilst this is hardly the best mixing setup, it at least has a bass module attached so I could listen to the bass sounds appropriately. This also gives me a pretty good idea of what it would sound like when played on someone else’s sound system that isn’t a professional music/audiophile. What I found immediately was that when not on headphones, the bass drum sounds incredibly Boof-y and required some pretty hard readjustment of the TubeEQ. What sounds great on headphones blows out massively on a sub. As such I reduced the fundamental frequency in the EQ as well as dropping the low boost from above 5 to around 4. This ended up with still a good sound on headphones but MUCH better production sound when played through a sub.