Whispering Tracks Devlog #3 - The sounds of the world

Progress is made, finally! Writing music is a long process. Especially when you do it on a side project, along another big project, and you're frequently interrupted by, uh, things happening. But finally I'm seeing the end of it. Today I'm proud to announce that I've finished writing and recording the game's musics! That's right, in this post I'll present to you all complete areas! And even if it is just music composition (and a bit of level-design), there's some interesting aspect to discuss. And, I hope, pleasant demos for you to hear.

How does a sea sound like?

The next area we visit in our journey is the one I call “The Sea”. Mostly because I want this track to be built around a slow and strong rhythmic  pattern. More precisely, I wanted something close to Erik Satie's Gymnopédies. Doesn't it evokes you the movement of waves gently crushing against a shore? However there's an issue: Gymnopédies is in 3/3, and has a very slow pace, while the music in my game must be in 4/4 with 110 BPM. I can't use Satie's phrase as it is, I need to find a way around. Here comes my second inspiration: Sailing to Rogueport, from Paper Mario 2. While the music is binary and much faster, we can recognize the same quiet melody. I love how this sounds like a waltz while still being in 4/4!

Starting from that, I wrote a background musing that follows this pattern. Still remaining on a single chord, although this time, instead of D minor, it's G major 9. D minor is not peaceful enough, but thankfully those two marry well together. However, I had to make an important choice. In fact, it's a decision I had to take very early during the project: do I use ambient sounds? Should there be actual sound of waves in the background? Seagulls? Initially, I also had envision car sounds and distant conversations for the city area, and rain and thunders for the Celtic one (don't judge me). This would help the player visualizing the place around them! But eventually I chose not to. Because I find the idea of the player imagining its own world from the music way more powerful! What I call "city" could be a forest of mushroom, or high mountains! There could be all kind of interpretation based on the song's energy and tone, and this is something that I personally love about music. Whispering Track should be a musical game! So… No noises! Only instruments.

Well, almost, as you will see. I used in some places sound effects that technically are not instruments, but are interesting musically.  A bit like percussion, if you will. If the music was released individually, they would still be there without feeling misplaced. There's a balance to find between “not forcing the environment through sounds” and “using more or less abstract sounds that might evokes something”. This doesn't mean that the music must be as abstract as possible! As stated, I wrote this piece with “sea” in mind, so I chose instruments and melody that fit that theme. The global mood of the song is a peaceful water level, some phrases are written as if they were sailor songs, and there's also a progression that I'm quite proud of where we start from a quiet dock to venture in the great sea and come aboard an imposing galleon.

Here's the result: Sea Area. A new thing I've done here is making some of the foreground instruments playing the same melody as the background loop. It emphasizes the motif, and thus creates a variety of atmospheres while giving a strong cohesion to the track! You also might notice that at some point I tried ternary rhythm, which doesn't always blend well unfortunately, but still gives a feeling of epic adventure. I'm really happy with how this one turned out!

Silence of the desert

The last area of the game, the desert, is mostly a level-design idea. Remember how the city is a very dense area filled with dozen of instruments blending with each other? Well, the desert is the reverse: it's an empty space, with some oasis here and there. This is either the most challenging level or the most easy one! Challenging, because since the player must rely on sound to navigate, having no sound around them will absolutely lose them. And yet it's also pretty forgiving, because as soon as you hear a signal, you know exactly where you are! And actually, there's isn't so much space in the game to have large empty spaces between every instruments. Eventually when I designed the level, I realized that the instruments were forming a line. A bit like if, in the middle of this desert, a path has been traced by civilization to join two areas. I liked this idea, and put the remaining instruments accordingly. So here's a tip for you once you'll play the game and get here: follow the music, and you'll be just fine!

Alright, but musically, how should the desert sound? Well, here is another exception to my rule “no ambient noise”, because I wanted the region to be windy! The desert is all about being surrounded by silence, and far in the distance, hearing a signal from a strange emitter. Thus I put on a white noise in the background, along a slow synthesized  flute occasionally filling the air with sparse notes. But what about the foreground instruments? Those, in contrast, are quite dynamic. A mix of jazz and electro, inspired by Todd Terje, Pilotpriest and Jaga Jazzist. Lot of parts that can both be played individually and together. I also had to make some tough choices to decide which one will be blend together (since I cannot put them all at the same place).

Musically I feel like I learned a lot composing this one! Or at least, I had a lot of fun making it. The first reason is that since the instruments are isolated, I had much more freedom on the chords they are playing. Thus I was able to use more complex song structures, which is quite refreshing and satisfying. Secondly, I used a "toy" I only bought this year: a MIDI-USB adapter! Which allows me to play directly on my keyboard and record myself. Until now I worked exclusively with DAWs, placing notes one by one with the mouse. A slow process, not very satisfying. But now, playing directly on the keyboard is so much more intuitive. I'm a poor player, but being able to perform myself gives much more energy and authenticity to the result! I also used it a lot for the sea section, and you can kinda hear the difference with the earlier parts. This also makes impro sections way more easy top create. There's a lot of those in the desert. To be honest, I'm kinda bad at impro. I easily see my limits on the keyboard: I naturally repeat the same patterns, only playing notes next to each other, or hitting one randomly and hoping it will be the right one. I can't play live, I always have to fix the result manually after recording. Still, it's refreshing, and I'm looking forward using it more!

As you can expect, this area was faster to produce. Because obviously there are way less instruments, even though their loop are the longest of the game. It's still one the work I'm the most proud of musically. So much that once the game is done, I might release a special version of it in a soundtrack. Anyway, enjoy your walk in the desert!

The forest at the center of it all

Now, for the last part, here comes the dreaded hub! If you recall, this is originally the first part I tried to compose, and failed to. I had no idea what to do for it! Did I find some inspiration since? Actually yes!

I wanted to avoid the classic “forest level” vibe. Searching what other kind of emotion I could target, "mysterious" and "quiet" came to mind. As the first zone in the game, it shouldn't have a heavy background. When the player hear a new instrument, they must hear it clearly, and understand how the game works. This is also the start of the game, so it can be a call to adventure, a mystic forest behind which unseen lands are hidden. Inspired by Wind Waker's Forbidden Wood, I made a very simple background where marimbas with echoes play a single chord at the start of the bar, answered by strings and a cello that just add a few notes. Like animals that you can barely spot before they run to hide in a bush. That's it, it's barely a background music! Again, I hesitated to put birds chirps, but that would go against the "only music" spirit. This discreet background will allow the player to notice the other instruments they should use to navigate, but also the sounds and notes made by the tiles when they walk on them (yeah, remember, it's the actual game mechanic).

Here is a tour of the forest. Each additional instrument is a hint to the area(s) it is next to. I'll let you guess which one is which.

And before we wrap it up, here is (finally) the complete world map of the game!

You can recognize the busy city on the east, the two kind of Celtic on the north, the sea and its shore on the west, and the road across the desert on the south.

What next?

As much as I like creating music, I'm glad this part is over! I wasn't seeing the end of it. Well, technically, there's still some work left. As I mentioned some months ago, the city area needs some polishing, and listening back to it I fill I can add some touches (and even remove some parts). Plus, the tiles also will have to play notes which should blend nicely with the music while still being noticeable! And finally I might want to do a little something special for the end of the game.

But! This can wait for later. Now that I have a complete level-design, I can make some progress on the code. There are still plenty of missing features that I can implement. The same goes for the visuals: at some point the game should have proper sprites! So there's a lot to do that doesn't involve music writing. Which mean progress will be a lot easier and more fluid! Expect to see updates more regularly.