Title Theme
Back in 2011, when Matt originally proposed the idea of us working together on a game, the concept was that he would make a game, and I would make music for it. Of course things are turning out a little different now that we’ve actually decided to make a game together, but as you may have seen in the last post, I do have a fondness for music. I think that music is a pretty important part of the video game experience and began thinking about sound before I’d figured out how I wanted anything to look.
Feeling that music is an integral piece of the overall puzzle, I began to think very early on about what we want for our soundscape. It seems like my approach of conceptualizing mood through sound is a little different than that of most developers. We knew we wanted something that’s retro, but what would that mean for the music? Afterall, Sword and Sworcery is awesomely pixely without falling back to chiptunes. And even back in the day of Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, developers were trying to get away from the hardware sound and using samples as much as they could to push in an orchestral or rock direction.
It’s funny, knowing how much I love pixels and chiptunes, that the original creators were often just struggling to get what they wanted despite the hardware limitations…
My thought though, is that I was in love with a lot of Game Boy and NES music for the same reason that I loved their graphics. It leaves a little bit to the imagination of the person playing the game. Is this orchestral? Is this metal? What is it that I’m listening to? Everyone ends up with their own interpretations, and I think it’s why there’s so many great tributes to these old songs on YouTube. So after giving it some thought, I decided that making the game with modernized sound wasn’t what I wanted. So that left us with a few options still. There’s lots of chiptune engines to go with, and while I really love the sound of a lot of Game Boy music, I think that the sounds are probably a little more harsh than what we want in this particular game. And so after spending some time listening to old game tracks… I eventually decided that Famitracker is my sequencer of choice.
So what I ended up doing with the first track, is that when I was walking to work I would also be carrying my portable recorder with me. Imagine that! Me walking down the street, humming into a microphone! Yeah, I know, weird, but when you’re working a full time job and trying to make a game in your spare time, you make the most of whatever time you get. So I came up with a tune that I kind of liked… something that was kind of light-hearted and energetic. Then I sat at home trying to noodle that tune out into something a little more substantial with my guitar. Eventually I thought I had something, so I set to work in Famitracker bringing it to life. And… well? What we have below is the result!
Note in the second half, there’s a mock-up of what we think will end up being our final Title Screen!