Tag Archives: music

Echoes of the Fey – Vocal Theme

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Yesterday, we debuted the vocal theme for Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail. Check it out!

This is the first time I’ve ever (co)written a song for a game, so I thought I’d write a bit about the thought process that went into it. It all starts way back at the beginning of development, when we were brainstorming about the aesthetic of the project. For some important story reasons (specifically the motivation behind the Human/Leshin war) there was always going to be a light steampunk element to the world. Traditional steampunk is a little played out/a bit of a cliche, so we aimed for a variation on the idea.

The fledgling machinery of our world isn’t powered by coal or literal steam, but magic drawn from Fey rifts. It’s clean energy. The world isn’t (visibly) polluted by its use. So I guess our aesthetic is Clean Steampunk? I don’t know, that sounds like a bad Skyrim mod so maybe I just need to come up with a new term.

ANYWAY, we aimed for a musical style that would reflect fantasy with an ethereal sci-fi touch. And we immediately seized upon Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack for Legend as an inspiration. Now, I realize this is a somewhat controversial work to cite. Legend was originally scored by Jerry Goldsmith, who was replaced by the studio near the very end of production on the film. Tangerine Dream was chosen to (bizarrely) appeal to a more youthful audience, because apparently the kids were way into new age electronica in 1986. A lot of people prefer the Jerry Goldsmith score and think the TD score (completed in only a few weeks to meet the deadline) is dissonant with the visuals of the film. Jenny (my co-writer, artist, and composer on this project) think those people are crazy.

A few months into production, we watched Legend again and I was struck by the over-the-top cheesy ballad that closes out the film.

Is it a good song? I’m not even sure. But it evokes a certain time in fantasy/action film making that is incredibly distinct. Legend wasn’t the first film or the last to end on a dreamy ballad that casually drops the title throughout. The Neverending Story and The Last Unicorn, for example. And if you widen the definition of the credit song ballad to take out the requirement of naming the title, you draw in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Princess Bride, and a ton of other films made from the mid 80s through the 90s.

Video games have their own version of this phenomenon. Final Fantasy games starting with VIII have prominently featured jpop ballads, and the Kingdom Hearts spinoffs have followed suit. Final Fantasy IX is probably the best one.

Final Fantasy XV is going to have a cover of Stand By Me by Florence and the Machine instead, if you want to know how bizarre things have gotten over at Square-Enix.

Thinking about these traditions gave me an idea: why couldn’t we do something like this for Echoes of the Fey? We were already shooting for a sound that invoked the fantasy films of the mid-80s. Why shouldn’t we have a vocal theme song.

This should have been a hell of an undertaking, since neither of us can sing. But we were lucky. The voice actress who plays Sofya in Echoes of the Fey, Amber Leigh, is also a singer. Once she said she was down to record the song, we knew we had to do it. Jenny wrote the composition and a version of the lyrics that, unfortunately, could have been seen as a spoiler for some of the events of The Fox’s Trail. That was fine for a song that played over the credits, but we decided that we wanted to use it as a promotional tool as well.

So I took a crack at songwriting. Let me tell you, it is not as easy as my previous experiences with penning lyrics: swapping words around in popular songs to make twitter jokes.

My first pass had the correct number of syllables on each line, but apparently it matters where you put the vowels (especially in a slow paced song) because I was trying to force Amber to hold some really terrible sounds.

So I did a second pass, and with Jenny’s help (and patience) we arrived on the lyrics we are using today. And we’re really happy with it! Our final product feels like a mix between the cheesy fantasy ballads that inspired us and the eerie Julee Cruise/Angelo Badalementi collaborations of the same era. Which is a fantastic result for me, since this project is all about mashing together fantasy and noire and making them kiss.

Hopefully you enjoy the song and I look forward to everyone playing the game that inspired it in (hopefully) a month!

Making Music: The Challenge of Minimalism

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First of all, let me be frank: I haven’t had much formal training in music. I rarely know which terms to use when, or how to technically describe some of the tactics I use while composing. But I grew up surrounded by musicians, started churning out my own music in middle school, took a couple college courses in composition, and kept churning more out. I’ve recorded about 19 full CDs of music altogether. So I’d like to think I have a decent amount of experience.

I’ve also allowed myself to develop some bad habits.

I’ve always composed with keyboard synthesizers using a wide array of digital instruments. I use software like Cakewalk or Ableton Live to record each instrument on separate channels. For me, the process of picking out the right sounds can take up at least half–if not much more–of the full time required to complete the song. Even once I’m done recording, I go back and keep changing the sounds–or adding new ones–until I’m satisfied.

It’s fantastic that the digital platforms for composing gives me that freedom. But as a result, I’ve noticed that almost all my songs tend to accumulate more and more instruments as they go from start to finish. In the beginning of the song there may only be two instruments; by the end there are ten, all playing at once in a mad dramatic frenzy.

After spending time with some other local musicians in Game Jams or panels, I’ve realized that my instrumental tendencies are not necessarily good ones. While I’m proud of my ear for instruments, I shouldn’t let the arrangement overwhelm the the structure of the song itself–or in many cases, keep me from thinking about the overall structure in general.

Here’s a version of the main theme for my upcoming visual novel, Echoes of the Fey. It is more or less a normal composition of mine in terms of number of instruments.

 

The overall feel of the soundtrack was very inspired by the “Legend” soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. But it was after I saw the movie “It Follows,” composed by Disasterpeace, that I started considering how many instruments I used. I was in awe of how a few simple digital sounds could create such compelling music, without complex instrumentation (that’s not to say, of course, that Disasterpeace didn’t work some brilliant technical wizardry to stretch those sounds the way they did).

I started limiting my songs to two or three instruments.

This forced me to think more deeply about the notes I was playing rather than obsessing over adding more instruments, drums, or sound effects to amp the drama as the song played. It also made me spend more time with the one or two instruments I did select, adding reverb, flangers, or other effects until they sounded just right. Here’s the result for Magic Energy:

 

I haven’t adhered faithfully to this rule all the time, I confess. But I’m trying to at least break my old habits. So far, I’ve learned that less can be more, even when it comes to increasing the drama of a song. I even made a song that only uses one instrument, and I’m damn proud of it. I can only hope that my music sounds as good as what inspired it!

Which version do you like better?