{"author_link":"\/users\/greg-lord","author_name":"Greg Lord","author_uid":"greg-lord","comments":[],"epoch":1512532405,"event":"LD40","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":69216,"likes":9,"metadata":{"p_key":"106213","p_author":"Greg Lord","p_authorkey":"1007804","p_urlkey":"322023","p_title":"Music & Audio in \"The Will of the Wisps\"","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD40","p_time":"1512532405","p_likes":"9","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1007804","us_name":"Greg Lord","us_username":"greg-lord","event_start":"1512086400","event_key":"70","event_name":"LD 40"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD40","removed_author":false},"_superparent":49883,"_trust":1,"author":7804,"body":"![willofthewisps-gplord-blogpost.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/c7e\/1\/z\/dd18.jpg)\n\n**Play [The Will of the Wisps here](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps)**\n\nI thought I\u2019d write a bit to add to [Adam\u2019s piece](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps\/$68881) about the development of the music and audio for *The Will of the Wisps*.  This was a wonderful project to work on, and I\u2019m hoping you all will like it as much as we have.\n\n#### The Concept\n\nMusic is always a tricky goal for a game jam -- like a game\u2019s concept, it can be hard to guess how long it will take to nail down a musical idea.  With that in mind, I started early this time, and began playing with musical themes toward the end of the first night, once we had the rough idea of our story in mind.  It was roughly a 3 day process from there, as I revised, arranged (and rearranged) the parts, and (the most difficult part), divided up the different instruments to be able to be faded in and out dynamically, as things in the game change.\n\n![TWotW0009.gif](\/\/\/raw\/c7e\/1\/z\/dd25.gif)\n\nThe game is a dark and spooky journey through a haunted forest, full of dangers both hidden and visible, and it was important that the music help create the mood to match the our artist's gorgeous visual world, and to help convey a sense of interaction with it.\n\n#### The Composition\n\nIn total, the game\u2019s main theme is divided into 5 tracks that each play for the full duration of the song (roughly 2:30).  The main melody follows a piano, a small string quartet, and a few other instruments as accompaniment, which play throughout.  Overtop of these, there are: \n\n* a pair of \u201ctwinkly\u201d tracks, twinned in a celesta and harp, that fade in upon collecting a firefly, meant to give a sense of magic to them; \n* a percussion ensemble that begins to pound a kind of heartbeat into the song upon the presence of danger (I won't spoil the source of that danger), \n* and a larger string section to add a kind of frantic rhythm to the melody when the danger gets to its nearest.  \n* The remaining fifth track is a looping set of ambient environmental sounds -- creaks, winds, moans, etc. -- to help situate the spookiness of the forest.\n\nThese all layer together as one song in the editor, which I then mixed down individually and balanced to be able to fade in and out dynamically, without hurting the overall mix.  (Or, at least, that was the goal.  I\u2019m terrible at mixing, so\u2026.) \n\n#### Making it Interactive\n\nThe technical side of that works through a Unity script I wrote to basically play and loop all five of these at once, setting the volume down on the \u201cdynamic\u201d four tracks, and then allowing scripted events in the main game code to kick off co-routines that would either fade in, hold, and fade out these tracks, or selectively set their volume to a particular value.  (We used the latter to swell the \u201cdanger\u201d tracks to particular volumes that correspond to your character\u2019s proximity to, well, danger.)\n\n#### The Tools\n\nThe music itself was written in [Cubase](https:\/\/www.steinberg.net\/en\/products\/cubase\/start.html), with instruments from both the [Native Instruments Komplete](https:\/\/www.native-instruments.com\/en\/products\/komplete\/bundles\/komplete-11\/) set (their various synthesizers also providing the excellent creepy sound effects, in the form of some truly terrifying synths within its *Absynth* library), and Symphony Series. I also used a few instruments from [CineSamples](https:\/\/cinesamples.com\/) (the solo strings and handbells) and [SoundIron](https:\/\/soundiron.com\/) (the harp).\n\nI've been writing music for years, but each of these tools was new to me for this jam, so it was a great chance to dive into them and learn them within the context of a project.  The dynamic\/interactive audio work was all done in Unity.\n\nI would truly love your feedback, so please do let me know if you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions!  Thanks for reading this, and, more importantly, [thanks for trying our game](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps)!\n","comments":2,"comments-timestamp":"2017-12-06T05:30:40Z","created":"2017-12-06T03:28:32Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":69216,"love":9,"love-timestamp":"2017-12-06T06:24:10Z","meta":[],"modified":"2017-12-06T06:24:10Z","name":"Music & Audio in \"The Will of the Wisps\"","node-timestamp":"2017-12-06T03:55:45Z","parent":67691,"parents":[1,5,9,49883,67691],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps\/music-audio-in-the-will-of-the-wisps","published":"2017-12-06T03:53:25Z","scope":"public","slug":"music-audio-in-the-will-of-the-wisps","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":200390},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"69216","n_urlkey":"322023","n_parent":"67691","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps\/music-audio-in-the-will-of-the-wisps","n_slug":"music-audio-in-the-will-of-the-w","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"7804","n_created":"1512530912","n_modified":"1512541450","n_version":"200390","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps\/music-audio-in-the-will-of-the-wisps","text":"![willofthewisps-gplord-blogpost.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/c7e\/1\/z\/dd18.jpg)\n\n**Play [The Will of the Wisps here](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps)**\n\nI thought I\u2019d write a bit to add to [Adam\u2019s piece](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps\/$68881) about the development of the music and audio for *The Will of the Wisps*.  This was a wonderful project to work on, and I\u2019m hoping you all will like it as much as we have.\n\n#### The Concept\n\nMusic is always a tricky goal for a game jam -- like a game\u2019s concept, it can be hard to guess how long it will take to nail down a musical idea.  With that in mind, I started early this time, and began playing with musical themes toward the end of the first night, once we had the rough idea of our story in mind.  It was roughly a 3 day process from there, as I revised, arranged (and rearranged) the parts, and (the most difficult part), divided up the different instruments to be able to be faded in and out dynamically, as things in the game change.\n\n![TWotW0009.gif](\/\/\/raw\/c7e\/1\/z\/dd25.gif)\n\nThe game is a dark and spooky journey through a haunted forest, full of dangers both hidden and visible, and it was important that the music help create the mood to match the our artist's gorgeous visual world, and to help convey a sense of interaction with it.\n\n#### The Composition\n\nIn total, the game\u2019s main theme is divided into 5 tracks that each play for the full duration of the song (roughly 2:30).  The main melody follows a piano, a small string quartet, and a few other instruments as accompaniment, which play throughout.  Overtop of these, there are: \n\n* a pair of \u201ctwinkly\u201d tracks, twinned in a celesta and harp, that fade in upon collecting a firefly, meant to give a sense of magic to them; \n* a percussion ensemble that begins to pound a kind of heartbeat into the song upon the presence of danger (I won't spoil the source of that danger), \n* and a larger string section to add a kind of frantic rhythm to the melody when the danger gets to its nearest.  \n* The remaining fifth track is a looping set of ambient environmental sounds -- creaks, winds, moans, etc. -- to help situate the spookiness of the forest.\n\nThese all layer together as one song in the editor, which I then mixed down individually and balanced to be able to fade in and out dynamically, without hurting the overall mix.  (Or, at least, that was the goal.  I\u2019m terrible at mixing, so\u2026.) \n\n#### Making it Interactive\n\nThe technical side of that works through a Unity script I wrote to basically play and loop all five of these at once, setting the volume down on the \u201cdynamic\u201d four tracks, and then allowing scripted events in the main game code to kick off co-routines that would either fade in, hold, and fade out these tracks, or selectively set their volume to a particular value.  (We used the latter to swell the \u201cdanger\u201d tracks to particular volumes that correspond to your character\u2019s proximity to, well, danger.)\n\n#### The Tools\n\nThe music itself was written in [Cubase](https:\/\/www.steinberg.net\/en\/products\/cubase\/start.html), with instruments from both the [Native Instruments Komplete](https:\/\/www.native-instruments.com\/en\/products\/komplete\/bundles\/komplete-11\/) set (their various synthesizers also providing the excellent creepy sound effects, in the form of some truly terrifying synths within its *Absynth* library), and Symphony Series. I also used a few instruments from [CineSamples](https:\/\/cinesamples.com\/) (the solo strings and handbells) and [SoundIron](https:\/\/soundiron.com\/) (the harp).\n\nI've been writing music for years, but each of these tools was new to me for this jam, so it was a great chance to dive into them and learn them within the context of a project.  The dynamic\/interactive audio work was all done in Unity.\n\nI would truly love your feedback, so please do let me know if you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions!  Thanks for reading this, and, more importantly, [thanks for trying our game](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-will-of-the-wisps)!\n","title":"Music & Audio in \"The Will of the Wisps\"","wayback_source":[]}