Going Down protocol music/sound journey
Hello, I'm Momo and I was responsible for the music, sounds and ambience in the game! :notes: I wanted to share some of my postmortem thoughts on how the process went for me and what were the inspiration points during it.
For me the process always starts with composing the main theme/song - different people approach this differently, but to me the main theme is an acoustic and stylistic cornerstone of all other sounds in the game. It sets the mood and tone for the rest of the sound design and also helps me to get in the right mindset :D
With the main song I wanted to convey a feeling of loneliness and of a lingering anxiety, and at the same time it's supposed to be an "elevator lounge waiting music". So it was important to make it minimalistic, with only occasional heavy accents on violins or vocals: Main theme - Elevator is your friend :musical_note:
After the main theme was somewhat done it was time for a sound hunt! I personally prefer to record as much of real sounds as possible and then postprocess them as opposed to engineering the sounds from a scratch. So...my house has three different elevators in three different places, and I rode them up and down to see which one makes the most creaky, cranky and heavy sound and then rode that one for a few times more, here's how it sounds:
Elevator ASMR :musicalnote:
There's nothing simple about the combination of all the little sounds a moving elevator cabin makes, yet once you hear it your mind almost instantly can recognize it.
The rest of the sounds were either me yapping into a mic, hitting metal objects (my favorite trashcan!) or postprocessing sounds into oblivion beyond recognition. I feel I still have a lot to learn in terms of a sound design, while I'm quite comfortable with composing, sound engineering often is complex, technical and requires a lot of trial and error, I would say that's where I've spent the most of my time during the jam, learning a few new tricks along the way. In the end, although I'm not fully content with my work, I think it's a decent result for a three days run and it was incredibly fun for me, as the theme hit a melancholiac note in me and fed my brain worms well :D
Cheers!
p.s. please try our game and let us know how do you like it:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/going-down-protocol :video_game:
p.p.s. bonus menu music: Menu music :musical_note: