Hello Ludum community!

In this post I will explain how I created the music for Lifted, explaining my tought process in detail. Hopefully this will inspire devs who have not touched music composition to give it a chance. I will mark music concepts in bold face so you can look them up.

As a disclaimer, I am self-taught in both modern music theory and ancient Greek music theory. So I use two classifications for what is commonly referred to as modes or scales: the modern or Glarean classification and Greek octave species and genus and I'll try to include both at least once. I also mix ancient meter (poetry) theory when dealing with rhythm.

My DAW of choice in which I write all my music is Bitwig (in part because it's the only commercial one that supports Linux).

My general process when composing a new piece of music is:

1. Chose the scale (color palette of notes, each associated with a feeling/emotion), and instruments
2. Write a motif (short sequence of notes that will be the theme if the song and will be repeated troughout the song with variations)
3. Create new motifs by developing the original motif
4. Build short melodic phrases from motifs
5. Derive chords from the melody
6. Build long melodic phrases from short melodic phrases
7. Build longer forms from long melodic phrases
8. Mix the song (adjust volume and panning for each instrument)
9. Add post-effects

I will now explain how I created both songs in my game: Lifted and Overworld. You can listen to them in the following video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaVM0hgKvS8

0. Lifted

Choosing the scale and instruments

For this piece, which was to be the title screen theme, I chose to start with the A natural minor scale / A Aeolian scale / Greek Aeolian tonos (diatonic genus) on A. This is a scale that evokes sadness. I also chose piano and violin (Grand Piano and VlnEns_Trem_) as the instruments for the parts, which are also commonly used in sad music.

Creating the motif

This is the palette of 7 notes of the A natural minor scale.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1' A B C D E F G A'

With these, I wrote the following melody.

Notes: ABCD BCDE

In this motif we have two sequences of four notes that ascend in step-wise motion. The idea behind this motif is that the first sequence lifts the second. Both sequences are identical in terms of relative pitch progression, but the first sequence starts at A, while the second starts at B, a note higher. The first sequence sets the home pitch of the entire motif at A so the second sequence at B sounds higher, and so it can be said that the first sequence lifts the second.

We'll label this motif as section A.

Laying out the form (1)

For starters, let the violin play section A twice solo, and then twice again with piano accompaniment that we will create shortly.

Violin A A A A Piano - - x x Piano (bass) - - x x

Adding chords

For the chords, I chose to go with a standard i-iv-v-i chord progression, which has the v → i perfect cadence. In the A natural minor scale this is Am-Dm-Em-Am. However, I realized that I messed up the placement of the third in the Am chord, placing it a semitone higher, thus turning the A minor chord into an A major chord instead, and so the progression actually ended up being A-Dm-Em-A or I-iv-v-I.

Laying out the form (2)

Let's add the chord progression to the song form.

Violin A A A A x Piano - - x x x Piano (bass) - - I iv-v I

Developing the motif

We have no piano melody, so let's create a variation of the motif. I raised the home pitch of the motif up a fourth, from A to D, and made the whole motif half as long (or twice as fast), so it fits twice in a measure.

We'll label this variation of the motif as section B.

Laying out the form (3)

Let's add the piano melody to the song form, and let's play it twice after the chord progression has played once. The violin will rest while the piano melody is playing.

Violin A A A A - - x Piano - - - - B B x Piano (bass) - - I iv-v iv-v iv-v I

Laying out the form (4)

Let's finish up the song by having the violin play section B once while the piano melody rests, and end it by having the final I chord play out solo.

Violin A A A A - - B - Piano - - - - B B - - Piano (bass) - - I iv-v iv-v iv-v iv-v I

Creating the final mix

Now that we're done with the score, let's adjust volume levels and panning.

Volume

I left the volume of the violin as is at -10.0 dB.

For the piano, I made the volume of the melody louder at 0.0 dB, and the chords quieter at -6.0 dB, as playing three notes simultaneously stacks up the volume, compared to just playing just one note.

Panning

I duplicated the violin part and panned one violin 30% to the left and the other one 60% to the left.

I panned both parts of the piano 30% to the right.

With this, we are done with this song.

2. Overworld

Choosing the scale and instruments

For this piece I chose to start with the E Mixolydian scale / Greek Ionian tonos (diatonic genus) on E. I chose piano (Grand Piano) as the main instrument for this song.

Creating, developing and modulating the motif

This is the palette of 7 notes of the E Mixolydian scale.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1' E F# G# A B C# D E'

Section A

I started with this motif.

Notes: E F# D

Then I transposed it up by 1 semitone.

Notes: F G D#

Then I flattened the G into an F#.

Notes: F F# D#

We'll label this motif as section A.

Section B

We'll develop section A by opening it up a bit (spreading the pitches apart).

In this case, I flattened the F into an E, and double sharpened the F# into a G#.

Notes: E G# D#

We'll label this new motif as section B.

Section C

We'll develop section B by adding a C# as a leading tone to D#.

Notes: E G# C# D#

We'll label this new motif as section C.

Adding chords

I derived the following chords from the notes of each section in the melody.

A. D#m from [D#, F#] B. E from [E, G#] C. C#min7 from [E, G#, C#]

With this, each section has an associated chord.

But before we start laying out the song form let's pay attention to what happened to the color palette of our song.

This is the palette of 7 notes of the E Mixolydian scale that we started with.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1' E F# G# A B C# D E'

Our song, on the other hand, now contains all the following notes: E F F# G# A# B C# D#. Notices that we're now using 8 notes in our song instead of 7, and that F, A# and D# are not in the E Mixolydian scale. In fact, our song is now closer to the C# Dorian scale than the E Mixolydian scale.

This is the palette of 7 notes of the C# Dorian scale.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1' C# D# E F# G# A# B C#

The only note that our song uses that is not in the C# Dorian scale is the natural F. So that is the chromatic note in our song.

We started writing our song with notes from the E Mixolydian palette and ended up creating a song using an octatonic scale, with notes from the C# Dorian palette and the natural F as an extra 8th color.

Translating the chords into Roman numerals we end up with ii (D#m), III (E) and i7 (C#min7).

Let us now lay the song form.

The short melodic phrase

I decided that the song form will consist of playing the original motif, that is, section A, twice, and then playing the derived motifs.

Piano A A B C Piano (bass) ii ii III i7

With this we got ourselves a short melodic phrase that is 4 measures long. We'll label it S.

Notice how this chord progression looks like a small move upwards, followed by a large move downwards, as if saying "We thought we would leave the depths (1 note up) but decided to stay in the depths. Not in the physical depths, however, but deep within ourselves is what is above the depths (double meaning, therefore 2 notes down)".

Also notice that this song can't be played by a single piano because the melody and the chords are on the same octave.

The long melodic phrase

We can build a long melodic phrase by repeating the short melodic phrase twice that is 8 measures long. We'll label it L1.

Let's develop the long melodic phrase by adding a fugue to it, we will add a contrabass playing the same melody as that of the piano, in the same key, two octaves down and starting a quarter tone later. We'll label it L2.

Let's develop it further by adding drums to it. I will define two patterns labeled 1 and 2. Each pattern will have the duration of one measure.

``` Beats: ◡ = Short – = Long

Drums: H = Hi-hat closed R = Rim C = Cowbell

(1) HHR ◡◡– (anapaest monometer)

(2) HHRCCC ◡◡◡––◡ (tribrach+antibacchius dimeter)

SD = 1112 ```

Our drums short melodic phrase will play the anapaest monometer 3 times and we'll finally play a tribach+antibacchius dimeter to mark that we are about to repeat the short melodic phrase. We'll label L2 with the drums as L3.

Putting it all together

This is the resulting song form hierarchy.

Long melodic phrases L1 L2 L3 Short melodic phrases S1 S1 S2 S2 S3 S3 Contrabass - - - - - - - - A A B C A A B C A A B C A A B C Piano A A B C A A B C A A B C A A B C A A B C A A B C Piano (bass) ii ii III i7 ii ii III i7 ii ii III i7 ii ii III i7 ii ii III i7 ii ii III i7 Drums - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 Loop point ^

L1 is the intro and will only play once, then L2-L3 will loop indefinitely. We ended up with a 24 measure long song.

Creating the final mix

Now that we're done with the score, let's adjust volume levels and panning.

Volume

I left all the instruments at -10.0 dB except for the drums, which I lowered to -15.0 dB to give a sense that they are moved to the back.

Panning

I panned both parts of the piano 30% to the left (even tough technically a single piano is not enough to play this song), and the contrabass 30% to the right.

With this, we are done with this song.

Things I forgot to do

Because I was in a hurry for this game jam, I forgot to apply post-effects, such as reverb and compression, especially compression. Because of this, the quietest instruments may be not heard at all and the loudest instrument may be too loud.