this track is special to me just because it was the first one that i wrote, and it ended up defining the feel of the rest of the soundtrack. it was also written one and a half years before the rest of the soundtrack, so it'll be a journey for me too to recall what went into writing it.

composing goals

for this first track, the two suggestions kartik, our creative director and lead developer, gave were vocals and percussion, but ultimately he and zach encouraged me to go with my gut and just make sure to harmonize with the dark and gritty feel of the game as a whole.

from the jump i wanted to avoid choir sounds and focus more on granular synths and generally more aggressive sounds. almost immediately i gravitated toward the phrase “touhou breakcore,” because i'm that specific type of nerd and the cutting synths plus that one specific trumpet sound felt like they'd make a fun contrast to the quiet, spooky, oppressive vibe of the rest of the area.

the writing process

incredibly, this is one of the two tracks on the soundtrack for which i only wrote one sketch before diving deeper. the first demo is essentially the first part of the track that ended up in the game:

in my own words from the messages that i sent to kartik and zach along with this demo, “Inspiration Struck™,” and they both voiced their approval and encouraged me to develop it more.

the most noticeable voices in this track are genre-standard chopped amen break samples and piano, both of which define the soundtrack as a whole. i was also already using the drone to open the track, fading in and then underlying the rest of it, establishing its function for the rest of the soundtrack.

in the next demo, i decided to lean really hard into the “touhou” part of my original goal and sample the infamous romantic trumpet from the roland SRX world sound bank, as heavily used by ZUN:

noticeably, the melody i wrote for the first half (for the phase where the adds break out of their cells) is very different from the one i went with in the final version, but the melody for the second half ended up becoming THE WARDEN's other motif. the first half was also originally on that trumpet voice, but later i ended up changing it to a very abrasive synth lead i'd previously tested out on another track.

a couple more iterations later, the melody had been moved to a synth lead (though not the final one), and i had added a countermelody to the add phase that didn't end up in the final version. kartik deemed it too whimsical (boo) and i agreed that it didn't really fit. this version also removes the trumpet sample from the last section — i'm glad i added it back later because it really adds a lot, in my opinion.

i iterated on this demo some more over the next few hours, experimenting with different instruments, until with direction from kartik i settled on the distorted lead for the add phase and the trumpet for the last phase. i also changed the intense countermelody in the add phase to just a harmony part below the main melody, which fit a lot more smoothly, and i added a few little textural details to the introduction. if i'm not mistaken, the last demo before the cutting apart for dynamic phase changes phase of the process is (up to looping the thing) what i uploaded to soundcloud after the prologue released.

finally, i wrote 2 end stings for this fight: one for defeating the warden, and another for dying. the latter ended up being the sound that plays when dying in any of the boss fights, when the DEATH/OBLITERATED/ANNIHILATED screen shows instead of just the regular DEATH screen.

cutting for phase transitions

once we were all happy with the composition, i then had to cut the final version apart to loop cleanly for each phase of the fight. internally, the fight is broken into 6 phases plus quick transitions between them, the most of any of the fights. i won't go into the gritty details because they're honestly not terribly interesting, but i did have to figure out a workflow for mastering individual looping sections that involved copying the ends of each loop and sticking them back onto the beginning with a crossfade. i don't think i did it in the most efficient way in the end but it definitely worked well enough.

wrapping up

so how did we do? personally i feel like this track is the weakest on the soundtrack, but mostly that's because i improved a ton at composition and production between july 2022 and january 2024, when i began the rest of the tracks. this one still holds a special place in my heart, though, and i'm glad i went with the add phase and final phase melodies that i did because they became an iconic part of the game's sound.

i hope you enjoyed this look into my twisted little mind <3 further entries will probably be a little more detailed with regards to the actual process, just because they were all written more recently than this one. it's hard to remember stuff i was thinking about a year and a half ago...

anyway! until next time!!! i hope you have a wonderful day :)

overarching goals

first, i want to talk about some of my wider goals going into the project, dating back to when i was working on THE WARDEN back in july of 2022 (time flies...) and continuing to the end of the project.

of these, the one that stuck with me the most (and the one i tell people about the most) is that i wanted the soundtrack not to feel like something you'd hear in another soulslike. it wasn't just that i wanted the composition to be unique — i wanted to eschew the genre conventions completely, avoiding orchestra and choir sounds in favor of harsh synthesizers and breaks. i thought, our game stands out visually, so it should stand out auditorily as well. generally, i stuck to this pretty closely. a few tracks use synthesized brass or strings, and most of them use some sort of heavily effected piano, which shows up all over the rest of my work too; but everything else feels distinctly synthesized, especially all the bass patches i ended up using, and the majority of tracks use sampled drum breaks. i'll talk about the specific sounds used in the individual track entries.

another goal of mine, or really a constraint imposed by the structure of the project, was to write and produce and finish each track within about a month. generally in the first week or so i would aim to produce two or three sketches, and then we'd pick which one to pursue; then i would spend the next two weeks fleshing out the sketch into a full track, with length dictated by the number of phases in the fight. i'll go into detail on how i wrote for building tension over time during future posts, but nailing that down took up a good chunk of the writing time for the first few tracks. finally i would spend the rest of the month mixing and polishing and then cutting looping portions for each phase so the music could transition dynamically.

lastly, i also wanted the soundtrack to feel coherent, like it's all part of the same story. i accomplished this the same way many many composers before me have done: through recurring motifs and through shared instrumentation, which i've already mentioned. five major motifs show up throughout this soundtrack:

motifs

the drone

starting with maybe the most subtle motif, but also the most prevalent, appearing in some fashion in every track except for one. this drone is a granular resampling of one stem from the title screen music our sound designer zach wrote for the original demo of the game, overlaid with a very low saw wave. this one doesn't have any intended meaning besides “void sols.” it's a pulse running under the whole game, tying everything to one root.

THE WARDEN's motif

this is the melody for the third phase of the fight with THE WARDEN, after the adds come in from the little prison cells. i'll go into more detail on how this came to be in the next part of this series, but it shows up again in a few other tracks, namely GATEKEEPER and ZENITH (and a little bonus appearance during the AMALGAMATE fight). in my mind it symbolizes the oppression and constraint that THE WARDEN embodies.

THE WARDEN's other motif

this is the melody for the final phase of the fight with THE WARDEN. like the first warden motif, it shows up again in GATEKEEPER and ZENITH. being more triumphant, it's meant to feel like (and literally also plays during) the moments before breaking out of the aforementioned oppression and constraint. it's one of the few times the soundtrack sounds like it's on your side, rather than something that's fighting you alongside the boss.

THE POACHER's motif

this one is a little more subtle — it's a quick set of chord changes that plays during both phases of the fight with THE POACHER, and then again (altered pretty heavily) in both phases of THE IMMACULATE. the meaning to me is hard to pin down, but it was important to me that these two bosses specifically share a motif. they're both more insidious in their oppression of the other little shapes.

THE WORM's motif

finally, this one plays during the VOID WORM fight and again against THE AMALGAMATE. it's sort of a "we dug too deep and look what crazy thing we dug up" theme. that makes it sound a lot less menacing.

wrapping up

wow, this post really got away from me. i hope you've enjoyed this little teaser for the rest of this series! i'm not going to promise a schedule for these, but i would like to get to the rest of the tracks sooner vs. later, mostly because i'm really excited to talk about the process. it's actually been such a blast to work with the folks at finite reflection and i'm really excited to see whatever they cook up next.

until next time!!! <3

otherwise this 9 month span has been full of working my day job and commuting a long way and staying mostly hunkered down trying to stay on top of everything, to mixed success. i'm on an upswing mental health wise. making it through. trying to rest. good things are happening.

today, i took a walk around my neighborhood and sat at a picnic table by the pond in the cemetery near my apartment. it's beautiful out today, 60 degrees and windy, and i just let the breeze and the sunlight cradle me for a while, journaling, writing something like prose poetry. trying to process. after laying down my pen, i stayed a while longer and watched a tiny song sparrow forage, kicking up leaves with both feet, occasionally making wary eye contact with me. it blended in perfectly with the mottled browns and yellows of the leaves, and it disappeared into the brush as suddenly as it had arrived.

it feels weird for the weather to be this nice this early in the year, but i can sit in denial and call it a false spring, i guess. trying not to worry about what i can't change. trying to manage what it's my job to manage. trying to love and let myself be loved. eat a snack, drink some tea. try to keep chipping away at personal projects. i'm strong, i tell myself — i'll make it through — i just wish it was easier, that i didn't have to be so strong.

i didn't do a proper new year's resolution this year (and i didn't meet most of last year's resolutions, which is par for the course), but i'm going to put it in writing that this year, i resolve to ask for help more often. we are a social species. we must let ourselves be loved.

thank you v v v much for joining me on this journey love you

hang onto your ghosts, or horrors above and beyond the flesh and our attempts to bring them close and make them tangible releases december 15th.

thank you for coming with me on this journey and i'm stoked to be writing new music again. love you!!!

LP is still coming along, it's been tough to stay motivated. that's not exactly it, even — i feel like i've been sort of living for this album for the past couple years, so it's tough to say goodbye to it. it makes me sad to think about, but ultimately it's a good thing. it's in the last stages of fledging and now it's time for me to gently nudge it out of the nest.

in other news, i have spent a good chunk of the past 3 months helping run the atlanta trans liberation basketball league, which has been extremely cool. it's been such a blessing to be part of a community of trans folks all working together to achieve something. our first regular season just ended, and now we're gearing up for the playoffs. i'm really proud of everyone involved. trans people are so cool.

with this it feels like the LP is like... 90% done. there's some arrangement tweaks that need to be made and then mixing and mastering but like, we are getting there. it's wild. it's wild most of all because the final track on this LP, working titled "spite," turned 2 years old yesterday — the logic file has been sitting on my computer since 2021, predating most of we will not walk onward. it got used in a url show around then (~ish) but that's all the love it got until recently.

entirely unrelatedly, another joy happening in my life right now is that one of my friends recently adopted the most adorable puppy that they named arthur. at time of writing he is almost 9 weeks old and weighs approximately 6 lbs and he is the most precious thing i have seen in my life. i spent this past weekend driving 6ish hours east with that friend and their partner (who is also a good friend of mine) to pick up arthur and it really was an adventure and a half. i dunno it just makes me really happy to get to experience having a puppy vicariously through these friends and also i do get to see him sometimes and it's wonderful.

just to give a little peek into the process, a couple months ago i decided one of the tracks on the LP was not, shall we say, good. so i've been putting a lot of work into writing something better to replace it and i am finally there!! all 12 tracks are officially sketched (i am declaring these to be final so i don't spend more time rewriting) and i'm in the process of writing lyrics now. it's so hard. poetry is so goddamn hard.

it always sounds so cheesy and insincere on paper but i'm trying to let myself accept the awkward stage and just play with the sounds that mouths can make? and the feeling of hearing someone say something. idk i am rambling it's just something i've historically felt awful at but it seems to go well when i let myself do it. i guess that's the same with everything, right?

anyway. that's my update. i hope you have a wonderful day <3

i have been making progress, though!! nearly every track is written in full now, and i've been tracking demo bass and vocals for some of them. i'm working on lyrics for the remainder — still a long way to go, but i'm getting there! i still want to be able to release by the end of the year and i think i'm still on track for that.

otherwise life has been a little rough, but i did visit some friends in new york a few weeks ago. some of them were people i met in college and hadn't seen in a while, and others i'd only met online before. it was a huge relief to just exist in a space with people i care about. also taking public transit almost exclusively for 2 weeks in a transit-oriented city has made me extremely stubborn about not driving in atlanta, which is significantly harder to navigate. also i managed to injure my ankle so that's no fun.

basically!!!! i am hanging in there!!!! thank you for reading i love you

in other news! life has genuinely been pretty good lately. settling into work post-holiday. i've been reading more for fun and started writing letters to friends, and i haven't logged into twitter in a whole week. less online is good.

now that it's coming to a close, though, i have to decide what i want to do with the next. i've decided to note my goals for next year here, just so i can come back later and say “hey y'all remember that cool thing i wanted to do? well i did it :)”

so here's my goals for next year:

• finish and release another LP (it's mostly written already!)
• start working out
• pick up sax again (especially bari, i miss my large son so much)
• join a historical fencing class — it's something i've always wanted to try
• complete another gamedev project (soundtrack, solo project, whatever)
• write a more robust blog entry parser/uploader (i am not kidding) and maybe also an rss feed you can subscribe to

thank you for coming on this journey with me! i hope this year brings good things for all of us.