Day 1#
The theme is One Summers Night this time around, with the theme painting of a Girl? leaning to a lightpost at the docks during sunset.
Initial feeling got was to do something more chill and mellow, so I loaded up a rhodes sounds since water always makes me think of a rhodes piano sound :D
Did a little string arrangement of the initial rhodes noodling to the painting, and I feel the vibe from the painting gives a chill adventure game feeling.
Initial feelings for instrumentation is maybe some piano or strings, light percussion, and mellow synths? maybe? probably will have better ideas tomorrow.
Initial idea for the Title Theme “One Summer’s Night”#
Day 2#
Morning
Listened to the track in the morning and quickly noticed some stuff that needed fixing (mostly just the 2nd violins that were doubling the bass voice for some reason 😅)
After fixing the glaring issues I started playing around the initial idea on the piano, and while jamming around that, I got this idea for a more rhytmic/groovy version. I decided to do a second section from that, but decided to first make a little drumbeat to play over instead of the metronome, which took me a while to find sounds I liked.
After recording a few takes over the drums, I took the one I was most happy with and started to arrange parts for the strings to play under the piano, but in the end the arrangement ended up a bit muddy feeling, but will take a break and listen back to it later in the day and find out then if it really is too muddy and needs fixing (also need to make/find some sort of a riser/sweep to make the change of parts smoother..).
Morning Progress for the One Summer’s Night#
Evening
Was not really feeling like working on the first track anymore today, so I started out to make a new one.
Since the first track is meant to be the Title Theme, I think this next one will be a sort of area/level background music, so something relatively soft and not too annoying.
I did the same I did when coming up with the title theme, and just improvised around ideas that came to my head while looking at the themes, and got a short little idea that I recorded and started working from.
The idea kinda felt like some sort of a ON HOLD music to me, so it fit pretty well to the vibe that I get from the image, that felt like its someone that’s been waiting for something/someone for some time now.
I didn’t get a solid game idea from the painting yet, but preliminarily I’m thinking of a setting where the game starts with the person in the image waiting for someone, but that someone never comes and they then set out to look for them.
So in that sense the ON HOLD music feel felt the right way to go to me, all though it might need a lot of tweaking to not be too annoying 😅
Spent an hour or so of trying few things, but ended with keeping the piano recording as it was recorded and then adding a harp and celeste doubling the melody, a soft synth pluck doubling the piano part (might need to prune some notes so its not too fat) and a cello playing a bass line.
Evening start of new bgm track “WAITING”#
Day 3#
So… I felt that the cello bassline was a bit too much for the soft ethereal ambience I had in mind for this track/area, so I just cut that out and added a Oboe doubling the melody in the later part of the section
After those tweaks I started to try to come up with ideas for a second section for the track, which should be a bit contrasting to the first one, but not too different to feel like its a different track all together.
Took a while, but in the end came up with a sort “variation” of the first section with the harmony and melody having some slight changes here and there to keep it new feeling but still having the same contour to the part.
I also dropped the harp and celeste for this new section, tried out a few instruments to play the melody part, and ended up really liking the solo cello coming to double the melody and fill out the mid/low end nicely, which I feel felt really nice after the previous section being more higher register for the melody line.
Felt done for the day after this, and stopped there.
Day 4#
Evening I
On my first listen back to the track, I felt that the oboe had a bit too sharp of a tone for the vibe I was going with, and swapped it out for a flute instead, which always works nicely with the harp and celeste.
Feeling like I cant add more to the second track at this moment, I will try to start a 3rd one.
WAITING after additions#
Evening II
After a short break, I started to think about what the next track could be. The sort of idea for the game these would go in, I had a sort of silent hill-ish? adventure game in mind, where the girl in the picture is waiting for her someone at the docks, and after waiting sometime a figure who she recognizes appears at the end of the docks, she runs to hug them, only to phase through them like a ghost and falling in to the water, sinking deeper and deeper trying to reach out their hand while they lose their conciousness . The first track One Summers Night is meant to play during this sequence, that would be a sort of introductory cinematic.
After that she wakes up in a weird place that seems devoid of life, where the player wanders around trying to figure out where the hell they are, and the second track Waiting is meant for that initial wandering around the place.
But after the player does/discovers things, the sun starts setting and some weird things would start to happen, making the player feel like they are not alone, or something like that.
So the new track would have to give a bit of a uneasy feeling, and hopefully make the listener feel somethings not right about the place.
I thought about what to do for a while, but I then got the idea of taking the “main theme” from the intro sequence and twisting that around to make it feel a lot more creepy/dissonant.
I started out by writing the new darker version of the theme and put that on the celli since it originally was with violins, and then wrote the harmony/counterlines with the rest of the string section.
While doing that I remembered the old style of tension music in old movies and tv shows where they had violins playing a really high drone note to add tension, which I tried out and felt like it fit like a glove in the mix! A bit later I also remembered hearing a constant rhythmic pulse added on top of that with other instruments too, so I added the harp and piano doubling the high F# drone note with a constant 8th note pulse, which felt pretty great to me, but might be a bit too annoying depending on how long this track would play in-game (it maybe could be a separate dynamic tension layer?)
I also added a little celeste flourish to the end, but thats just a placeholder, since I’m probably going to extend this, or do the ending so it can loop well.
Still haven’t done anything more to the first track… hopefully will get the mojo to fix the build to the big part on that before the time runs out 😅
But anyway, that’s all I got made today
First version of the 3rd track!#
Day 5#
Evening I
Listening back to yesterdays track (working title NIGHTFALL) I felt that it could use a more mellower 2nd section, so I got to trying out stuff for that.
Since I had previously added the little celeste flourish at the end, I got the idea to replace the F# drone note with a little chord vamp on the celeste, where it just keeps repeating 2 half note chords every bar for the whole section, so there is something repetitive like on the previous part, just so it doesn’t feel too separate from what came before.
Since I had used cello on the earlier area music that plays before things start to get weird for the character, I decided to use that again for the melody as sort of contrast to what it was in before. I tried out some woodwinds I used in the earlier track too, to have the melody on the second half of the section, but wasn’t feeling them for this context, so I tried out a solo violin instead and really liked it playing the melody together with the cello and its also playing it harmonized like the strings were in the previous part, with some slight differences at parts to have some interest to it.
now the track is pretty OK length wise, but probably needs a bit tweaking to the end if I want it to loop around to the beginning better, but it’s probably best do that stuff after a break with fresh ears.
NIGHTFALL with new section#
Night
I was doing random testing with vocal stuff and chopping up samples of the other tracks hip hop style, and got some of those sounding pretty cool when pitched down.
While playing around with those chops, I got a little groove idea that then evolved into some sort of a DANGER/ENEMY ALERT beat that I liked.
Since its almost midnight now for me, I think ill listen back to this tomorrow and see if it still feels good and then try to continue it forward.
New track UNWELCOME#
Day 6#
Evening
Listened back to yesterdays late night sample chop testing idea and it still felt good to me, only thing about it is that it might be a bit too different to all of the preceding tracks.
Listening to other jammers devlog posts in discord really made me wanna write something a bit more energetic, so the idea of the game my tracks were for kinda changed a bit to a more darker Silent Hill-ish direction 😅
I feel the track could fit ok if I made a couple ambient tracks with a more industrial vibe for the world when the sun has set after NIGHTFALL, but I’m not sure if people want to listen to that kind of ambient stuff for multiple minutes during rating.
Added a second section to make it about a minute long now, which is probably an ok length. For the new section I added some of the solo strings that I had in NIGHTFALL before playing some melodies, which I’m feeling might be a bit too much and might cut those. I also remembered I discovered a cool bell sound a while back from one of those circular saw drill bits, which when struck produces a clear pitch that when sampled can work as a weird bell thing. So I sampled that of course, and put that on a Sampler track in Cubase and used that for some of the melody lines since it felt fitting to the sort of vibe I had in mind for the now a bit weird place we are in after NIGHTFALL.
Felt pretty done for the day at this point and stopped there.
UNWELCOME with new added section#
Day 7#
Evening
Now that I had made the small direction change for the fictional game, I felt that the second track WAITING felt too ethereal/bright for the style of game I envisioned, so first thing I started working on today was coming up with a new track to replace that one.
I tried all sorts of things to modify the tonality and notes of WAITING to make it more dark and what not, but still felt off to me, which I decided to be the melody itself and decided to scrap the whole track.
For the new try at the WAITING track I decided to take the “main theme” I made for the game in ONE SUMMERS NIGHT, and change that to a more major-ish feel and have that be the intro track for that start as we are at the docks during sunset.
I played around with just whole sale doing the same thing in major, but ended up with something not so “just the same thing in major” which I liked.
I didn’t have any arrangement ideas for it now, so might just keep it as solo piano, but then the sudden use of strings in nightfall might be a bit weird, but it is what it is I guess 😅
Feeling pretty creatively done for today, so might just spend last days of the jam tweaking ONE SUMMERS NIGHT so its the best I can make it, and have it as the last track in my submission, with the order of tracks being WAITING-NIGHTFALL-UNWELCOME-ONE SUMMERS NIGHT, which feel like the way to go.
Like I mentioned yesterday, I might try making one or two little ambient tracks, which I might have after NIGHTFALL and UNWELCOME, but I don’t want to make the submission too long, so will see on the last day how it’ll be 😁
New track to replace WAITING, called WAITING?? 😅#
Day 8
Been feeling a bit creatively drained for the last few days regarding the jam, so didn’t do much other than slight tweaks here and there. I tried to continue making the title track ONE SUMMER’S NIGHT better, but still feeling really stuck on that one, so it might end being submitted in the state I got it after the first few jam days 😅
Since I was stuck on doing anything on the current tracks, I decided start trying to make 1 or 2 ambient tracks to help have some chill stuff between the tracks, just so that the submission doesn’t sound too all over the place, like I mentioned yesterday.
I sampled the opening piano chord from ONE SUMMER’S NIGHT latter section and put that on a sampler track, which I put the Speed setting on a low value, so when the sample is triggered, its played through very slowly, which got a nice texture of the rolled chord.
I then put Cubase’s FX MODULATOR insert effect on it and used the Atmosphere Designer preset which I like, that preset has some effects that really slow down the audio signal, which always gets nice soundbed kinda thing out of sounds.
I had that sort of droning in the background, with the midi played without a metronome, and I then played other sounds on top of that the same way.
In ambient stuff I always feel like using mellotron sounds (might just be because I’ve listened tangerine dreams rubycon album a lot 😁)
Kontakt Factory Library bank has some nice Mellotron samples, so I loaded up the Mellotron Flute patch and started playing some melodic stuff over the drone, slightly mimicking the ONE SUMMER’S DAY’S melody’s A# to G motion to have a bit of continuity between the tracks.
Then I used my mic to record some light piano stuff from my digital piano’s speakers, just as an experiment I’ve never done before, which worked ok for this thing, probably because I have a really long wet reverb as insert on everything, so everything gets kinda mushed together to a soup of sound.
New ambient track REFLECTIONS#
Since this was a quick one for me, I felt like trying to make the second one right after.
Since I had a slight Silent Hill inspiration for the setting, I wanted to give a try making a trip hop influenced track, albeit only in that I was going to use a drumbreak to play stuff over 😅
Started playing around with the opening Cmin7 chord to G motion from One Summers Night again (I know, becoming a bit of a one trick pony over here 😂) but after some thinking decided to keep the A# to G motion in to top notes/melody, but changed the G chord to a Gmin7 instead to make it more dark, then vamp between those to have a steady groove.
That felt good to me, but after jammin around ideas on what other stuff to do so it’s not just that vamp all of the track, I ended up having a bit too much fun just jamming stuff and ended up with a more energetic take that I liked even more, so the track ended up being a more uptempo lounge? tune instead, with an electric bass added to play a bassline under the piano.
This more energetic track lead me to think of how it would be if the sort of main antagonist of the silent hill purgatory place the girl gets trapped in would just be chilling in a club area in the game, where you had to go back to again and again to progress, and as background music he would be on the stage singing a sort of “must be tough for you 😉” sneering song, with the lyrics mocking/making fun the player.
It took quite a while for me to come-up with lyrics I at least somewhat liked, but for starters I feel they work somewhat ok, I will probably tweak them later, but now I could at least record some test vocals to see how they feel.
From the test takes, I feel the idea can work, but I need to listen back again tomorrow and iron out any lyrics I don’t like + the test vocals I did sound a bit too nasal now that I listen to them after a break, so need to keep that in mind when recording new ones 😅
New track OTHERSIDE#
Day 9#
So, after listening back to yesterdays new track, I still really liked the whole thing, so naturally I then spent the rest of the day trying to arrange it further and make it really polished.
I had a bit of a tough time coming up with arrangement ideas, but after switching out the old drumbreaks out for some more modern drum beats that fit the rhythm of the track, I managed to get a flow state going and the arrangement just started to assemble bit by bit (did take me the whole day).
I started out with doing some strings parts, mostly since those have been a sort of main instrument throughout the tracks, but now as I write this I realized I haven’t used the solo strings that I’ve had on previous tracks… but maybe it’s better this way, since there’s already a lot of stuff.
After doing some string lines and doubling of the piano during the chromatic triplet ascends and descends, I started to try and put in some horn parts since I felt like that would fit this type of track.
I already had a sax doubling a synth lead in the first iteration of the track, so I muted that for now and picked up the one dry horn sample library I have, that being Session Horns, which has sampled trumpets, trombones, and saxophones.
Since I only have the lite version of Session Horns, I only have the sort of “ensemble” patch it has, with the instruments it has laid out on the keys and the library has a so called Smart Voice Split function that splits notes to different instruments depending on the register when you play more than one note at a time.
So I started out by having the section accent the notes at some parts, and after that got ideas for doubling the harmony by doing some long pad notes to make parts feel more full.
After that I was going to remove the sax and synth tracks which I was no longer using, but then felt like giving the tenor sax sound I had used previously a try. The sound I had used was a patch from Cubase’s stock Halion Sonic library, but when I started trying out some melodic stuff with it, I found that the patch actually had some different articulations, with the one named Growl being the one that really made me like it.
The Growl articulation had that nice buzzing/sharp tone to it that I’ve always liked when I’ve listened to T-Square and Honda Masato’s sax tone on their tracks.
So inspired by that I actually made the sax pretty much the lead instrument on the latter part of the song, which hopefully wont take too much from the vocals when I start to try record those tomorrow… 😅
Speaking of vocals, I need to come up with a few more lyrics tomorrow and then really try to get the best vocal takes I can get with my meager skills… Hopefully will at least get somewhat OK takes so I don’t have to scrap the vocals all together, since I spent quite a bit of time coming up with the lyrics 😁
OTHERSIDE now with an actual arrangement?#
Day 10#
Dawn of the final day?
The first thing I did today, was master the other tracks to a somewhat similar volume, and then I spent the rest of the time trying to come up with additional lyrics and trying (and failing) to record proper vocal takes.
I had to stop working on OTHERSIDE when I realized there’s only a few hours to go till the submission deadline, and since I still felt the vocal takes were not that great and I kept slurring some words while singing, I decided to upload a second version of the track without the vocals, even if the track might feel a bit empty without them.
So next I tried to mix and master OTHERSIDE the best I can in a short time and then made the itch project page to finally submit them + the YouTube video and maybe a scritch player for the project page if I have time left after everything else.
Okay at this point I’m pretty much done? I’ve submitted the project with all the info I usually try to provide, the youtube videos are uploaded and linked on the submission page, I even got the scritch player done (still uploading to itch, so fingers crossed it works 😅).
Now it’s just uploading this blog post to my github page and link this to the submission page for anyone who wants to read my ramblings, and if that person is you reading this right now, congrats on getting to then of this without skipping anything, right? 😉.
Anyway, thats all for me.