Story begins#
New Territory#
This jam is going to be a bit interesting for me since in this jam participants are meant to showcase a world/setting of their making using mediums like music, art, text, or a playable demo game.
I can write music somewhat but I feel that using just music is enough to get a sense of a world, especially since the world has to match the theme “Effect of Environment on Society and Culture” and address its associated question of “How does the environment affect your world’s society and culture?”
So since I’m no good at drawing and intending to do the jam solo, I’m going to try and come up with a story of a world and then write music to go with parts/characters of the story.
Initial Ideas#
The Sundering#
When starting to come up with ideas for the story and world, and thinking about how to manage all the text, I remembered about a notekeeping app called Chronicler I had come across a while back as I was looking for new solutions to write down these devlog/jam journals.
The way I currently do these posts is using the VSCode IDE with a markdown support plugin, and it’s still the best way to do these after looking at alternatives.
But for keeping all of the story ideas from characters, places, events and so on Chronicler felt like it would be a great fit, so I downloaded it and started just trying to come up with ideas.
At first I was drawing blanks, but as I was improvising on the piano I got a short idea for a bit of a dramatic tune that then sparked an idea of a world which was one large landmass that was highly technologigally advanced, but the hubris of nations and their wars lead to the development of weapons of mass destruction which ended up destroying the world and it’s people, and shattering the one large landmass to pieces.
From that initial story and musical idea I came up with a sketch of music for the destruction of the old world, calling the event The Sundering as a placeholder name for now.
That would be the lore of the world, and the actualy story would be set far in to the future with the placeholder date being a thousand years in the future, with the current day humans living on an island that used to part of the large landmass.
On the island there is a ancient structure that the tribespeople have build their city/village around that they worship as a Guardian Deity, but the structure is actually one of the ancient weapons.
If you’ve ever seen Turn A Gundam you already probably have regognized I’m heavily ripping off the story from that, which I only realized as I started writing this journal 😂
Hopefully I can get to story to be more of its own thing so it just doesn’t feel like a bootleg version of Turn A Gundam…
But from that initial idea I then came up with the plot of a village elder that disappears on an expedition to find other islands/land, since as far as the tribe knows the rest of the world is just water, but elder stumbles upon another ancient weapon or something from the old age that turns them evil.
Then later the village gets attacked and things happen that force the main character and companions to leave the village to stop the evil people, and at this point they probably would not know that the previous elder Arseno is actually alive and behind the attack.
Coming up with the name for the elder took quite some time and i just searched the definition of random words that came to mind and eventually came across Arseno which turns out to be a esperanto word which means arsenic so felt fitting for a sort of “poisoned” person.
So from that I looked for other esperanto words and got a couple of other names to use for the hero and companions:
- Ferulo The Man of Iron
- Stelino Daughter of the Stars
- Espero Hope
- Vento The Wind-Person
After I got that pretty generic rough idea for the story with the village attack leading the hero on their quest, I then got some more ideas on the music side and continued the Sundering track with a second calmer and mystical part, which is meant for after the the world has been destroyed and we are now in the future and see the village and the old machine the tribespeople worship as their deity.
That would be the conclusion of the intro scene and then after that would probably come stuff in the current day setting up the main character and current day plot like the failed expeditions to find other land, Arseno presumed to have diea on their expedition and then because of that the ban of any further expeditions.
Maybe in a tropey way the main character has always wanted to go out on an adventure?
But got quite a good start for just one day with these, hopefully I won’t run out of steam like I usually do…
Maybe I could try to make a little RPGMAKER demo game like I did for the Impressions: Mystery Jam #1?
I’m using modern orchestral sounds so will probably need more modern sprites for this one though, or maybe just use the stock tileset from RPGMAKER MV, that might work..
Anyway, will have to try stuff and see if it feels good, but for now here’s the extended version of The Sundering track
Maybe A Video?#
Listened back to what I did yesterday and immediately noticed that the oboe was too low in the latter half of the track, so i raised the oboe part up by an octave and that did the trick. This is why when working on tracks for too long without breaks you end up not noticing obvious issues 😄
After that I took some time to come up with an actual intro section to the track, since I started it from the initial BIG BOMBASTIC doomsday idea and I need the start to gradually build to the destruction of the old world to illustrate the story writing.
For the intro section I started with a vibraphone playing chords with the motor on and then added the first violins playing long held note played tremolo. After a bit the violins start to play other notes with each chord change, and are accompanied by the 2nd violins also playing tremolo. but the 2nd violins harmonize with with the first violins in minor seconds for the most part and that harsh dissonance added a really nice tension feel to then lead to the BIG and bombastic sundering section of the world being destroyed.
Maybe the minor seconds are a bit too dissonant for some, but they are only during that latter half of the intro part which should be short enough to just feel cool and weird without getting grating to the ears.
I then added a suspended cymbal, timpani and bass drum rolls to lead to the big section and some weird and creepy cong/tam-tam sound effects that sound like wailing at parts of the intro too add to the tension feel.
After adding those I got the idea of putting really softly played rolls on the timpani and bass drum in the backrougnd of the intro part which keep ebbing and flowing to add to the tension feel, which worked nicely imo.
Then finally I wanted to add some low end instruments but I didn’t want to make the feel of the section too dark or heavy, so I tried an idea I got of having the cellos and basses sparsely play the root note pizzicato at parts with the cellos playing first and then the basses 1/8th note later, which I tried to make it feel like a pulse/heart beat with the Ba-Dum, Ba-Dum effect it gives.
After that I added some percussion to the main bombastic part by using some anvil hits, concert toms and a snare drum since I felt that it needed something more.
Maybe the snare is a bit too much with the energetic rhythm I gave it, but at least the section now feels like it has momentum 😉
Later after a break I tried to write more story stuff which ended up with me deciding to try and do a scrolling text video with the story and music as my jam submission, since I did that for the last Melody jam and I liked that way of presentation.
Of course I should probably make all my writings of the characters, story, places and events be available in a more READ ON YOUR OWN PACE as well.
Maybe I can make a separate page on my website for each writing section? so, I page for CHARACTERS, LOCATIONS, EVENTS and so on.. Maybe that could work? will have to try stuff later in the jam when I have more writing done.
I gave the scrolling video a try with the current music and story writings I have done and it feels pretty OK to me, all though just white text on a black background is a bit boring, but we are meant to do all assets for the jam during the jam and I’m bad at drawing, but might have to try to make some rouch sketches to outline places/spots in the story to put in the backgound of the video.
Maybe just doing white drawings on a black background would be easier for me? I kinda did that for one the previous impressions jam video/thumbnail art and it came out somewhat OK though not great by any means 😄
Getting in the flow#
Homevillage#
The music for the sundering felt at a good spot now, so I started to work on the music for the actual start of the story in the Present Day, also not sure why I initially called it the Current Day since that sounds kinda odd.. 😅 Apologies to any writers attending the jam that will have to read my poor attempts at writing 😂
To accompany the starting story text about the hero and their friends life in the village, I wanted to write some really happy music to show how peaceful and without care their life is at the time.
After a bit of coming up with melodic ideas I got something I liked and then recorded multiple different takes of the idea, then after a break started arranging it.
The arrangement I ended up with after the break was an Irish Flute and Solo Violin playing the melody with a marimba accompaniment alongside a few percussion instruments like the Djembe, Riq, Tabla, Clave and Shakers.
Its a pretty simple track with the base idea being repeated and variated, first played by the Irish Flute, then by the Solo Violin and finally both play their own parts together.
Maybe it’s a bit too simplistic and generic sounding, but I kinda like it so w/e i guess? 😁
Coming Of Age#
For the next storybeat after getting to know the main characters, the village and it’s inhabitants, I had an idea that the previously mentioned attack that leads to the the hero setting out for revenge and to stop the evil would happen during the village’s Coming Of Age ritual, right as the main character comes of age.
Maybe the attack would be done by some ancient weapons revived by Arseno and they could be un-manned and controlled by some sort of an ancient AI, perhaps the ancient weapon Arseno found during his voyage contained inside it an AI that then took control of him, making him start reviving the rest? maybe something of the sort could be a cool plot element.
Arseno himself would probably not be leading the attack himself and the reveal of his state would be much later down in the story, but perhaps the machines would still need a human operator to work and maybe Arseno had in their madness killed Justo’s parents and fused them two ancient weapons to make them work and those two weapons would be what attack the village?
Might make for a sort of emotional plot beat when the character during their revenge quest against the weapons finds out that their parents are actually inside the machines, maybe they would speak during a boss battle using the voices of his dead parents which leads to hesitation from the hero, but eventually the voices could say something like “I’m already dead, please kill me” leading to the hero destroying them and having to get through that trauma.
Maybe in a jrpg fashion you would fight against them a couple of times at different points in the story, first during the attack on the village, then once more later on where they speak using the parents voices and then much later in the game where their parents manage to somehow get a bit of control to tell the hero to kill them and end their suffering.
I think I’ve seen similar plot elements multiple times before in a lot of different stuff, but I’m not trying to make anything groundbreaking here, just getting some sort of a coherent world and story together is hard enough as it is 🤣
But anyway, I got a little idea for the attack on the ceremony and then pretty quickly the arrangement flowed out in a session which I liked.
Kinda feels a bit samey with the sundering track, as this one also has the pedal tone on the bass and all of the voices moving in parallel. I think it feels OK since its meant to illustrate the attack from the ancient weapons and the sundering was also caused by them.
I still want to put a section of music before it for the village’s Coming Of Age ceremony that gets interrupted by the attack, but I have zero ideas for it currently and probably need to write the story text furst so I can get the feel for what sort of ceremony it actually is.
Coming Of Age cont.#
While I was trying to come up with text for the actual coming of age ceremony, I got an idea for a little folky dance tune and ended up getting something started for the ceremony music.
The feel i had for the coming of age ceremony was that its not really a religious thing, but more of a festival where the whole village comes together to celebrate the kids advancement to adulthood, so this sort of folk dance feel seemed like it would fit.
I do fear that it might end up feeling too samey with how similar in vibe to the village track before it 😅
The instrumentation for the ceremony festivities music is pretty similar to the village track with the use of a solo violin and the irish flute, but the track also features the whole string orchestra playing the melody first in octaves at the start on the violins and viola, and the celli and double basses play the bass line throughout.
After the new part ends, I added a little 4 bar part after to then lead to the previously made Attack music for when the machines attack the village.
The between part is still a bit work in progress and probably not that smooth yet, but the 1st violins playing tremolo over the cellos, basses, timpani and the shaker accenting the rhythm seems to work somewhat OK, probably will have to listen with fresh ears later to see if its actually good though..
Also in context with the current story text I’ve managed to write till now with their respective music
After The Attack#
The coming of age music sounded OK for now, so I decided to start writing stuff for what happens after the attack when the heroes wake up the next day.
I had the rough story outline in mind for it already, where the heroes wake up and find the village partly in ruins and a lot of people either hurt or dead. Maybe there is also a funeral for the ones who died?
With that in mind I started to come up with some sort of melancholic music, landing an a little melodic figure in Cminor that I liked and building from that as the main seed/motif.
The initial melodic idea being G-F-G-Bb-G all quarter notes in a medium slow tempo, which felt fitting for the sad feelings mood that the story point needs.
Instrumentation wise I decided on the English Horn as the lead instrument with the string section playing backing harmony and lines with the mutes on aka con sordino + a harp. Muted strings is a sound and texture I haven’t really used much and this felt like a good spot to use those. The muted strings have a more mellow sound which helps the english horn stand out better and just the overall tone of them con sord is really nice.
After some time I got about a minute and a half long first version done that I felt was OK for now and decided to listen back to it later to continue more.
At this point I’m going take a 2-3 day break from this jam and try to finish listening and rating all of the submissions to Grunt.’s OST Album Jam that I still haven’t reviewed since the rating period only has 3 days left.
A Slightly longer break?#
Through some unexpected circumstances my 3 day rating break for the earlier jam ended up turning in to a 2 week long break from the jam… 😅
Trying to start working on the jam again after such a long break is feeling really hard for me right now, I had a nice momentum/flow going earlier but now I cant really get into the groove…
Spent 2 days on trying to come up with a new track for the part of the story where the heroes set out to sea in a quest for vengeange to find and destroy the things that attacked their village, but only managed to get a piano sketch of the idea I got for it where i improvised stuff around that little G-E-G-F# motif idea.
After recording the sketch I was really having trouble with thinking of an arrangement for it, so instead I worked a bit more on the Aftermath track and swapped the string sounds over to the Hollywood strings from the Anthology strings I had been using before since the legato on those is a bit wonky, and since all my other sounds are from the hollywood orchestra package already the strings will blend better.
I was only using the Anthology strings because they are kontakt based and using the purge function is a lot better in kontakt since it can dynamically load samples back after the purge if needed, unlike the PLAY engine where things stay permanently purged and you need to reload all the samples if add new notes and then purge again after that which is really tedious but necessary on my 16gb ram system 😅
I also swapped the strings on my other tracks as well, but other than that haven’t really got much done..
There’s still about 9 days left in the jam, so hopefully I can get a lot more story done to have a satisfying end to this little story. Probably will have to speed up the pace of the story to just have the heroes find something important on their voyage that will help fight against the old weapons i.e “Remnants”, and maybe the important thing could be a key item to revive the remnant in their village that they worship as the guardian deity?
So my thinking is that maybe not all the Remnants would be evil and control their user, but instead just have the one Arseno found be the evil one, with maybe its code gone wrong that turned it evil/autonomous ala skynet.
Maybe the previous one large landmass could have had parts of it sunken under the sea and some floating in the air after the sundering, both staying floating and preserved by some still running old technology?
Maybe the key to reviving the guardian could be in a sunken lab/factory under the sea and then afterwards using the remnant they can go to the flying island(s) where the corrupted Remnant Ombrilego would be found.
Just some ideas that popped to mind while writing this part of the devlog, but will try to maybe turn that into something, probably wont get much more done at this slow pace now with the remaining 9 days though but will at least try!
Aftermath with the changed string samples#
Piano sketch for the new Setting Off track#
Ending first?#
Was not really feeling anything from the previous days piano sketch, so I instead I wrote some short story text for the underwater lab where the key to the remnant in the vilage will be found.
After writing that I got to thinking about the part after that where they go to the sky island and face off against Ombrilego, which I’m intending to be the sort of conclusion of the story.
While thinking about story stuff for that part I got the feeling to try to start making some sort of battle music for the final face off, and after the first session I managed to get a little 8 bar sketch for Ombrilego’s theme which I used the little melodic idea from the initial Sundering track.
I’ve already used the same melodic idea in the Remnant attack on the village as well, and since I’m intending to have Ombrilego be the machine that lead to the Sundering happening using that for their theme feels fitting since they are one behind all of those.
I started out with cellos and basses playing the new melody line in octaves and then added male choirs to double them alongside some brass and winds playing backing harmony with a trumpet later doing a melody part with more movement.
After that I started to accent the rhythm with different percussion instruments like a bass drum, toms, marching drums and piatti which added a lot more power and marching feel to the track which felt fitting for the Ombrilego’s reveal.
After it felt pretty full arrangement wise I got an idea of adding some actual lyrics to the melody/theme since the choir and quarter note march feel felt like some actual words would be cool.
I had been using the Esperanto language as a base for coming up with all the character names up to this point, but after trying to write lyrics in english and seeing the translations in esperanto I was not really sure I could pronounce them properly + the lenght of phrases was a bit too long to fit the melody in my opinion, so instead I tried out doing them in latin, which fit somewhat better although I am just using google translate to turn my written in english lyric sentences to latin so the sentence structure might be totally wrong in the latin versions 😂
Current lyrics:
Ombrilego,
Fatifer,
Laudetur Senex
Original english version:
Ombrilego,
Bringer of doom,
Praised be the old one
After getting those lyrics done I recorded multiple takes doubling the melody with them and they felt fitting to the vibe nicely to me, though listening after a break now I maybe need to make the singing a bit more upfront since its maybe a bit too in the background which makes it hard for the lyrics to be intelligible.
But at least for now a good start?
Day after I continued working on the face off against ombrilego music more and I managed to add a suprisingly lot more stuff to it, so maybe I’m getting in the flow again? At least I hope so.. 😅
After the intro bit I had previously made, starts the new actual battle part. For the new parts I pretty much just did variations on Ombrilego’s melodic idea in different short sections and nothing too fancy, but then later on the last bit after the 0:51 mark I added a part from the village music melody to play after the brass on the woodwinds but as I now listen to this later it gets a bit buried under the tremolo violin parts I added after those so they might need more doubling to be audible 😅
I also thought of more lyrics to record for the new parts, but I only managed to come up with a few lines, and those still need a lot of tweaking to fit and flow smoothly.
Tried recording some of the lyrics ideas but feeling a bit unsure about using any of those, for now I just kept the bit I recorded for the start of newer sections I had previously made where the choir chants pretty much just telling you give in to Ombrilego.
Current lyrics in english/latin (used and unused):
ENGLISH
Ombrilego,
Bringer of doom,
Praised be the old one.
Let the fateful one be praised.
Ombrilego, Ombrilego
Resistance is futile, all will become one
In front of the old one, you will die
For they are superior, and you inferior
Give up control and be ascended
Yield, Yield, Yield to the greater.
In front of the one all will fall
Yield, Yield, Yield to the greatest
When all are one, none is greater
Be slaves of the bringer of doom
Doom bringer
Doom bringer
Be slaves of the bringer of doom
LATIN
Ombrilego, Fatifer,
Laudetur, Senex
Fatifer, laudetur
Ombrilego, Ombrilego
Resistentia vana est, omnia unum fient
Coram sene morieris
Nam illi superiores sunt, tu inferiores.
Imperium relinque et ascende
Cede, cede, cede maiori
Coram uno omnes cadent
Cede, cede, cede maximo.
Cum omnes unum sunt, nihil est maius
Servi estote Fatiferi
Fatiferi
Fatiferi
Servi estote Fatiferi
The End?#
Didn’t really feel any good ideas for the boss fight tune and since there is only a bit over a day of time left I just decided to start getting things ready for submitting.
I did record piano sketches of 2 ideas I got for the adventure part when they leave the village and find the control key to Cindrilego and for the end of the story, but with the time left I’m just submitting the sketches since I wont be able to arrange anything by the time.
Now it was just mastering the tracks to a good consistent volume, rendering out the final story + music video and uploading that to youtube, which will take a while since the video is about 16 minutes long 😁
Probably will also upload the raw audio files to itch if people want to listen to just the music without youtube compression, but just the video would also work fine imo.
No art to go with the music and story sadly since I’m crap at drawing, but hopefully just the text and music is enough for people.
I did notice at the later stage of the jam that my submission does a pretty piss poor job of answering the jams actual theme “Effect of Environment on Society and Culture”, since the old weapons/mechs are not really part of the enviroment…
Maybe I could’ve had people who lived underwater in the old laboratory area and also some people living in the sky islands, and then wrote some stuff about how that affects their living, but well I’m shit at writing and even this took quite a bit of effort 😅
Even if this doesn’t really match the theme well, at least I got quite a lot of music done for once and just getting things done is enough of a reward for me 😁
Though working on the last half of the Ombrilego battle track I realized just how much it sounds like a We have One Winged Angel at home sort of thing with how much elements I seem to have unconciously borrowed from it 😂
I think I’ve rambled on enough so I’ll stop this devlog here, below you may find the video with the finalized versions of the pretty basic story and the music to go with it.
Final Submission? (Not)#
2 Week Extension!#
So.. On the same day I made my final submission video and uploaded it to YouTube later during the day it was announced that the jam would get a 2 Week Extension to work on the submissions more, which meant I could try to actually arrange/complete the piano sketches I had no time to arrange previously.
Starting from the old sketch I initially had made for when the heroes set off on the quest, I arranged that to a bit somber but uplifting sounding thing with some woodwinds and strings that then has a big hopefull ending that then ends on a more mysterious mood to lead into the ombrilego fight and music.
After that I got into a nice flow with the other 2 sketches and spent some days arranging those, making the setting off tune Adventure start with just the brass playing the melody on horns and trumpets with trombones playing the harmony, that then goes to woodwinds for repetitions and finally the strings for a pretty basic action feel section before ending on bit mysterious feel for the lab and the mysterious key and the voyage to follow it’s guidance.
The last was the one for the end of the story after defeating Ombrilego and for that I wanted it to feel a bit heroic, but not too much, so I tried to not go overbeard with the brass and just use horns for the lead at the first part and then start slowsly bringing in the rest of the orchestra to finally end on a big tutti for the last chords to close out the video, with the choir singing GLO-RI-A-TUS in latin, which should hopefully give that WE ARE VICTORIOUS feel to the end.
After gotting versions of all 3 I was somewhat happy with for now, I tested them out in the final video context and they felt pretty nice! Though the pretty bombastic end to the Adventure music in the underground lab might make the grandeur of the final ending tracks big end chords feel lesser since they both do a bit of the same thing in a way… but should still work OK.
I exported the current video version out and put that on YouTube for archival, but next up is just polishing the 3 tracks as much as I can till the time runs out and most importantly, I probably should come up with more story text for some parts since the music is pretty long compared to the meager amount of text at parts and that ends the viever having to watch the text scroll up the screen REALLY slowly to match the runtime of the music 😅
Might not update this devlog with any more progress after this, other than the final submission video of course 😉, but for now here’s the current WIP version with everything arranged.