Music & Sound Effects: Metal Theme & more

[Zhuriel]

I took the Music and Sound Effects ticket in the PPS FS2012. Since none of the existing music themes really fit my rather eccentric taste in music, I decided to create a new one from scratch, writing, recording and all.

The style will be basically whatever I come up with, generally mostly metal-influenced, but with elements of whatever other style I think would sound nice in the context, which can be pretty much anything
I'll probably include lots of ambient sounds because I think that's a good match for the space setting of the game.

So far, I've written a theme for the main menu, you can listen to a demo recording of it here.
It's not intended to be similar to the default main menu theme, but just something that in my opinion fits well.

I've also started writing Jupiter and Earth themes, inspired by the ones in the default theme, Earth will be busy and fast while Jupiter will be slow, very "ambient" and "empty". I'll post here when I have demos of these.

If you have any comments on what I have so far, please let me know!

[x3n]

awesome, I like it

[KnallKopf]

me too, great job there!

[The Jo]

+1
I just included your theme locally in orxonox on my computer instead of the main theme in order to find out how it sounds in the game.
(I downloaded the file, converted it to .ogg, renamed it as 'mainmenu.ogg' and replaced the current file in data_extern/audio/ambient/default )

In my opinion it fits better than the current theme (which regularly made me adjust the sound volume to 0 - probably I'm too sensitive when hearing lound music).

I suggest to make the part when the guitar joins in a little bit quieter. The difference between the silent chords and the guitar is quite strong. (That was the point when I had to readjust the volume to a more quit level.)

[Zhuriel]

Thanks everyone!

I suggest to make the part when the guitar joins in a little bit quieter. The difference between the silent chords and the guitar is quite strong. (That was the point when I had to readjust the volume to a more quit level.)

I'm aware of that, it's mostly because I didn't really spend any time on mixing - the demo was recorded in about half an hour including actually learning some of the parts (which I had written during a lecture and never actually played before) and mixing in GarageBand

The final recordings will be done in Logic Pro (which i should be getting in a few days) and a lot more time than half an hour... xD

Also, BTW, "where the guitar joins in" is probably not what you meant, the chords in the beginning are also played on guitar with a bit of effects trickery

[x3n]

the current theme (which regularly made me adjust the sound volume to 0)

Haha, so true, that's what I do as well. I guess I'm kinda fed up by the main menu music after working on orxonox for so long. Especially because it sounds more like atmospheric background sound than a main theme. Looking forward to the new music theme

[Mozork]

I like it!
A coherent musical theme will imho significantly enhance the user experience.

While you're at it, could you also create some soundbites that could be used for the interface, e.g. popup-sound, new-notification-sound and so on? That would be awesome.

Rock on.

[Zhuriel]

So I got Logic Pro and recorded a proper version of the main menu theme. I also gave it the title "Earthrise" because, well, I don't really know... I just thought it fit I guess. You can listen to it on my SoundCloud. Might still need some more mixing and mastering work but I'm happy with it so far.

If you have any feedback, especially about the mix, I'd love to hear it.

While you're at it, could you also create some soundbites that could be used for the interface, e.g. popup-sound, new-notification-sound and so on? That would be awesome.

I've already been experimenting with various synths and effects, got some interesting sounds so far. I'll see what I can come up with.

[Mozork]

Still like it! The name is somehow quite fitting.
I would like it if the drums were a little louder ,or maybe progressively louder.

I guess it would be a good idea to make the individual tracks loopable, because they will be looped in the game.

[Zhuriel]

I recorded my Jupiter theme, check it out on SoundCloud.

I guess it would be a good idea to make the individual tracks loopable, because they will be looped in the game.

Everything I've written intended to be played in-game (= everything except the menu theme) should be more or less loopable (musically), the problem is mostly that with the very ambient, spacey sounds I've been using is that either all the long reverb and delay trails get cut off when it loops or I'd have to insert the ringing-out reverbs at the beginning which would make that seem rather abrupt. Currently I'm leaning towards fading the songs out at the end and starting from silence if there are any sounds that ring out, to make an even transition.

[x3n]

It's also possible to implement the crossfading programmatically, i.e. in the game's code. In fact this is already implemented if we change the music... but probably not for looping. But I guess it could be done - if that makes things easier for everyone.

[1337]

Kevin definitely implemented cross fading in the code, but it currently doesn't affect looping of ambient sounds AFAIK. Though, I'm not entirely sure.

[Zhuriel]

Status Update: I finished writing Earth, Mars and fight themes. I'll start recording those this weekend, plus I'll have a friend record some additional MIDI drums to make those I wrote a little more interesting.

Also, judging by playcount, this might have gotten lost in my last post: Jupiter theme

Regarding looping and crossfading, I don't think crossfading loops would be a good idea, it'd be hard to find a solution that works for all tracks. While the Jupiter theme would benefit from it, anything that doesn't have just ambience at the beginning and/or end will probably sound really strange because the tempo gets messed up. IMO the best and easiest solution is to just assure they loop smoothly manually, possibly at the cost of a few reverb trails.

[Mozork]

Another option would be to consider a track consiting of an intro part that crosses seamlessly into a loopable part. We would just need an "augmented" version of a music track that consits of 2 instead of one sound files.

[Zhuriel]

Another option would be to consider a track consiting of an intro part that crosses seamlessly into a loopable part. We would just need an "augmented" version of a music track that consits of 2 instead of one sound files.

That is a very good idea and actually might be the best solution. Most of my tracks should be fairly easy to split like this. But since that system is not yet implemented, I'll just make my tracks regularly loopable for now and look at splitting them up in a good way later.

I had a very successful drum recording session and I've already included some of the new MIDI in my menu theme. I've uploaded a new version of the track on my SoundCloud for which I've also re-done the drums with different samples (I didn't realize I got 13GB of samples for download free with Logic when I did the first version) and improved various other things.