Swang Development Log — Music

In this post I’m going to be showing and talking about the three tracks that I’ve produced for Swang so far. But before I do that I have a little disclaimer that I want you to keep in mind.

While I’ve played the piano as a hobby for most of my life, I haven’t spent much time composing music and this project is very much my first serious step in that direction. I’ve learnt a ton already and I’m expecting to learn a lot more, so what I have so far is only a work in progress as I most likely will be coming back to make changes as I learn new things.

My toolset consists of my Macbook Pro, GarageBand and an 88-key digital piano with MIDI output.

Main Theme

I’ve always liked games with simple, catchy melodies, so here’s my attempt at making one myself. Being the first piece of music that I wrote, it had a big role in setting the tone for the rest of the soundtrack.

I found it easiest for me to stick to real life (orchestral) instruments, since that requires the least amount of knowledge about the software. When using electronic instruments there’s a whole lot more knobs and levers to mess around with to get a good sound, which seems a bit too intimidating to me at the moment — but I’ll get around to that some day.

This track isn’t only important for me to set the overall tone, but also for the player who hears it the first time they start the game. That’s why I wanted to have the baseline play on its own for a couple of repetitions to give it some time to set up before adding in the main melody. I think this will go well together with an intro animation before arriving at the main menu of the game.

World 1

The levels in the game will be split up into different worlds, with each world revolving around an environment and musical theme. The music for the first world has, similarly to the main theme, a steady tempo and upbeat style to it. As the game progresses towards tougher worlds to beat, I imagine the music will evolve into more darker themes.

I went into writing this track with only a vague melody in mind, but as I started playing around on the keyboard I discovered the baseline that you now hear in the intro and going forward. I liked it so much that I decided to make it the main focus of the theme, with the melody mostly just tagging along for the ride.

World 1 Boss

Yes, there will be bosses in this game. This is primarily because I really wanted an excuse to write boss music, but I think there’s a good way to include them that makes sense mechanically as well.

This track borrows from the melody of the main theme, but goes into a cooler and more suspenseful tone. Since this is just the first boss however, I wanted to keep the intimidation factor down to give more room for the music of future, more dangerous bosses to feel more scary.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the music I’ve been able to write so far, but as I mentioned in the beginning I still have tons to learn and I intend on going back to touch things up as I improve my skills. There’s certainly a lot of room to develop the melodies further and make them feel less repetitive, as that could quickly become annoying when playing the game.

All the tracks are included in a playlist on SoundCloud, which I’ll keep adding to as I go forward. And as always, all feedback is very welcomed.

My next step is to start working on the graphics. As I’ve been writing this music I’ve been keeping in mind a graphical style that would fit well together with it, so now it’s time to start materializing those ideas into drawings.