Part 1: Summary and Meeting
When composing music for a game there’s quite a few things to consider as I’ve discovered while working on the Floob the Jelly Cube game. In the game you play as a sentient cube of jelly named Floob and escape an after hours supermarket before the 10 minute time limit where your cleaned up by the janitor.
Having an early team meeting was great for clarifying details such as number of songs and sounds required, length of songs, the feel or mood of the game and possible references for sounds; Brainstorming sounds is especially useful to do in person where many sounds can be voiced by the team, in this case 80% of the character sound references were mouth sounds.
Here is the team meeting video:
Part 2: Reflect and Plan
From the meeting our audio team compiled a list of the sounds shown here:
Character
- Rolling
- Jumping/Landing
- Splitting
- Absorbing
- Shooting
- Sliding (Sticky Squeegee)
- Idle Wobble
- Full/empty (Absorbing)
- Dissolving
- Ejecting mass
Environmental
- Janitor Footsteps
- Janitors Cleaner
- Game Start Voice over
- Game lose Voice over
- Game Win Voice over
- Fridge Door Opening
- Falling objects (cereal boxes, soup cans)
- Fan Buzz (fridge/freezer)
Along with that these are the references the team agreed on for a number of the sounds:
- Cube idle sound:
looping, low volume (consider a slightly swaying block of jelly, as that is the idle animation we are aiming for) - Cube rolling sound:
consider something similar to tape being peeled off a desk, or a lint roller over fabric, but “wetter” or more filled in? - Cube jumping sound:
consider a similar but exaggerated sound to the roll, perhaps more along the likes of a suction cup being unstuck? - Cube shooting sound:
more intense and shorter than the jumping sound, a quick “spat” that needs to be playable quickly and repeatedly, eg. Plants vs. Zombies pea shooter. - Cube split sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6uroCuTuEo this effect but less gruesome. - Cube wall stick sound:
as the cube sticks to a wall mid-jump, Something similar to this is played https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vl9X3A4yHY - Vacuum cleaner approaching:
A clip that should last about 30 seconds and is played towards the games end to signify the approach of the cleaner. Hopefully getting louder and louder until it is the dominant sound in the game.
We booked a studio session in a post production room to get some sounds made to get early feedback from the game team, why? Because your interpretation of what a sound should sound like can often differ from what the creator is looking for.
Here are the rough mixes of the sounds we came up with in the first session:
Majority of the sounds were made blending voice sounds and liquid sounds. We got a lot of material to work with by each member recording their take of each sound; Although it’s good to have options this amount of recordings of similar sounds made for a lot of sorting work in the mixing stage.
We also received some visual aides from the meeting. Visuals are important for scoring and creating sounds for a game, for me it gives a clear idea of the mood of the game, we got to have a playtest of an early model of the game after the meeting which showed a 3D vibrant pink cube in an aisle of bright colours, simple obstacles and a fun, platform arcade feel like Mario or Banjo Kazooie. Along with that a map of the level split into sections that require songs of increasing intensity shown below.
As a project plan for the audio we did up a spreadsheet listing all sounds and songs required and assigned a team member to each (this is always open to crossovers as I prefer my group projects to be), and the timeline showing the deadline for all assets and green boxes indicating expected completion dates:
Part 3: Making Music
Studying the style of music helps clear some of the frustrating guess game out that can otherwise swamp the early stages of composing. I decided the best way to start was to make a song that best fit the game style and visuals. For my track to fit the game I needed something that keeps a moving forward feel, I decided a walking bassline would work great. Here’s the tutorial I used to learn the pattern.
Choosing a reference track is an important step to composing, especially when you’re unfamiliar with the genre; It gives ideas to get the track started, sounds and processing to aim for and works as a reference of what a quality mix in that genre sounds like. With the walking bassline in mind as well as the bright, 3D platform style of the game I was lead to this lighthearted, fun track from the Super Mario Sunshine game. I landed on it definitively when I heard the walking bass and simple drums along with the fun overall sound which fit the vibe of Floob.
Starting the composition began by building a foundation; This can come from a chord progression, often the beat or rhythm or a bassline. I started with a similar walking bassline from the reference made on the analog synth Ableton plugin, utilizing a sinewave and squarewave with a very short decay and medium release to emulate a clean bass guitar. From there I took the simple 4/4 closed hat drum pattern from the reference track, these were my foundation for the composition. From there I could try a variety of different sounds, my method for this track was putting an arpeggiator set to 8th notes on the bassline and pitching it up an octave, I’ve used this method before on game music as it instantly adds a fun bouncy feel with good pace that fit this game perfectly.
Part 4: Acting on Feedback
Character sounds came first as as they were more urgently needed by the developers. The feedback received from the character sounds from the game developers was the jelly cube sounds were too watery and needed to be meatier, and many of the sounds were too quiet and thin; I also gained some advice from a producer to try a synth to make sounds. These notes in mind I took to a studio with access to a range of great analog synths. Many of the new character sounds were made using the Moog sub37 which gave them a thicker bassier sound and also gave the sounds more life; More like a character moving and less like a blog of jelly being moved.
The background music was a simpler fix, the feedback received was it wasn’t able to be looped because of the faded out outro and also it was too long to work for the level it was intended for. I had all of the separate elements made into various loops loaded into ableton’s session view so decided to re record the song rather than edit the original, this was done mainly for experimentation, experience and fun.
Recording the song in this was also made for trialing combinations to choose ones that fit the mold best.
Part 5: Reflect and Progress
So far this game project has been entertaining to make the sounds and songs for a genre that calls for at least a bit of silliness which has been a relief to step away from some of the seriousness of recording an emotional singer song writer or the sterile technical side of engineering. Educational learning new mixing techniques to make sounds stand out and be interesting but keeping in mind they will be heard repeatedly so keeping that in mind and not to make them irritating. Working on a game and with game developers is an experience that re taught me to speak about sounds using the common language of sounds and examples, and having visual aides is helpful to get a feel and starting point to make audio, I found it very helpful and will probably even utilize photographs, art and everyday life as inspiration for future productions. When working in a quite large team, ours was nearly 10 including animators, communication was important through updates, feedback and questions and having a lead liaison that was reliable was a great thing I’ll seek to establish in future projects.
The project is still in progress, I’ll update this post with links to the game and more audio as it comes out. Till then below is a preview, the second background music track completed using many of the same sounds for continuity.
Learn, Grow, Live Great!