Wildermyth's first game trailer is out!
You should watch it. Allow me to make that extremely convenient for
you:
Annie is a star. She did a huge amount
of work storyboarding, animating, and editing. But since I am not
Annie, I'm going to talk about the music involved and the
rollercoaster of creating that instead.
Some truths from around the time I
wrote the song:
- The team was talking a lot about Wildermyth's opening quest: something strange is happening in the woods, and the threat turns simple townsfolk into adventurers and heroes
- I had learned a little about mountain dulcimer but didn't own one yet
- I spent enough time with my sample library to forget what is idiomatic to the instrument, and was writing impossible things that didn't sound like a mountain dulcimer at all
So I'm binge-listening to mountain
dulcimer playlists on YouTube and hoping osmosis will fix my
problems, when something glorious happens. Late one night, suddenly
everything from team meetings and the recordings coalesced into that elusive thing: muse-level inspiration.* The song came
out complete and quickly; it took about an hour to write it down and
record a demo on my phone.
Gentle reader, now you can hear that
demo too:
I thought of it as a cool little
internal thing that might contribute to our inspiration feedback
loop. Recently Doug had written a story about the cultists, and it
helped bring us all into that world. I wanted to do something
similar.
The team liked it! The idea of using it
for a trailer someday was born. It was exciting, and far beyond my
hopes. I decided to flesh out the arrangement, record it, and then
have it ready and waiting for the future. The song was basically
done, so the rest should be easy, right? Right? Hahahahahahaha no.
Arranging the song was rough.
Everything I tried felt derivative and stupid. Real talk for a
minute: one of my struggles as a composer has been to
accept that having a toolbox does not make me a hack.** The truth is
that having a toolbox means I have experience, understanding, and
contextual awareness. Still, sometimes understanding one's own work
can masquerade as feeling like it is devoid of meaning or mystery.
There was no deadline, so I worked on
it in fits and starts. Eventually the terrible guilt of having
nothing to show the team overwhelmed the terrible fear of showing
something bad. (I strive to evolve beyond this method of task
completion.)***
Asides aside, here's what I eventually
ended up with. I'm actually quite pleased by it:
Happy ending, right? But it's not the
end yet!
The time comes: we
are ready to make a trailer. Annie played with the audio against a
storyboard, and made a rough edit that fit the trailer's
story-arc and our self-imposed time limit. She sent me this, sped up
15%, for reference. I'm posting it if for no other reason than
chipmunk voices are funny.
I made a nice edit
for her to try, and a couple other options for good
measure. Instead of speeding up the song, though, I found ways of
cutting out more time without sacrificing the flow.
But
eventually, it sinks in that the song is too slow.
Not just, “a verse takes too much time,” but “this doesn't make
for an exciting, well-paced trailer”. I realized that using the
song was a dangerous assumption. It fits the world of the game and we
like it, but sometimes I like this
is a poison that keeps you clinging to something ineffective. Killing
your darlings and all that. But at this point the best option was to
somehow make it effective. Cue: STRESS.
There wasn't enough
time to re-record everything, so I looked for tools that could speed
it up without changing the pitch, over-compromising the quality, or
burning a giant hole in my bank account. I figured out that Audacity
could speed up the song and then bring the pitch back down without
sacrificing too much audio quality, so things were looking good
again. Annie also asked if I could add some pizzicato or something to
the verses. For the sake of getting her something to cut against, I
focused first on just getting the framework of the edit nailed down,
and recording later. But by the time we settled on the edit, she
said, “don't worry, I think it will work as is,” and I let it go.
Soon after, Annie sent the team the first rough pass of the trailer:
It was immediately
obvious why she asked for something more. There just wasn't enough in
the music to support the visuals.
I got to work right
away. It didn't need a whole lot – a new cello part to function as
a bass line, and more drum action – but that little bit made an
enormous difference. To keep things consistent, I recorded at the
original tempo, mixed the new material into the trailer edit, then
sped it up and tuned it down again. There will always be some things
I notice due to the speed-up, but overall I'm really pleased with how
everything came together. Now, it's a happy ending.
After taking this
journey together, I think it's worth watching and hearing the final
result one more time in context. Allow me to make that extremely
convenient for you:
*I do not believe in muses, but that is
another post for another time and another place.
**I could write a very long editorial
about this feeling, ways I've seen it manifest in other people, and
the environment that allows both it and an attitude that music is
worthless to simultaneous flourish, and oh wow, hey why does anybody
let me write blogs, I am too serious and introspective for my own
good, let's get back on track.
***For anyone who struggles with the
same feelings, I will tell you what I did to finish the piece – I
made arrangement choices that felt the best despite being hackneyed,
and when all the bones were there I embellished some things and took
other things away, and kept nit-picking until I felt good about it.
If this sounds like basic technique and a painfully obvious solution,
you are correct. The important takeaway is this: sometimes the
obvious choice is the best
choice, and that may not be clear to you while in the throes of
self-doubt. Take heart, my fellow stress-writers. Keep confidence in
your ability.
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