Hey all, it's Sean checking in again.
One of the first things you learn in any creative field is that what you start with is very rarely what you end with. From an artists sketch to the final painting, from a writer's first draft to the final pages, and from a composer's first demo to their final master. Almost any creative work is subject to change along the course of it's creation. Mobius welcomes this evolution. We like to explore the concepts that arise during production and let them guide us. The Apollo lander didn't touch down on the moon with the same thrusters it used to take off, after all. We are, as much as anything else, a deeply curious team. I think that attitude caters perfectly to the kind of games we've set out to make. I put together a nice little playlist for everyone with 2 of my favorite bands, Death Cab For Cutie and TV On The Radio. This playlist contains examples of 1 song from each band that evolved either in it's creative process or...perhaps more interestingly...devolved! In Death Cab For Cutie's "Title and Registration" you can hear how the personality of the song managed to retain the intimacy of the original demo while entirely changing from more of a singer/songwriter feel into an electro-coustic pop format. Lyrics changed. Instrumentation changed. But the bones of the song stayed, and in the end were more cohesive with the record as a whole. Now TV On The Radio's "Test Pilot" is an entirely different example. I've provided the album track as well as a "Re-Make" by Chilly Gonzalez. It's immediately clear that the de-evolution of the song produced an entirely new feeling. Something is "rainy" and very human about it. By tearing the production apart and allowing only the melody to remain, you're forced to contemplate the phrasing and harmony unburdened by the meaning of words. SO COOL!? YEP. Hey gang, It's Sean.
When first thinking about the score, I put together playlists of inspiring music, things I can immerse myself in that will start my brain along the right path towards finding the sound of a game. I'd like to share some of the early inspirations for Beacon 88 with all of our fans out there. You'll just have to open Spotify and follow this link: Beacon 88 Playlist 1 Now if you've been following my previous posts you'll notice not much in these examples sounds like the Scorescape I had posted earlier. This is one of the best parts about developing! Let me explain. When I look for music that inspires me, I'm not looking for instrumentation or formats or textures, I'm simply looking for the overall affect of the music, like a compass...but for feelings! There has to be something underneath all that technical information that gets at the heart of what I want my score to say. These examples gave me part of what I needed, but there was so much more to say about Beacon 88. I'm still finding new music every day to inspire me, so I'll keep you updated. Hey there Mobius-ers. Mobii? Mobiuses? Sean, here. I wanted to kick off one of the first posts of our dev blog talking about what the process of finding the music of Beacon 88 has been like, and to share some of that inspiration with all of you. As a composer and music editor in my time outside of Mobius I've found the best way to communicate musical ideas is to use examples. But with Beacon 88 I knew that just wouldn't work. I can't tell you how or why, but when we started creating this game. I knew music just wasn't going to do it. There is something inherently wrong in Beacon 88... There's a darkness to it that simply can't be communicated with music. Without pretense, my mind immediately was drawn to the sound of radio static. There's a disconcert in the sound of failed communication. I needed to get this feeling into the game, not only that, I needed to make it the central theme of Beacon 88. And along side it I needed to find a way to hint at the incredible gravity behind our Fleet's mission, to find a new world to inhabit. So along these lines I scoured the Library of Congress for great historical recordings and speeches, slices of history to give players context. My experiments produced the following sketch of Beacon 88's first draft "Scorescape", a combination of sound design and music. I find this sound weird and beautiful; a collage of music and sound that produces a nostalgic melancholy, a lament for what was and what is.
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