Your Ears Are Not Ready
about 2 years ago
– Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 06:50:53 AM
We are really close now. We'll have a date for you shortly - lots of juggling in order to figure out exactly what that date is, but it is closer than you may think. And you're not gonna believe how good it has turned out. As we draw closer, we are going to move to updates every Monday until the big day.
Today, we thought we'd focus a bit on Romancelvania's score. We are lucky enough to have Jim Bonney doing our music. Talented as he is, Jim doesn't like to toot his own horn. So before I turn it over to him, I want to say that I am a bit obsessed with video game music. Half the time I'm working, I'm listening to a game soundtrack. Some days I'll just put Donkey Kong Country's "Aquatic Ambience" on a loop for more hours than I'd care to admit(you know by now how weird we are). When trying to figure out how levels should sound, I'd say to Jim, "I always adored Ocarina of Time's use of the glass harmonica in the forest temple, think we could work in a track with that?" And without fail, Jim would shock us with a track that slaps for days. Like Jim, I don't like to overhype, but at over 60 moody and eccletic tracks, I would genuinely put our score against the greats. I truly believe there's no game score that stretches so far and hits so hard. Prepare to be shook.
Over to the mad maestro! - Bill
These days I’m feverishly putting the final touches on Romancelvania’s soundtrack. I’m really pleased with how this music turned out… and there’s a lot of it.
We all agreed from the start that the game should have [almost] wall-to-wall music; and while there are recurring melodic themes, the musical style and instrumentation flexes dramatically from character-to-character, and location-to-location.
We’ve got classic spooky instruments like pipe organ and theremin, but we also mash up classical string quintets, shred-metal guitar, electronica dance beats, beatnik jazz sax, thunderous drums, soothing harp, not-so-soothing accordian, 12-string acoustic guitar, hippie drum circles, plucky harpsichord, kitsch-y 50’s vibraphone, Alpine horn (and yodeling!), analog synthesizers, opera singers, down-n-dirty blues harmonica, a men’s chorus, Italian mandolins, funk bass, 8-bit chip-tunes, Jamaican steel drums, Japanese shakuhachi flute, loads of other exotic world instruments… we even have a few Christmas carols!
In fact, pretty much the only instrument we DON’T have in this score is banjo… and that was totally intentional. (sorry Dad… maybe next time!)
With that, here's a track from one of our secret levels (yeah, we have those, the game is huge). It's a chase scene that is ridiculous and absurd and was loosely inspired by a DKC level (and I've reached my allotment of DK references for life). Enjoy!
