CALLUM COLLINS:
Exegesis Working Doc
GAME AND SOUND DESIGNER
Sound Project
To begin my project, I started exploring different contextual influences; for me, this means looking at game soundtracks and critically reflecting on the themes and composition of the pieces.
​
I attempted to focus this contextualization down by first picking a theme or genre for my sound-piece. I knew that from past experiences that I can quickly concept and develop synthwave and other more electronically focused tracks so I decided to stick with that focus. I had previously done some work with synthetic instruments and orchestras and so I really wanted to try and incorporate these two design elements into my project.
​
I have identified 3 contexts that will act as the critical influences for this project, they are:
​
Mick Gordon’s DOOM(2016) OST
Guillaume David’s WARHAMMER 40K Mechanicus OST
FromSoftware’s Kings Field IV OST
Mick Gordon’s DOOM
​
​
​
I’ve always been fascinated by the work of Mick Gordon since the release of DOOM in 2016. I have watched interviews and livestreams detailed his work for both DOOM and its sequel DOOM Eternal. In these interviews [links?] Mick details his creative process and the thinking involved in creating this soundtrack and how he was able to take the original 8bit sounds and motifs of the original doom games and elevate them into the modern video game space.
The other reason for his influence on the project is his use of noise and ambient electronic sounds. These sounds add levels of texture to the soundtrack and are the primary reason why the DOOM soundtrack was so successful; without this texture, it is just metal music.
This reflects one of the themes of DOOM which is the merging of flesh and steel, creating cyber-demons.
​
WARHAMMER 40K Mechanicus
​
​
​
Warhammer 40k is a fantasy world and one of the races in this world is called the Adeptus Mechanicus; a race of Martians whose religion surrounds the Machine God. For the Adeptus Mechanicus, every machine has a spirit that inhabits it. When machinery breaks it is the job of a tech priest to sanctify the machine and repair it, both physically and spiritually. They are heavily cybernetically augmented beings, like the cyber-demons of DOOM.
This is philosophy is reflected in the soundtrack for the game; strong atmospheric tones are interrupted with jarring electronic noises but softened with the use of gothic style choir and orchestra. It is this connection between electronica and orchestra that I want to replicate in my sound-piece. All of the tracks move you into the space, you can definitely feel as though you are there in some gothic chapel littered with machines and odd, alien technology.
​
King’s Field IV
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
This soundtrack is not as influential as the other two, however the gothic theme of this soundtrack is more present and focused.
doom Guitar experimentation
I started by working on the DOOM inspired side of things as I have experimented with this before and during the in-class exercises, I had experimented with compression and noise already.
​
I started by grabbing guitar VST (FL Slayer) and creating a really simple loop.
​
I then had the idea of taking this guitar and duplicating it, altering it slightly, and panning each guitar to the left and right. This gives the guitar a bit more texture.
​
I then added my effects; reverb, eq and some automation to they slowly fade in at the beginning of the track.
​
Once I was happy with the sound of the guitar, I made a simple drum loop and added the same effects to it. Lastly, I created some simple noise and gave it the same pattern as the guitar with a slight delay further texturing the sound.
​
With the guitar done, I started experimenting with different atmospheric sounds but ultimately I need a new project, focusing on atmosphere.
Gothic experimentation
This has been the hard part of this project. I have been trying to identify contexts I can use as a reference but the problem is finding the right sounds. I have gone through a large library of sounds and many of the sounds are good but not quite what I want. Normally I would simply edit them but I'm not sure what effects to use to create the sound I need.
​
More research is definitely required and unfortunately, it is hard to find.
Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor
I started by looking at the type of notes rather than the type of sound I wanted, so I looked into different scales. I already kind of knew that I wanted my piece to be in either D minor or E minor so the next part was finding how to write the music. I wanted something light and quick; this revealed Toccata, which means: "is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers."
~ From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccata
​
On this page, I also found this library of examples;
​
This helped me immensely as now I know how the notes move and I will be able to learn by replicating some of the elements in these pieces, starting with Bach's in D minor.
​
I opted to remove the Fugue from the section and focus on just the toccata and played the notes on a simple organ in FL Studio:
This was definitely the sound I wanted so now I was free to start experimenting with the notes themselves, changing up the progression but keeping the rhythm of the original piece.
I will continue working on this but it's a good base to start playing around with effects to see what I can create.
​
I started with some reverb and eq to really bring out the space. I then added a filter so that I can fade it in and out with automation. I am using a filter instead of just automating the volume because I think it has a nicer effect.
​
Next, I will start layering this with other instruments and to give the sound more texture, starting with a flute.
Creating Techno-Atmosphere
Atmosphere can be hard to get right and I find that layering multiple effects and instruments helps to build the space. I experimented with several different sounds and sound combinations and arrived at this example as a base:
​
​
​
I think it first the techno theme but also has a creepy sound which should help the gothic motif come through when I begin layering the instruments. While this atmosphere works for the beginning of the piece where I plan to build up tension, I feel I will need to adjust it to be faster and maybe noisier to keep up with the main section of the piece.
Final Intro Mix
This is the final mix for the intro part of the sound piece.
​
​
​
Since this soundtrack is designed to be part of a game, I need to make it dynamic, which means breaking the piece down into sections that I can loop depending on what the player is doing. This saves me a lot of time since I only need to create one dynamic track instead of composing a collection of musical pieces to cover all the moments the player will experience. Of course, it would be better to create more tracks and with more time and an actual game prototype to work with I would.
Creating the dynamic sections
Mixing the First Loop
I started mixing the piece from the beginning, using the atmosphere track to slowly build up my instruments. First was the organ/flute since this was my main piece. I still wasn't too happy with the toccata, but I cut the end of it off and slowly introduced each part of it while layering in the drums, which would keep the tension, and the guitar, which would later feature heavily as the main instrument and needed to be present beforehand to not startle the listener.
​
This section, like the intro atmosphere, needed to loop so that I could use it in a game.
Mastering the First Loop
To really get this loop to stand out I needed to use some drums to build and hold tension. I really struggled to get punchy, low-frequency drums that would still work on speakers. I started by adding some reverb to them and then experimented with both eq and compression. The eq was okay but didn't work well with the reverb, so I opted for compression instead. I added a lot of gain to the low and medium frequencies and gave the master compression a soft knee so it wasn't too sharp on the reverb. This made them punchy enough to stand out in the relatively muddy mix however when the drums are played close together, the reverb is very strong; this can be seen in the next two loops.
Second Gameplay Loop
The idea behind this section was to continue to build on the previous loop and introduce the synth which would be the main feature of the combat loops.
Transition to Combat
I needed a small transition for moving between idle music and combat music and since there's a lot going on in each of these loops, I choose to use a small section of the atmosphere and let it tail into some silence. I then broke the silence with some drums so that I could move into the combat section with some punch.
Combat Loops
The two combat loops are pretty similar but I was able to split them to create a bit of diversity for the player. The main difference between the two is the guitar. The first loop uses the guitar in sections, similar to how I used the organ/flute in the first gameplay loop, and the second uses the full guitar riff which I created using the same techniques as the guitar tests above but with a different note progression, designed to match the original organ/flute toccata. Since the synth was the lead for this section, I created a new organ/flute pattern to closer match the combat sections rhythm.
Two different guitars, panned hard left and hard right and passed through a layer effect allowing me to automate volume and effects on the two guitars simultaneously, even though the two guitars are mastered on different channels
New organ/flute pattern
Guitar pattern
Synth pattern
Combat Drums
I originally used a different plugin to create my combat drums called FPC. FPC is a full drumkit and I usually use it to get a basic idea of what kind of drums I want for a sound piece but I ended up cutting them from the final mix.
The Final track
Reflection
I am very happy with the way this piece came together overall. The main area I would improve would be the drums; I feel like I need to work on a sound piece where the drums are the main feature and build everything else around those as this project has shown me how important they are.
​
I definitely should have been testing this sound piece on different speakers and headphones as I developed it instead of designing the whole piece with one set of headphones. This is because it would have been a lot easier to master each sound individually, as I mixed it, to work on speakers too. Instead, I had too many different sounds that I needed to change all at once which was too much work for this project. I got the track to sound good enough on speakers by adding a dynamic compressor to the master fader and tweaking that. The problem with this was that each section has different instruments at different volumes and a blanket compressor can't be adapted for each section. I still think the compression was a good idea even if it does make the whole mix a little less polished/lively.