takunomi-blog/posts/TGWKaR DevLog - Sound & Music.html

<p><time datetime="2021-06-22">2021-06-22</time></p>

<p>One of my biggest concerns for The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit has been sound and music. I taught myself to program to start this project, and drawing I just did as best I could, but creating music is a field completely inaccessible to me. I love music, I’m just comically tonedeaf and incapable of getting rhythm (doubly unfortunate when people who teach music always rely on people just getting the basics, and if they can’t, they’re completely lost). A dear friend of mine helped out with two tracks for the game a few years ago, but he’s a very busy man, and I really needed more progress in this area. Then some months ago, another friend of mine decided he wanted to try his hand at sound effects and we had some fun evenings experimenting with what sounded good for UI stuff (confirm, move cursor, cancel etc). Eventually he wanted to help out with music as well. I had been unsure of how to feel about this. The first buddy I mentioned was also very talented, but both guys have a melancholic flair to their art, and I was unsure of whether I could steer the talents towards my vision (I shudder at myself for writing that word, but it is what it is). My first buddy had initially made a track that was, in a way, exactly what I was hoping for. It was upbeat, fast and catchy. The problem was, for inspiration, I had sent him a video of a song that gave me those feelings, and though not the same, I couldn’t help but feel he had created a fantastic song where his heart wasn’t 100 % into it. The second song he made was also great, but I really didn’t feel like it fit. It was much more his own style, and really, it was a fantastic song.</p>

<p>Seeing as I had earlier failed at directing my super helpful and talented friend, I feared something like that could happen again.</p>

<p>It seems a bit uninspired to say this (as I mentioned the same game in the previous Boss post), but I was playing FFXIV, and was running the Great Gubal Library with Jon, when it dawned on me how incredibly varied, yet still fitting, the music in that game is. I thought I had been a fool, not being better at providing some general guidance for the music, and then accepting that a different person, an artist, was doing their thing. Very well. As I was working on designing Baalianargh, it was obvious that boss music was needed. My friend is a gamer, so I assumed he had a sense of what would put you into a fighting mood when asking for boss music. Furthermore, Baalinargh has his different stages, so some music that could change over time, or three smaller tracks? Would that be enough to work with? Would it be too much to ask?</p>

<p>He provided a great track. It was his style, but it was definitely also what I had hoped. I think people will get into a good boss-bashing from that music. His work on it inspired him, and he made another track. This too was good, but I hadn’t asked for it, and wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was closer to his own style I felt, and I told him this over text. I agonised about it, because I didn’t want to turn him down when he felt inspired, so after some discussion I called him on the phone and we talked it over. I couldn’t be sure how he took that conversation, but I know we don’t always know what to say in such situations, so I told he could of course call me back if he realised he had forgotten to talk something through. About twenty minutes later he called me. I had hurt him. I can’t 100 % repeat what he said and what I had said, but he was definitely right. I had managed to phrase my thoughts in a terrible way. I apologised, and I felt awful. And then curiously, a few hours later, I realised what to use that song for. God. Damnit. It fit perfectly. I had had a very specific mood for a specific situation, and I just didn’t know how to ask for that music, and here it came, just straight into my chat feed. Since then, my buddy here has been incredible. He created a bunch of original sound effects (many of which I immediately found a use for), and has created songs for all kinds of situations. I am incredibly lucky.</p>

<p>These aren’t the only things that’ve occurred recently, but let’s keep this focused with just a semblance of structure, shall we?</p>