Henu
Dismember
I'm currently working on a very 80's- inspired military strategy game and taking a ton of references from both Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri. Which is challenging, to say the least, but also extremely fun!
I've been composing for games for years, but I've never been asked to do this style and while I can get some of it working nicely (on my personal standards), I get completely lost when trying to provide anything "less meaningful" or more "anonymous-sounding" music and everything turns quickly sounding like a hero is having his final fight against King Kong dressed in armour and machine guns.
My initial idea was to compose a couple of suites for different locations and basically just cutting them to pieces and using them as a "pool" where to launch the shorter pieces every now and then. However, slapping the files to the game made me painfully realize that while I've actually done an ok-ish 80's action movie soundtrack, it doesn't fit a strategy video game AT ALL. There is way too much stuff happening, too much dynamics, etc. It's like I can't give any room for simple development but rush into a crescendo as soon as possible.
After going back to the drawing board, I realized that technically all of these parts are ranging from medium to high intensity and there simply isn't enough of underscoring in the actual gameplay where you are just supposed to build and make decisions and not only conquer other players' bases. So I started to compose more stuff until I realized that I have no idea how to undescore in Ye Olde Way. In fact, I've done so criminally little of undescoring in general with an orchestra that I'm just banging my head against the desktop, throwing my empty notation sheets to the floor and playing absent-mindely either long and boring cello lines for idling or random woodblocks for suspension with my keyboard.
So, here's my question. How the hell is a proper non-thematic underscoring composed in those 80's and 90's orchestra-based soundtracks? I'm a sucker for that era adventure movie scores and could probably sing them while I sleep, but in those the music is mostly "on/off", very thematic or punctuating important moments only. I'm looking for some references which could help me to get started and to figure out something which would help me to "fill the blanks" between the more dense parts I already have.
Any help in underscoring (without using flautando chords, felt pianos and/or gamelan loops :D ) would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: The more I think of this, I'm pretty sure that had I ever actually studied classical composition properly, I could tackle this problem way easier. :(
I've been composing for games for years, but I've never been asked to do this style and while I can get some of it working nicely (on my personal standards), I get completely lost when trying to provide anything "less meaningful" or more "anonymous-sounding" music and everything turns quickly sounding like a hero is having his final fight against King Kong dressed in armour and machine guns.
My initial idea was to compose a couple of suites for different locations and basically just cutting them to pieces and using them as a "pool" where to launch the shorter pieces every now and then. However, slapping the files to the game made me painfully realize that while I've actually done an ok-ish 80's action movie soundtrack, it doesn't fit a strategy video game AT ALL. There is way too much stuff happening, too much dynamics, etc. It's like I can't give any room for simple development but rush into a crescendo as soon as possible.
After going back to the drawing board, I realized that technically all of these parts are ranging from medium to high intensity and there simply isn't enough of underscoring in the actual gameplay where you are just supposed to build and make decisions and not only conquer other players' bases. So I started to compose more stuff until I realized that I have no idea how to undescore in Ye Olde Way. In fact, I've done so criminally little of undescoring in general with an orchestra that I'm just banging my head against the desktop, throwing my empty notation sheets to the floor and playing absent-mindely either long and boring cello lines for idling or random woodblocks for suspension with my keyboard.
So, here's my question. How the hell is a proper non-thematic underscoring composed in those 80's and 90's orchestra-based soundtracks? I'm a sucker for that era adventure movie scores and could probably sing them while I sleep, but in those the music is mostly "on/off", very thematic or punctuating important moments only. I'm looking for some references which could help me to get started and to figure out something which would help me to "fill the blanks" between the more dense parts I already have.
Any help in underscoring (without using flautando chords, felt pianos and/or gamelan loops :D ) would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: The more I think of this, I'm pretty sure that had I ever actually studied classical composition properly, I could tackle this problem way easier. :(
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