I picked it up again after the summer, and the visual style of the game had really started to fall into place. After that, some time in March, I put the Smash hit music on hold, and focused on finishing Sprinkle Islands. After a while I presented a second batch of ideas, and this time we all felt that we were going somewhere, and I still think that there are some really nice ideas in there. Dennis and Henrik presented a couple of reference tracks, (Shigeto – Look at all the Smiling Faces, Gold Panda – Fifth Ave, Robot Koch – Water and Solutions, to name a few) that all had features they wanted for the music, big sounding spacey reverb, interesting drum programming, warm analog sounding sampled beats, a bit of static, and some heavier beats and analog synth stuff as well. I tweaked the sketches for a bit, but then we decided (thankfully!) to move on in an another direction. Dennis had suggested that the music should be divided into 24 second parts in 120 bpm, and that all parts should be able to be played in any order and still make musical sense. They were based around heavily processed drums, some ambient synth chords and some melodic arpeggio stuff. I did the first couple of sketches in February. Something I’m very thankful for, cause their feedback, ideas, references and the discussions we had made it all so much better in the end. It took a while while for me to find the right style, partly because of the fact that we worked on Sprinkle Islands at the same time, and partly because Dennis and Henrik were quite particular about the music. They knew right from the start that they wanted the music to be electronic, and that the style of the game would differ a lot from earlier Mediocre games. So I thought I’d write a little something about that.ĭennis and Henrik started working on what would become Smash Hit sometime during the fall of 2012, and I joined in sometime in January 2013. And equally humbled by album downloads, spontaneous remixes, and questions from fellow producers regarding the inception of the music. I’m very happy for all for the kind words I’ve received through e-mails, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and other places. And i’d like to think that the fact that we really worked hard on getting the music and sound design to fit the game really paid off too. A game that, thankfully, lived up to it’s name and became quite a smash hit indeed. Because of the enormous reach of the game, my music has been heard by millions of people that would have never heard it if it wasn’t in a game. And in the end definitely the most rewarding. Writing the music for Smash Hit was probably the most challenging of all the games I’ve worked on with Mediocre. But enough about us, here’s a piece by Douglas explaining the challenges and process of creating Smash Hit’s soundtrack! Douglas is also the mastermind behind the music featured in our previous games like Granny Smith and the Sprinkle Series.
Today’s post is guest written by Douglas and was originally published on his Bandcamp site. Since Smash Hit was released in March 2014 we at Mediocre have received tons of emails and messages asking us about the music featured in the game! It really seems like you guys are loving the tracks our composer Douglas Holmquist wrote for the game.
Where the magic happens! This is where Douglas composes his music and sound effects.
0 kommentar(er)
