This was a song that never went anywhere, written for a video game that doesn’t exist. I guess you could consider it practicing. In writing the song I tried to convey the sense of an exotic adventure just opening up before you. I was thinking of travel to foreign lands under a faked passport, masked betrayal, no one to trust, and just barely making it by your wits alone. Also, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Can’t do without the rooftop leaping.
The song is designed to loop and was intended as the opening song.
Pencil Racer is alive and thriving on AddictingGames.com! Go there right now and play the game. I actually think it’s quite fun, and I’m super happy to have done the soundtrack:
Joel Breton, the executive producer on the game, met with me, showed me the old version of the game, and asked for something ambient and conducive to thoughtful play. I came back a few days later with this, designed of course to loop:
Finally, after another few weeks, Joel informed me that the game had gone through some pretty radical changes - it was much sunnier and friendlier, and now the ambient parts seemed not to fit. I gave it a listen with the new graphics and had to agree: the ambient bits had to go. It was simple to cut them out, and we were left with this, which (did I mention a few times already?) is up online now. Hey, I’ve got an idea: go play it! And, y’know, you could always tell them if you like the music…
Here are four other soundtracks for cell phone games. I was limited to a 5k midi file and about 30 seconds. The other limitation, of course, was the midi sounds themselves, which don’t really sound like the instruments they’re supposed to model. But most disadvantages can be flipped around to benefit you, if you find the right leverage point, and so I realized that midi sounds are just, well, “video-gamey” pretty much no matter what you do.
But really, it was a lovely and enjoyable challenge, trying to fit emotion into a thirty second loop.
In this one you’re a cool bird in a train cart (who knows why), launching from a ramp to see how far you can fly.
This one involves smacking flies with a swatter.
This is a sad one. You’ve got to jump from a freeway overpass and try to land in people’s cars to score rides. It involves a lot of landing splat right behind people’s cars.
And this is a golf game, where you practice your putting.
I recently got a commission to write a handful of soundtracks for cell phone games. This is not terribly glamorous work, particularly since I don’t get to put my name on the music, but I’ve been quite excited about it all the same. For one thing, getting paid to make music is a thrill, pretty much no matter what. For another, it might lead to something bigger and better, and I’m happy to get my foot in the door. You never know where the word “yes” will take you, after all, but “no” is always certain: nowhere and nothing. “Yes” at least is allowing the possibility.
Finally, I thought I’d enjoy the challenge of writing short midi loops. It’s like a haiku - small, quick, hopefully significant. I found it great practice, actually.
My friend at Atom Entertainment provided me with samples of the games, and I started off by spending some time just clicking through them and listening to the music in my head start to flow. The first four soundtracks are below. They’re designed to loop but I’ve got them playing through here only once.
A driving/racing game
A spaceman jetpacking through a lunar cave
A whack-a-mole type game involving bonking things on the head
A geography game where you identify the 50 states by shape alone
