HI! Last week I started the creation of sound and music for the game Mermaid river. Making game audio is something that I think is interesting but that I lack knowledge of, so it felt exciting to address this task at last. In this post I’m going to talk about the music that I’ve made.
Mermaid river is a game with a pirate theme, so when I made the music I wanted it to stay within the frames of the theme. I also think that it’s important to adapt the music to the feeling of the gameplay. To make the music pirate like, I thought of what instruments that would fit the time period of the 17th/18th century, And of course I also thought of the music from the generic pirate movies and games like pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island. The fact that our game was rather slow phased and under water could also be related to a kind of Yoga, relax, water spring kind of music which did affect the result of this week’s music making.
The program that I’ve used is Magix Music Maker 2015, the program contains allot of different instrument effects that you can connect to a MIDI track. So the work that I’ve done is the input of each note onto a MIDI-track and the tuning of effects.
The music strip that I ended up with was a melody with three instruments (two different Organs and a drum) as a base for more development. The music made I would describe as a slow and pirate inspired and I feel that it fits the gameplay rather good. However there is one thing I fear: That the slow music will make the player fall asleep. There are some things I like to try out: a more decisive use of percussion, establishing a clear rhythm for the player to hang on to rather than slowly falling into sleep as the flowy yoga music continues. Another thing might be to add raise the BPM (beats per minute) and pitch the melody.
It has been very fun and interesting to make music for a game and as it is put into the game which earlier had no sound at all you understand how valuable this part of game making is.
Below I have added a the direction for a youtube site where I have uploaded the music strip.
/ Nils Folker
folkergamedesign 
Hello Nils!
I think it’s very clear what you have been doing this week. You did explain very well but you also managed to keep me entertained with the music. Well done, you made a great blog post. But blogs can however always be improved no matter how well it’s executed. And everybody has their opinions to what they think should be added or removed. What I want is just a little more details about “Magix Music Maker 2015”. Sure, Mr. Google is always there to help if there’s something I’m curious about. But is the program free or does it cost? If it does cost, is it worth it? Comparison with other programs, etc.… Such information which the reader doesn’t need to search for is worth gold.
Great that you added source material for your inspirations. That way I can get a way better perspective on what goes through your mind when dealing with your task. What I always find so hilarious is that at least one of the three media sources “Pirates of the Caribbean”, “Monkey Island”, and “Assassins Creed: Black Flag” is used to get inspiration. Well… It sure is very good sources to use, but I think it could be a very good idea to expand the research area when searching for inspiration for pirate themes. Listening to all kinds of Pirate Themes in different kinds of media will help to get a greater view at the subject. That’s basically what we’ve already learned in class but they used games as example. The same should go for music.
Btw… I love the soundtrack. Great that you could combine Pirate theme with underwater theme. And the melody gets stuck in my head too. But as you say you should definitely do a little experimenting with the tempo to get a better point of view. That is always a good idea. One will hear a melody with a new appreciation when doing that.
Martin
GillaGilla