The House of Tesla Dev Log #11
Hello everyone!
My name is Tomas, and I’m a music composer for The House of Tesla. In the last dev log, Jana talked about lightning, and how it creates mood and visual narrative. How it always begins with a clear idea of what kind of atmosphere a scene should have. I like to think of music in the same way. Allow me to elaborate further.
As I mentioned, it all begins with the idea. Usually, the idea is in the form of musical motive, instrumentation, or specific rhythm. Since I can start working on music quite early in the development, at the beginning, I'm not working with the playable demo, but with the visuals. Those give me a broad idea of what the given chapter is about, what kind of puzzles you are going to solve, and what mood it projects. Then I try to translate it into the musical form. However since we are working with interactive media, the music must also be interactive.
Interactive or adaptive music is a challenge on its own. It should fluently react to the player's input and progress. And if done correctly, you as a player wouldn't even notice it changed. Yet it fluently transitions between different pieces of music based on set parameters.
I had the pleasure of working with Blue Brain Games on all three previous titles of The House of Da Vinci. Previously, the music played more of an ambient function. Since it was implemented directly with the game engine, it didn't allow us to do a lot of adaptive work. In comparison, the music for The House of Tesla is a totally different story. Thanks to middleware (a piece of software managing all audio and talking to the game engine), I was able to finally realize all my ideas of how the music could work in this game.
So how does it work? I'm tempted to say: „Magiiiiic" like Shia LaBeouf, but it's actually much simpler, it’s a set of parameters, which talks to the aforementioned middleware. One parameter I'm mainly working with - let's call it „In Game Progress" defines what type of music is being played at what time. In the real world, it means that the further you advance in the chapter, the more developed music is being played - thus rewarding you for solving the puzzles. I composed the music specifically to meet its need for variability. There are many more things that make it sound natural and the music will never sound exactly the same each time it's being played. So, if you get stuck with solving some puzzle, you can rest assured that music won't be boring after some time!
Working on The House of Tesla has been one of the greatest privileges for me as a composer. I cannot wait to go to my studio every single day and start working on it. The musical palette is also much more developed than how it was in The House of Da Vinci Trilogy. We are working with electricity and that gives me a much broader use of synths and also, I can use an actual Tesla Coil. Oh yeah!!!
Not that I own the Tesla coil (imagine how high would be just the electricity bills!), but fortunately I had access to one. My friend has a performance group, and part of their performance is quite large and working Tesla Coil. So, I asked him if I could record some musical material. Then I created my own synth based on just the sounds of the Tesla Coil. I can tell you - it was a lot of fun!!
So, it's about time I got back to composing in my favorite place on earth—my studio. I can't wait for you to hear the results! And keep your ears up for the official soundtrack release!
Cheers!
Tomas
My name is Tomas, and I’m a music composer for The House of Tesla. In the last dev log, Jana talked about lightning, and how it creates mood and visual narrative. How it always begins with a clear idea of what kind of atmosphere a scene should have. I like to think of music in the same way. Allow me to elaborate further.
As I mentioned, it all begins with the idea. Usually, the idea is in the form of musical motive, instrumentation, or specific rhythm. Since I can start working on music quite early in the development, at the beginning, I'm not working with the playable demo, but with the visuals. Those give me a broad idea of what the given chapter is about, what kind of puzzles you are going to solve, and what mood it projects. Then I try to translate it into the musical form. However since we are working with interactive media, the music must also be interactive.
Interactive or adaptive music is a challenge on its own. It should fluently react to the player's input and progress. And if done correctly, you as a player wouldn't even notice it changed. Yet it fluently transitions between different pieces of music based on set parameters.
I had the pleasure of working with Blue Brain Games on all three previous titles of The House of Da Vinci. Previously, the music played more of an ambient function. Since it was implemented directly with the game engine, it didn't allow us to do a lot of adaptive work. In comparison, the music for The House of Tesla is a totally different story. Thanks to middleware (a piece of software managing all audio and talking to the game engine), I was able to finally realize all my ideas of how the music could work in this game.
So how does it work? I'm tempted to say: „Magiiiiic" like Shia LaBeouf, but it's actually much simpler, it’s a set of parameters, which talks to the aforementioned middleware. One parameter I'm mainly working with - let's call it „In Game Progress" defines what type of music is being played at what time. In the real world, it means that the further you advance in the chapter, the more developed music is being played - thus rewarding you for solving the puzzles. I composed the music specifically to meet its need for variability. There are many more things that make it sound natural and the music will never sound exactly the same each time it's being played. So, if you get stuck with solving some puzzle, you can rest assured that music won't be boring after some time!
Working on The House of Tesla has been one of the greatest privileges for me as a composer. I cannot wait to go to my studio every single day and start working on it. The musical palette is also much more developed than how it was in The House of Da Vinci Trilogy. We are working with electricity and that gives me a much broader use of synths and also, I can use an actual Tesla Coil. Oh yeah!!!
Not that I own the Tesla coil (imagine how high would be just the electricity bills!), but fortunately I had access to one. My friend has a performance group, and part of their performance is quite large and working Tesla Coil. So, I asked him if I could record some musical material. Then I created my own synth based on just the sounds of the Tesla Coil. I can tell you - it was a lot of fun!!
So, it's about time I got back to composing in my favorite place on earth—my studio. I can't wait for you to hear the results! And keep your ears up for the official soundtrack release!
Cheers!
Tomas