[protoviolence, malviolence, and making music quickly]
is now a bad time to admit these were my first times making video game music?
[back]
[written 10 October, 2023]
Making music for videogames has always been a professional career goal of mine. I love video games, short and simple. They’re fun, they’re wonderful media for interactive art, you don’t need me to tell you this.
More importantly, however, I have always appreciated video game music.
Sure, you could harp on about your Persona 5 music or Sonic music (because, admittedly, people do not do the composers for their respective games right by half the shit they say on the internet) but it’s always an integral part to the full experience of the medium, much like any other piece of media that we consume.
One day, while mindlessly scrolling twitter (or, X, I guess) I stumbled upon an open call for talent needed for this visual novel, it was hosted by vtuber and artist of adorable things Mado, and it seemed like something that I would be interested in. I submitted my form and went on with my life until I got an email to join the dev team’s discord server
and that’s when my fun little experiences in learning how to make VGM started.
making music that won’t make people rip their ears out
Part of what has always intrigued me about VGM is that it inherently needs to be unique enough to be engaging with the player, but not too overwhelming, but also be able to be repeated as to make sure the player’s experience isn’t negatively affected by it. It’s a delicate balancing act, for sure, and I was finally going to get a hand in that experience.
First things first was trying to come up with a motif for the main antagonist, Cautionne.
From the jump I was already rockin with his vibe, but I was having a hard time coming up with a motif from the get-go. Thankfully, Doran had a gallery of motives ready to pick out, I just had to find the right context to place it in.
A lot of what mado had given me to reference was super helpful in determining the vibe I wanted to build from. Something funky, but with a touch of technological sinister-ness(?) to show that he may be a goofball, but he doesn’t mess around. This was unlike the approach that I normally had with the sounds I make under melo-dii, let alone melodius or mellow.d, especially as it was much more sample heavy.
Eventually, I settled into a theme that I felt was fitting and one that Mado also really liked!
From the jump I was already rockin with his vibe, but I was having a hard time coming up with a motif from the get-go. Thankfully, Doran had a gallery of motives ready to pick out, I just had to find the right context to place it in.
A lot of what mado had given me to reference was super helpful in determining the vibe I wanted to build from. Something funky, but with a touch of technological sinister-ness(?) to show that he may be a goofball, but he doesn’t mess around. This was unlike the approach that I normally had with the sounds I make under melo-dii, let alone melodius or mellow.d, especially as it was much more sample heavy.
Eventually, I settled into a theme that I felt was fitting and one that Mado also really liked!
Cautionne, the GREAT Emporer of MalViolence!
I was making steady progress! I finished the first song and- oh, right, I got 2 or so weeks left to make the other themes.
While I did have some sketches made, they weren’t enough to really show, so I had to proceed with some tact to be able to make the rest of the tracks in time for the release date.
A key component that I picked up was that, in writing VGM (especially when its for a month-long jam), you need to hold relatively little attachment to an initial idea. In service of being able to sketch out multiple ideas and working on them quickly, I needed to make a pretty “whole” sketch, and if I wasn’t satisfied with it, I threw it out and completely disregarded it.
This may be a hard thing to handle doing at first, but it eventually becomes liberating when you need to work on things with a deadline. It can also feel creatively liberating too!
hindsight’s 0518, this joke sucks, but here’s how the “making music quick” skill grew further
September rolls around, I’m figuring out how to balance work, school, being an adult, working on an EP, being in a band, as well as composing the music for spooktober!
Thankfully, being in a composition class this semester has also had me mentally primed to have a very focused approach in composing the music for protoViolence.
“Neutral Tones” (known a bit more formally as “incidentaly i ought to consider where i stand on this path”) was a piece that I had mostly came up with by improvising over the very simple, satie-esque, changes on a wurlitzer. This was intended to be my composition midterm, but to kill 2 birds with one stone I showed it to Mado to see if she’d like it.
Thankfully, she did!
Interestingly, I didn’t compose most of the music through FL Studio. Since I didn’t have access to a DAW, I resorted to composing most of the tunes in musescore 4 (wonderful notation software that’s free, open source, and is ONLY going to get better).
What I found to be interesting was how quickly I was able to write out a full idea in relatively short time, especially when we had to make the theme for protoViolence more-or-less on the last few days of the jam. I quickly wrote out 13 bars, sent it over, and finished the rest the following night.
Other than that, however, coming up with the other themes followed my usual pursuit of improvising over changes that I made, but the focused approach I had here was vastly different than that of malViolence.
Other than that, however, coming up with the other themes followed my usual pursuit of improvising over changes that I made, but the focused approach I had here was vastly different than that of malViolence.
this will guarantee have me make enemies with violinists if I asked them to sight read this
and so it goes
outside of VGM. As much as I appreciate VGM, I would advise other composers to seek out the inspirations to the scores and soundtracks that they enjoy so much, since it’ll help a ton in developing their own vocabulary and have it apply to other projects, especially if the sound may not be what you’re accustomed to.
You can play malViolence here and protoViolence here