Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like a change of season - I hope you've all found a way of enjoying this most recent equinox. My name is [TWDEV] SwadianFC, and my partner-in-crime [TWDEV] Callum Bigden and I make up the music department here on the TW team. It's our job to immerse you in a World War II atmosphere: each time you boot up Traction Wars, you should feel like you're crawling through the Normandy countryside, fighting for your life and the lives of your squad-mates – not sitting in front of a computer, waiting for something to load.
Fortunately, for the World War II genre, there is a wealth of music written for film and video games that has established an iconic sound - think Band of Brothers, Medal of Honour, or Saving Private Ryan. Unfortunately, for us, it's tough to get out of that style without leaving the audience stranded, and equally as difficult to write music in that established style and not sound like a cheap rip-off.
As a team, we decided the best way to determine a musical direction was to share music that we liked that might fit in the context of a realistic, historical FPS. So, we listened... and listened... and listened... and we're still listening now. After all that listening, we decided that the music should feel as epic as the story we are telling, yet accessible and relevant enough to satisfy diverse musical tastes.
"Music... turning eye candy
into ear candy"
Mixing our sounds together in Cubase
Our most recent task was to write music for a loading menu. With a sound concept in mind, Callum went to work:
We liked his basic idea, but some of the samples of instruments he was using didn’t quite sound epic enough. So we combined our music libraries, as they have different strengths. The result of was a much more powerful and believable track where the listener isn’t distracted by a poor synthesised sound.
With the team in approval of our collaborative effort, all that was left was to mix the individual tracks together, and then master the end product. While there are always things to be worked on and improved, we were ultimately satisfied that our creation is sufficiently relevant, accessible, and epic.
I hope you've enjoyed reading about our process, and I look forward to presenting more of our music to you in the future.
What the sheet music looks like
We are still looking for talented individuals to join us on the team, so if you think you might have what it takes or if you are just curious then you can check out our recruitment page for full details.
