Composition for Lord of Rigel is rapidly reaching an end. In the coming week I will be working on three (possibly four) tracks – cleaning up* the Selach species tracks, adding drums to the hostile version and tightening up the mix on both that and the neutral. I’m hopeful that this will be a relatively painless task as they are very near done now anyway.
I also have a better idea for the sound of the Rigelans after a chat with the design team and may attempt writing the neutral version together with the Final War Commences track which will be a mixture of the sounds used for the Rigelans and Arcturans. I had an idea drafted for this already so may continue with that but I imagine I’ll try out some new ideas too. The Arcturan track has been around for a while and I have a plan for what sounds to use that will complement the Rigelan.
There isn’t actually that much left to write at this point and a lot of it is just cleaning up tracks and getting them ready for mastering. Cleaning up a track involves a few things. First, removing unwanted resonant frequencies, possibly caused by reverb build up. I tend to use notch and bell curves with a high Q value for this. Second, adjusting reverb parameters to remove as much muddiness as possible without losing character or tone. Finally, using high pass filters to remove as much low end information as possible, which in turn tightens the bass instruments and helps bring out the higher frequencies. Essentially, lots of small adjustments that add up across the whole track to make it sound cleaner and more separated.
There are some rearrangements to do on ambient pieces and some short event tracks but it is pretty close now, depending on how much I agonize over the main menu music! I have been a bit concerned by the amount of sub bass on a few and will need to reference them carefully when I’m going through everything but overall the balance seems pretty good. Join us next week!
