We told you the game tells the story about a bard. But there’s no bard without his songs. So now I'll talk you a bit about the creation of the game’s theme songs.
What’s the most difficult with games soundtracks is the repeat factor. You have to keep in mind the song’s gonna repeat again and again when the player will play to the game. This means the music have to loop and should avoid being annoying. Moreover the music shouldn’t take too much space in the game, in the sense that it shouldn’t distract the player. So the challenge is to create a non-repetitive but looping song which shouldn’t be too intrusive but not boring either.
On our previous game I had to deal with a cow-boy theme which wasn’t actually so complicated since my favorite instrument is the guitar. But with Bardadum we are into a medieval theme, the challenge was a bit higher.
The first question was: what's medieval music? The point is not to write a thesis about it but just to identify the different instruments from the era. And then we usualy find some lute, harp, flute, tambourine, harpsichord… this kind of instruments.
The sound of a guitar was way to rich to fit with the lute. So I used a ukulele and back it up with guitars to amplify the sound. Particularly the bass that was missing with the ukulele.
I tried to modify ukulele or guitar samples to create a harp sound but never managed to…
However, I reproduced a harpsichord-ish sound with the guitar. Playing the strings in specific way and putting the microphone at the right place to record it did the trick.
The flute was another issue, the two first songs originaly had flute lines but I wasn’t satisfied with it. Anytime I recorded it, it sounded like out of tune. So I gave up on it.
Then I decided to replace the flute with some “noises” from my kid electronic organ. That’s always like fighting to use this thing, it barely still works. Aah I wish I could have some nice instruments and a real studio to record music…
And then tambourine, or sound-like. Some percussions with my guitar and small bells did the trick.
One other instrument I included lately in the creation was the Jew’s harp. I wanted this kind of sound for the swamp world. I first tried an occidental/modern one… Oh man ! This is so impossible to make a sound with this. Moreover that totally hurts your mouth. No way I could use it. Fortunately, an australian friend showed me some vietnameses jew’s harps times ago, I bought a couple of these, et voilà! These vietnameses ones are called Dan Moï, it’s very easy to use and the sound is so nice. (And it’s quite cheap too ;)).
Plus some back vocals here and there and Bardadum theme came to life.
You can listen to the original soundtrack here:
。Jrtessier.bandcamp.com
。Soundcloud.com
A bientôt ! :)
JR.
