When you take a holistic snapshot of the game, Glitchspace is quite a difficult thing to characterize. We are taking what is an inherently "normal," (by that I mean it's nothing new) subject matter - visual programming - and encapsulating it into what is visually a very abstract world.
So what does this mean for the music? Well it's been a pretty challenging and interesting process to figure out how it should sound: do we go with something "normal," or try something abstract? What instruments do we use? How does the musical contour change over the course of the game?
When I started this process, the team knew one thing: we weren't interested in making a score that was "epic," or just about dumping electronica Glitch beats everywhere: that's just way too obvious and derivative. We wanted something different and more restrained; where every instrument and nuance counted for something and mattered. After mulling around with a few ideas I think we're at a stage now where the music is in the right place and lives up to this ideal. Whilst I don't want to give too much away at this stage (for us the music and art is a very intrinsic part of the game's narrative experience) I'm here to report some of the many creative processes (and keyboard bashing) that I went through to get to this stage. These examples are unmixed "demos," at present but the final release of the game will see everything fully polished to super shiny detail.
So let's start at the beginning. Of the game that is. With version 2.0 that will be dropping soon, you'll be starting your musical journey with a soundtrack that is super simple: literally one layer. This was a creative decision on our part as we wanted the music of Glitchspace to be something that almost mimicked the actions of the player as they program: hearing simple ideas first, before proceeding into more complex ones:
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/simple-layer
If you're interested, I designed that drone out of a Music Box I sampled to death for a library I worked on. I actually only needed one note though from the recorded set to make it. Here's what that sounded like before: from sample, to being processed in a multitude of ways to make the drone:
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/simple-layer-design
From there, the soundtrack will of course evolve, adding more layers and becoming more complex as a result. Let's fast forward into the game to give you an example of what that's like:
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/astral-projection-demo
What I particularly like about going down more of an abstract route is it allows for much more creative freedom in the styles you explore. Therefore we also wanted to try and bring in organic elements into not only the environmental geometry, but also the music as well. Check it out:
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/void-demo
Interestingly I actually didn't write any of the music tracks I've done so far concurrently to how the game has been developed. It's in fact been quite the opposite for me: I found myself initially getting too hung up in figuring out how the start should sound. The problem with this that I discovered quite quickly was that with the art in a state of flux, each time I thought I had nailed down the starting music, it would become redundant with the art changes brought in. By doing a reverse engineering approach from complex to simple, I found that I was able to get that one layer sounding like it should be.
Overall, if you wanted to sum up what sort of feel we're going for I've found I've taken most inspiration so far from Brian Eno, particulary Music For Airports (such a good record and is one of my personal favourites):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KGMo9yOaSU
Even though I've been involved with Glitchspace for two years now, I've never really felt like I've had the opportunity to properly get into the gritty stuff with Glitchspace's soundtrack. However the past few months of the project have changed that and I think players are going to not only like what they see for 2.0 onwards, but hear too!
Ronan