Game 3:  Attack on Titan: Edge

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Brief: Menu music with the following keywords to describe the requirements: 

"Viking, Attack on Titan, medical, epic, tense, dying light, raven, bird, flying, dangerous"

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I was contacted by the developer of this game through a post I made within the "Game Dev League" server. The server has an option for individuals to make a post under the "open for collaboration" text channel, in which they can display what they're looking for, the skills they have, the project if they are creating one, the duration the project would take, what the collaboration would entail ass well as the status of the request, which can be set to open or closed. Below is my request:

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This project was perhaps the most difficult of all to interpret, and I acquired the skill of deducing what a client wanted of me even when the client wasn't sure what they wanted themselves. The client gave me a list of words to inspire me without providing reference tracks. They then went on to give descriptions of what they wanted using terms such as "tense ambiental music" but then changing their mind halfway through the compositional process to something dramatic and trailer-like. This wouldn't be the last time the client changes their mind, and this would have an impact on the composition.

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The game itself was a darker version of the popular anime series "Attack on Titan", in which soldiers must fight human-like giants called titans who seek to destroy the city which houses the last members of human civilisation. The soldiers use a type of harnessed gear that propels them through the air with the help of gas canisters and grapple hooks. The way to kill Titans is to manoeuvre themselves through the air to cut the nape of the neck of the giants, as it is their only fatal point. The game has you, therefore, re-enacting these actions in a 3d scaled world with you as the player assuming the role of one of these soldiers. 

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I began working on a track with the purpose of filling out the menu music. The client wanted a tense but orchestral drop in a minor key, so I returned to my "Aseum project" instrumentation to achieve the sound. I used the bow/pizzicato articulation on one of Aperture Orchestra's violin presets and used taiko drums for the purposes of creating a loud enough drum pattern to be noticed when listening to the track but not so obvious that it dominates the soundscape. The use of the Taiko drums could also be interpreted as a nod towards the Japanese heritage of the project. Ultimately, I achieved a good start to creating the tension required by the brief. I built a strings section soundscape including long, expressive viola textures in the first section, before going for a heavy dramatic drop with the previously used "horns section battalion" soundbank as well as engaging all of the instruments in the project at once. Multipressors had to be used in order to normalize the levels in the track and I opted to altering one of the Battalion instruments by offsetting the "marcato low ensemble" element of the sound to +10 semitones, this created an impressive but difficult-to-control chord pattern. 

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The client then requested towards the end of my compositional process that they wanted the menu music to be able to loop so I had to offset and reimagine a lot of sections of the track, including creating an end section that could loop nicely back into the pizzicato build-up. this was the client's final request however throughout the process, the client had expressed a lack of clarity which made it difficult to compose something which would be satisfactory for myself and the client, including changing the function of the music (level, tutorial, menus) as well as the general atmospherical goal the song should have (tense ambiental, dark dramatic orchestral, flighty and hopeful). Below is the final result of the track incorporated into the game's main menu.

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The experience I gained from composing for a client as indecisive as this one made me realise the importance of clarification before starting a project. Throughout the process, I had to make time-costly alterations to the track. If I had asked the client to be more specific, even convinced them to join me on a call and establish what they wanted from the project in the first place, the alteration wouldn't have taken place. It would have instead been created within the first instances of the composition.