Music!

Written By Eric Fulton

Hello and welcome back! My, but look at all the dust! I know it’s been a while since my last post, but we’re getting pretty close to our launch date so I figured now would be the perfect time to jump start the old blog engine with a few words about the music of Voodoo Detective.

Specifically, I want to share a little about the philosophy behind our soundtrack, the process that governed its creation, and a little sneak peak at the making of one of the tracks.

I have to add that working on the music for the game with Peter McConnell, our illustrious composer and very cool human, was one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of the entire game development process.

Catchy Versus Ambient

When we first began working with Peter, we actually got off to a rough start. The first musical sketches he sent our way weren’t at all what we had in mind for Voodoo Detective.

Both Eric A. and I felt strongly that each song in the game should be memorable. Earworms. The sort of music you walk away humming.

But that sort of music doesn’t lend itself well to repeated playing. It becomes monotonous. And the issue of monotony is quickly exaggerated in the expansive, multi-hundred hour, AAA games that have become so popular of late. Those games fare better with more ambient music that doesn’t fatigue the ear as much when repeated. However, for our game, catchy is ideal!

Once we communicated our desire for “catchiness” to Peter, everything clicked. Peter has a breathtaking capacity to adapt his work and its style to the needs of the medium (our video game in this instance).

So we have catchy music! But beyond catchiness, there was one other musical technique brought to bear in our soundtrack. And there’s a very special caped crusader who would like to tell you all about it.

Batman

There’s an English word borrowed from German: “leitmotif”. From wikipedia:

“A leitmotif is a short, recurring musical phrase associated with a particular person, place, or idea.”

If you’ve ever seen Batman: The Animated Series, you’ll know what I mean. Batman, and almost every single villain in the series, have their own musical phrase that plays whenever they’re on screen. Sometimes it’s happy, sometimes it’s sad. But, it always suits the mood of the scene it appears in. In my opinion, Shirley Walker’s work on that show was one of its most compelling features. I’d like to share a few examples.

Here’s the Joker’s theme:

And here’s the Joker’s theme, only sad:

And here’s the Joker’s theme with a little more intensity:

And just for fun, here are a few of the other villain’s themes.

Pretty cool, huh? Especially that last one! Ha!!! And finally, also just for fun, here’s Shirley Walker explaining batman’s theme on piano:

So when we first began to compile a list of tracks we thought we’d need for Voodoo Detective, leitmotif was something we had in mind as we went through each character in the game. Voodoo Detective has a theme. His client, Mary Fontule, has a theme. Gordon Crumbsford, the greedy banker, has a theme. And so on.

I’d like to share a little bit about how Mary’s theme developed and in order to do so, we must now descend from the dizzying heights of musical theory to alight atop a roof overlooking the ocean at sunset. Two people are about to share a quiet moment together.

A Rooftop Sunset

There’s a scene in our game where Voodoo Detective and Mary Fontule stand on the roof of a law office at sunset. It’s a peaceful moment where the player gets to take a breath and step away from all the puzzles and the dialogue and the corruption of this festering town.

Like all of the music in our game, we started out with a document containing image and music references to similar work we wanted Peter to draw inspiration from. Here’s where the scene takes place:

Since this scene represents one of Mary’s story beats, we wanted to make use of her leitmotif. We told Peter the scene was to be melancholy, wistful, and contemplative. But we also wanted it to have a hint of romance, adventure, and some of that sweet noir magic. 

Although, chronologically, this isn’t the first time you hear Mary’s theme, it was the first time we set about trying to compile references so that Peter could compose it. We started out with a list of eighteen references that was quickly narrowed down to five. Here are those five:

As you can probably tell, the list is still pretty scattered. But not to be deterred, Peter took the references, all of our notes, and began his wondrous work. What follows are five distinct iterations of the song.

As you listen, you can begin to hear things take shape as we pulled in different directions with our feedback. The final reference we came up with that got us where we wanted to be with the piece was Marion’s Theme from Indiana Jones (written by John Williams).

And since I couldn’t stop from going on about Batman and leitmotif earlier, here’s a slightly different version of Mary’s theme for a slightly different mood.

One of the most seemingly obvious lessons I took away from the whole experience was that the best way to talk about music is not with words, but in fact with more music! Each musical reference we shared with Peter got us closer to the finished product than any thousand words might have otherwise.

With a Song in your Heart

I could continue to talk about how we started out with digital instruments and went on to record live musicians (as the game ballooned in scope). But I think what I’ve just shared constitutes the bulk of interesting things I had to say regarding the matter of our soundtrack. At least for now.

I can’t tell you how excited we are to share the rest of Peter’s incredible work once the game is released. Until then, I’d like to leave you with a little song (in your heart). The finished version of the song from the videos above recorded with live instruments.

Love,
Eric Fulton

Eric Fulton
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