After the final crits when everyone was encouraged to make a short trailer-like video for their games and submit their work for the Rookie Awards, we realized that we already had the track for the video – the one I made for the crash scene, all I had to do is make it a minute long, which really wasn’t that difficult given that I had to retrain myself to keep it under 30 seconds when I made it. So I extended it to one minute, then Miranda and Doris both used it to come up with their own version of the trailer. Both videos look amazing, and I’m really happy that track helped inspire them in putting the trailers together. It was a nice way to wrap everything up.

My last contribution to this project was the track I made to run in the background in scene two, where the player explores the forest in search of parts to repair their ship. Although I think they only might have used it instead for the 3rd scene in the big room where all the alien floating jellyfish are held captive, I did see a clip where it also played during exploration in the 2nd scene. In any case, this is the first track where everyone liked it from the start. I’m, again, using Xfer’s Serum on this track for the synth brass-like sounds that accompany the pad I made with Omnishpere and Ashlight, with a soft sparse piano arpeggio running in the background. Very atmospheric and airy.

After playing around with some melodies for the audio puzzle I finally came up with one simple enough for any player to memorize and repeat. Eight notes playing one at a time plus another note that acts as a “wrong answer”. For the sound itself, I experimented with two instances of Xfer Serum. I settled on two saw-based sounds, one that acts as bass and one at a higher frequency, a couple of octaves higher. I submitted it for review but Doris thought the note that is supposed to be the “wrong answer” sounds too similar to the rest, so I redone it, but this time instead of both Serum channels playing the same note two octaves apart I changed it so one of the plays two octaves and one semitone higher than the other, making it sound totally “wrong”. Everyone was happy with it this time.

The idea I came up with for the audio puzzle was shut down for two very good reasons: first, the music box sound doesn’t really match the full-on sci-fi theme we went with, and second, it’s way too complicated. We need something that would play one note at a time, something any player could follow and figure out, even if they don’t have a musical ear. Doris said she wants to integrate the puzzle on a pad with nine buttons, so she needs a sequence of eight notes plus one extra note that has nothing to do with the sequence.

I came across a very interesting article on the Lambert Castle Museum website, written in 1971 by John A. Pfirrmann, a dealer of fine arts, about the history of the music box – https://lambertcastle.org/the-age-of-the-music-box. While reading the article I recalled that it was decided that we need to record some sort of audio puzzle for the player to exit the ship after it crash-lands. So I got to work and wrote a short melodic midi sequence which I ran through a plugin called Jessie Music Box by Necromare, which in my opinion is one the best VSTs that emulate music boxes. I then divided the track into four sequences as I envisioned the puzzle on a pad with six buttons, where the player must arrange the sequences in the right order – four buttons for each sequence, one button to play the hint, and one button to act as an “Enter” key.

I talked to Miranda, one of the IMMR students about the crash scene before I started working on it again and she told me that the whole thing should be around 25 seconds long. Equipped with the knowledge I gained from watching almost three hours of trailers I went to work. Like with the previous version I wanted to incorporate elements from the track I did for the initial scene for a seamless transition. On top of the drums I added an alarm-like synth sound I made with NI Massive X and a pad preset I found in Omnisphere. A few sweeps and a low rumbling bassline and the track was done.

While thinking about how I’m going to redo the crash scene track, I came up with the idea of going for a movie trailer kind of vibe. I’m talking post-mid ’00s, where every trailer sounds like it’s advertising a Transformers movie. So I sat and watched two hours and a half of YouTube until I boiled the whole thing down to its core – the drums. Most of them don’t even have other instruments except for heavy percussion and very low booming synth bass. The formula is pretty simple actually, all you need to do is layer a variety of very snappy snares, on top of every single drum hit, throw in some synth sweeps – the kind that sounds like your washing machine when it’s on spin cycle and there you have it – trailer music. Throw in a few low-humming synth bass notes and it sounds amazing.

I finished the second track for this project. I proposed we use it for the crash scene. I tried to include elements from the track I did for the first part of the first scene for a smooth transition, and relied heavily on Xfer Serum for this track. But with a bass line with notes arranged in triplets and a tempo of 156 bpm, I assume the track was a little too heavy than what was needed since I haven’t had any feedback on it. Except for Dean, he liked it, being a fellow psytrance fan.