I’ve always liked to compose soundtracks for games. Since I experienced the beautiful soundtrack of Yoshi’s Island, the idea of me being the next Koji Kondo or Yoko Shimomura has enticed me! I’d like to talk more about what happened from my first experience with a good OST to now, but I’ll skip it so I don’t bore my viewers.
A great opportunity to test what I can do approached me when a lead sound designer was requested for my team. I quickly jumped at the chance to claim the role.
I think the first thing to begin with when creating a soundtrack is to create the main theme, unless you have ideas for other soundtracks that you just need to compose before you lose them (I record my voice and faintly sing what I’ve come up with, so I can compose later). All the other games has themes and it’s no exception that our game should have one too!
I thought the main theme of Spirits of The Shogun should signify and sum up the general feel of the game – the situation that lies ahead of the player.
I first went for a calming soundtrack, since I thought it would be great to have a sort of ‘calm before the storm’ feeling.
My attempts resulted in quite generic melodies which were predictable and slow. I redid a lot of tunes until I got one certain catchy melody. However, I lost it after forgetting to save. In the end, I went freestyle without any regard of the resulting feeling the theme would produce. I went on playing chords until I felt it audibly pleasant, then I had the chords repeating with more or less additional instruments and melodies playing together.
I got a feeling of anticipation and an excitement that kept building, and I was content enough with the result.
Since I’m doing music for a traditional Japanese inspired game, it was obvious for me to use Asian instruments. I had the Koto instrument being a lead instrument because most people associate Asia with it and it worked out the best of all the other choices I had. Other instruments I had for the soundtrack was for example Pipa, Erhu and Dizi.
I had to take into account that the music during gameplay would turn electronic when switching into the spirit realm, so my theme had to convey that part of that game too. I had electronic tunes play alongside the instruments halfway through the theme, as if the player suddenly entered the spirit realm. To have a smooth transition into the electronic part, I had a electronic beat vaguely playing pretty early on.
To have a good smooth loop on the theme, I composed the theme to end up calm again towards the end. Each electronic tune are stopped to play until the Dizi is left playing, just like in the beginning. It’s not the best looping I’ve made, but it works just well.
I like how I tried to follow a direction with the soundtrack by achieving a certain feeling, but transitioned into me just doing my own thing and it still ended up quite good.
Next up is for me to create an upbeat soundtrack for the gameplay. Preferably before everyone starts to believe I really made the existing one that played during Alpha, which is actually a placeholder soundtrack from Onimusha.
Antonio Ackalin 