Last week, I decided to sit down and write some music. Umibozu, our game, is a dark and atmospheric game centred around mysteries and sea-dwelling monsters. It is also very much inspired by steampunk with gears, steam and chunky machinery through-out. So, essentially, what I was looking for was ”spooky steampunk”.
After some quick research in the field (i.e. I searched ”steampunk music” on Youtube a couple of times) I found that similar settings usually go for a Baroque or Victorian inspired soundtrack with big strings, clavs and (surprise) steam organs. Some soundtracks I looked at were James Newton Howard’s work in the Disney films Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet (which, by the way, is way too underrated). Here’s some examples:
A common thing among the tracks I found particularly steampunky is that they were all very bombastic. They gave a sense of discovery, exploration and adventure, and hey, who can blame them? It’s what steampunk is all about. It did, however, not sit well with our game and felt like too much. It needed a slower pace, something stripped down and minimalistic.
So, I started looking at the instruments themselves trying to break down the music and see if I could create something new out of it. This is were I found out about the harpsichord, a weird piano looking instrument from the Renaissance that I think everyone has heard but no one knew the name of, as demonstrated by this lovely lady here:
When played classically, it defenitely sounds like something Marie Antoinette would party to, but played slowly through minor scales with a truck-load of reverb on top it could sound very different. I started trying different things with it in an attempt to capture the spooky and mysterious atmosphere, but alas it didn’t work. The sound, even though I only had a single instrument, still felt like way too much. The game is set on a big ocean without land in sight. The only thing you are able to hear out here is the wind and the creaks from your own fishing boat. Could I create something that mimics this? Something that accompanies ocean winds and ship noises?
This is what I came up with:
https://soundcloud.com/teodor-huldt/umibozu
To me, this is horror music in its most simple form. Just a texure run through a synthesizer. It sounds kinda like the wind and kinda like a machine at the same time. While it is not especially steampunk, it certainly fits the game and kind of puts you on edge, perfect for a mystery.
Anyway, that’s the journey I went through last week. I started out with big orchestral music and ended up with a single note texture. I hope I’m not rambling too much. Join me next week as I go from big band jazz to dubstep. Bye!
Teo's game design blog. 
Hi Teo,
I enjoyed reading your blog post very much. You describe the journey it took you to arrive at your final (and indeed very spooky) music very well. You talk about what you want your music to accomplish within the game and what feelings you want to evoke in the player. I enjoyed the little lesson in steam punk music (and why, in its truest form it won’t fit your game) as well as the video about the harpsichord very much.
I feel you could have made your post even more valuable by showing a little bit about the process of making your game music. What DAW did you use? Do you program the music on a keyboard roll or are your fingers capable of, on a piano, “merely hitting the right keys in the right order” (as Mozart put it if I remember correctly, might have been Beethoven, neither will be mad at me now for misquoting them anyways)?
As a closing remark, I want to congratulate you on the music that you made (I took the liberty to listen to all other Umibozu music you posted on your Soundcloud and it is all fantastic! This is the main reason for me wanting to know more details about the production of it on top of the design thinking that went into it.
Elias Faltin
GillaGilla
Hello Teo!
This was an excellent blog post and a very interesting read. It was very informative and described your creative journey from research and inspiration to creation. It was easy to read and written in good and understandable english. The videos you posted worked very well together with your text and gave me a deeper understanding of what you were describing.
I can’t say I have any general complaints about this blog post as I felt it did everything it’s supposed to do for the course requirements. However, if I have to pick something that could be even further improved on this already good blog post I would’ve personally enjoyed even further description of your creative process and even more music theory. What did you play on, how did the piece of in-game music you post evolve through various stages and so on.
Other than that I, like Elias, took the liberty to listen through the other Umibozu tracks on your Soundcloud. Great stuff. Really liked the Menu Theme.
And finally, I have to agree that Atlantis and Treasure Planet are both severly underrated.
// Karl Lindkvist
GillaGilla