Time Warp: Music!

We've moved on from the story! Who'd have thought it, we only took 3 posts, 2 of which were corrections for changes to the stuff in the first post. safe to say, anything that isn't set in stone I won't be writing overly detailed posts on again. Actually, I will, but not on the story. Nothing spells disaster like false hope to fuel the hype train. Anyway, we have a more important topic to discuss in this post! Can you tell what it is? That's right, because you read the title! Music!

Now, let's get something out there right off the bat. I'm not a composer, and I cannot make music for the life of me. If anyone could recommend any free programs or tutorials or anything (literally ANYTHING) then I'll be happy to take a look. But for now, I'm stuck with the world's supply of music. Immediately when thinking of music, my mind jumped to royalty free music. Why wouldn't it? I used to run a YouTube channel (I still upload to it occasionally), and I've used a number of royalty free songs in my videos.

But I always find that royalty free songs have a certain...generic-ness to them. That's no comment on the creator's abilities, it's far better then I could ever hope to achieve, but it just seems to be sort of normal. There's no real stand out orchestral songs that would serve for a sound track, they all tend to play it safe and stick to genre-based formulae of how to compose music that fits comfortably in the "good but not quite Carling" field of quality. It lacks an oomph that makes it distinguishable as both a track, but also as the soundtrack to this game. Basically put, it sounds royalty free.

However, I've always had one idea sitting at the back of my head, just waiting for the right time for it to come to fruition. I've sat on it for a while, but now I think it's a good time to bring it out for use. A man, named Gustav Holst, once wrote a orchestral suite consisting of 7 movements. Don't know what that means? It means he dropped a sick ass live performed seven track album, but before albums were a thing. Or recording was a thing. Anyway, this suite was called The Planets, and is a very famous classical composition. If you've ever watched 2005-ish era Top Gear then they used it quite a lot.

This is where I unfortunately have to give you both a history lesson and a law lesson. You see, here in the UK we have laws about copyright. Mainly, you can hold the rights to your work, as is rightfully so. But, nothing lasts forever. You see, after a certain amount of time, differing from country to country there is a time period that acts as an expiry date for the copyright, so as to not limit works for all eternity by some stingy dead guy. This is usually the year of the composer's death, with an amount of years added onto it. In the UK, this is 70 years. So, Holst died in 1934 of heart failure at age 59, and yes, I have done my homework on this. When it involves laws, you really do have to do this properly.

Anyway, Holst died in 1934, plus 70 years for the copyright on his works to expire and this gives us a solid number of 2004, meaning his works have been copyright free for 12 years! Crikey, it's a wonder you don't see it popping up more. But either way, since the copyright has expired completely, this essentially makes it open for whatever you want to do with it. In this case, it will be our sound track. Remember how I said it was a suite? And how I described that as like an album? Well each movement (track) had it's own name, which are listed as so:

1) Mars - The Bringer of War (composed in 1914)
2) Venus - The Bringer of Peace (composed in 1914)
3) Mercury - The Winged Messenger (composed in 1916)
4) Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollity (composed in 1914)
5) Saturn - The Bringer of Old Age (composed in 1915)
6) Uranus - The Magician (composed in 1915)
7) Neptune - The Mystic (composed in 1915)

Those are in order, by the way. I know that they were composed out of order, but whatever, that's how it's supposed to be. Each one is themed on a different planet, and is essentially a different emotionally-styled piece, each intended to invoke different emotions in the listener. However, what we're interested in is the movements Mars, Venus, and maybe Jupiter. The others may be used here and there in bits, but these three will be our main basis.

I say basis because they won't be staying how they are. You see, they're free of copyright, meaning I can edit them however I see fit. In this case, I intend to break them up into segments, so that I can play different parts when the player hits different triggers, making the music match what is happening in the scene. Why choose this suite over other ones? because it offers a good variety without losing it's cohesion, and plus I really like it. Why classical music? Because when done right, classical music is awesome, largely for soundtracks such as this.

One last comment about the music as we start to wrap up here, is that this music won't be non-diegetic, like most soundtracks. This means that It'll be physically in the story, as a real thing that the main character is supposed to be able to hear. This basically comes from a audio system built into his helmet, which story-wise will be to keep him calm and focused, but deep down it's because he likes it. He just doesn't want any one to know what Mr Bad-Ass Assassin Man listens to his tunes while on the job, he thinks it makes him seem unprofessional.

Anyway, that's about it for the music for now. This should be pretty final in terms of sound track, but you never know, as the story has proved. I've made some refinements to the AI and game mechanics, so they'll maybe be the next posts, but we'll see because I might end up splitting them up into separate things cause they're both quite hefty, I think. I'll leave you all to listen to the Planet Suite, because you know you want early access to the soundtrack. It's pretty cool to listen to, it's about 50 minutes in total so enjoy.