Some Tracks From a New Project

Hey everyone!

I started this project fairly recently, and it's been one of the most amazing work experiences I've ever had in terms of team dynamics and a friendly work environment, so I'm quite happy to be helping them out. Technically, I'm not supposed to be showing anyone the music, but I figure it does no real harm since it IS my music and I'm only showing a few tracks for now.

I won't actually mention the name of the project, but suffice it to say that it involves dinosaurs and a certain extremely popular computer game that was recently released.

To the music: the general style is a cinematic, thickly-orchestrated contemporary kind of style that's mostly centred around orchestral instruments, but also has prominent appearances of various ethnic instruments and some rock guitars and such in some tracks. The nature of the style is, unfortunately, fairly derivative, so don't be surprised if things remind you of existing soundtracks - hopefully I do the style justice while still expressing my own voice. You can be the judge, of course. :)

The first piece is simply me improvising a bit on what will (most likely) become the main theme of the project. It's serving as a subtle introduction to the game for now, hence the title.

Piano Intro

I may as well get the piano-based stuff out of the way while I'm at it, so here's a piece that is piano-led and works as the theme you hear while exploring deserted city/abandoned facility environments, hence the somewhat empty and plaintive sound.

City Ambience

Next up is the piece I had to write in an hour or two to demonstrate my versatility and abilities for the project. I was asked to take the main themes of the original game and combine them with the main theme from Jurassic Park. You'll likely recognize numerous elements from both in this short little teaser if you're familiar with either soundtrack.

Theme Teaser

Now for something more exciting: the main theme! This is likely to be tweaked and edited and expanded/shortened for the final release, but this recording is certainly a bold statement of the mod's theme and it also introduces a number of secondary themes that will make a further appearance in other tracks.

Main Theme

Last thing I'm going to show you guys (for now, anyway) is another action theme. This is meant to be something of a rousing "setting out" kind of thing. It features some solo violin work and fun time signatures.

Move Out!

Enjoy and please feel free to leave your comments or even just general impressions - I appreciate the feedback! :)

Congratulations on landing another project! Sounds juicy. ;)

I take it these tracks are supposed to be consumed as prototypes? Just sounds like you're fleshing out ideas and finding your feet. I did find the piano stuff slightly contrived, especially when you place it over that brooding backdrop. Surely the piano material should be more a little more edgy so it doesn't sound out of place?

Anyway, I'll keep my eye on this.

By the way, if I were you, I wouldn't link to the site at all. Not only do these things have their way of spreading around, most search engines let you search for pages which link to another certain page.

Hey Mike!

I took your advice and edited my first post, I hadn't thought of the searching for links thing; kind of obvious :P

As for the music, you are quite right about the "fleshing out ideas" bit - I'm still working without too many set environments and no precise idea of anything yet, so I'm just writing whatever I'm inspired to write based on the copious story notes and team discussions I get to have. Very enjoyable system though, I have to say.

I probably agree with your comment about the piano stuff too, but I'm not precisely sure what you mean: by "contrived" here do you mean unoriginal or simply bad? I wasn't really intending for it to be very edgy at all, but if you think the contrast between it and the background doesn't work then I may change things up. Let me know!

Thanks very much for the comments! :)

By "contrived" I did mean unoriginal, yes, and therefore probably "bad".

If I recall correctly, a lot of it was chords I, IV and V with a touch of the old I-VI-VII-I trick thrown in for good measure. Kind of new-agey. That's really simple, and it works for a lot of stuff, but not - I feel - for this particular subject matter.

I think the material would work much better if it was a little edgier, a little more dissonant. I also got a sense of the background being a nice ambient haze but the piano sticking out somewhat. Maybe filter the sound somehow so it blends in.

Anyway, those are just some generic pointers.

Good call: I'll see about revising those then to give them a more appropriate sound. :)

RAWR!!!

...

Sounds cool Marius - keep us posted on what looks like a badass project.:thumbsup:

Hahahaha, will do. XD That was a pretty awesome reply.

So you're composing for a Mod for The new Turok Game?

Good guess, but no actually. Crysis - all the dinosaur models are completely custom-designed. ;)

Haha, I saw this over at moddb.com... was wondering when you would mention it here. I've already heard the Main Theme, and thought it was fantastic. The new pieces are absolutely wonderful too! You capture cinematic feel really well. Can't wait for more. :)

Thank you very much! Yeah, it's exciting to be up on ModDB. Which reminds me, I should get them to update our profile there with the new website link...

I have a question for you Marius. Are you getting paid for this project or is this for free?

Nah, I'm doing this one for free. I played through Crysis, absolutely adored it, wanted to score a mod of it, found this one, and signed on. I offered to do it for free because it's a non-paid project all around and, to be honest, the work environment is WONDERFUL. The team is just such a pleasure to work with and the game is so much fun that it makes it totally worth it.

They've offered to pay me something indirectly by buying me some sample libraries, which is certainly very generous, but it's certainly not my reason for working with them. Thanks for asking! :)

Damn! Buy you sample libraries!?! Really? :O

Where do you find such great people? Seriously.

Anyway, Moddb is a good place to find work for aspiring incidental composers, though it can be hard to find *quality* mods that don't already have a composer(s) on the team.

Yeah, that's why I love this project so much! :P

True say about ModDB. I also like looking on the forums of specific mod-friendly games I feel like contributing to.

Two more little snippets for ya. Both of them happy, for some contrast.

I'm actually amused by these two because they really don't seem to fit in very well with the project, but I was asked to make them and the devs say they're perfect, so it'll be interesting to see what they have in mind for them. The first is just a positive sort of theme, not a whole lot more I can say about it.

Positive Theme

This second one has a bit more story to it. It was originally written for something completely different and then it turned out that it wasn't suitable there, so I showed it to these folks and they wanted it so now it's here. I tweaked it to have some subtle hints at the main theme and then thought that it might make a nice part of a creepy ambience by having a modified version of it play out of a ruined car radio or something over top an existing scary exploration ambience. Anyhow, the first link is the original and the second is my "Radio Edit" which is basically just me doing some audio manipulation on the original to make it sound like it's coming out of an old radio. I haven't gotten to make it skip/crackle yet, but I might.

Happy (Original)

Happy (Radio Edit)

Enjoy! :)

How weird... :blink: Yeah, couldn't picture these in this mod, but whatever, they know what they're doing.

The pieces themselves are great. Keep up the good work! :thumbsup:

My internet's down, so I'm using crappy dial up right now. Will comment on your pieces when my internet's back up. ;)

BTW, working with mods sure looks interesting. The graphics, for one, are really awesome. Too bad I seldom play games that make mods out of them.

Okay, so I have some very exciting news to share with you folks, and so while I wait for Nigel's review and more, I'll share it with you:

Yes, that's right - the June issue of PC Gamer magazine has a full page featuring this mod. Talk about exciting! I dunno about "professional sound designer", but it's certainly good advertising. :D Also, the official full website will be going up soon, so I'll make sure to post a link to that as soon as it goes live within the next few days.

Stay tuned!

This is great Marius! Congratulations!

I'd like to know one thing though, when you were composing the music, did the developers send screenshots or a short demo for you to test out? Or did he just say I want something like this and you composed it?

Oh, I get screenshots, story documents, and I'm basically chatting with the entire dev team on a daily basis, so I basically know as much about the project as anyone - makes it really easy to envision the concepts of each piece that's requested. At this early point in development, there isn't a whole lot of ad hoc music that I'm writing - it's mostly just me playing around with themes and their potential implementation in various game environments that have been conceptualized so far. Since I'm also doing sound design, I've been running around recording various things for later digital manipulation as well, so it's quite a fun job - just last night I put together some dinosaur stomps a la Jurassic Park for the upcoming teaser trailer.

Anyhow, I'm glad you like it! I'll be posting a link to the official website (in its re-constructed form) very soon, I hope.

There's a link in the magazine clip :P

Very cool stuff here, I can't wait to see how it sounds in game :happy:

True say, Mark, but the page at that link isn't actually the final site - it's just where it will eventually be. I will hopefully be able to post the teaser trailer here too once it's made. At this point, it's looking quite spartan so I'm hoping I can convince them to make it a bit "more". We'll see...

Will the trailer have some of your music on it? :D

Well, yes in the sense that anything related to this project that you HEAR will be from me, but it might not actually be "music" per se because, with the current draft anyway, the teaser is very short and the devs want it to be extremely spartan in terms of sound design, which means that it'll likely just be some sound effects and very very subtle creepy hints of music.

I'm not actually sure at this point because I've suggested that the trailer be revised before being released but the discussion hasn't really happened on the subject yet. In any case, there will be SOMETHING, but how musical it is will largely depend on whether or not they revise the current draft to include more stuff.