Describing the sound world of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie.
Can you describe the musical world of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie?
How did your compositional approach differ from previous games?
Lots of synthesisers, lots of processing, lots of saturation.
How did you differentiate between the music of Reverie and the real world?
Only synthesisers and sounds that evoked real instruments.
you’re free to even hear this happen in the second animated cutscene, where Polly enters Reverie.
Did you come up with separate themes for each of the Aspiration characters?
If so, how did you compose these?
What were your inspirations?
The Aspirations were some of the very first sketches I did for the game.
For each one, I wanted to write a sort of ‘pop single’ that epitomised their influence.
Chaos was all about unpredictability, uneven metres, oddly shaped phrases.
And that’s just three of them!
What were the main challenges when composing the music for the game?
How would you describe your sound/compositional style across all of your work?
That always feels super encouraging to hear.
I do it, obviously, but I’m always humming something on top.
Why did you choose this instrumentation for these projects?
How does Harmony differ?
Where does this come from?
Are you often drawn to projects with those sorts of themes?
So, I’ve just sort of embraced it, and allowed it into my writing.
What do you see as the key role of music in video games generally?
Is it part of the storytelling or accompaniment?
The biggest thing to me is that the music always reflects the player’s experience.
So, when writing background music for an area, you’re scoring the player exploring that area.
Maybe you shouldn’t have music for this entire stretch of time because it feels right for the moment?
How does taking that away feel?
It’s all part of the score!
How did the composition of this song come about?
What emotions were you hoping to convey?
Also was your dog in Chicory called Pizza or something else?
For me they’ll always be Spaghetti!
For me, the little dog was Marzipan.
It’s also the name of the character based on me!
Which leads to some fun easter egg dialogue if you choose that name.
