Music for Gameplay
DISCLAIMER: The footage shown is from the 2018 game Celeste, made by Matt Makes Games and Extremely OK Games, Ltd.. This project served as an exercise in music composition, with the challenge being to produce music that would fit with the visuals of an existing game. The provider of this gameplay decided to add difficulty by giving three distinct sections from different parts of the game.
I divided this gameplay into four moments that each were given their own feel based on the visuals. I have never played Celeste, so I went into this with no preconceived notions of how the game actually sounds at these moments in the game. The whole piece was created using Ableton Live 10.
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The first section outside of the mountain is my favorite. The phrase that guided this composition was "Monastery on a mountain during a snowstorm". Given my own preference toward electronic music, I opted to make the main melody line into a reverberating techno to evoke large open space. The metallic chimes emulate the wind chimes you might find in a monastery. Something I did that I felt was really effective was the adding of a low pass filter to the music whenever the snow on screen was falling slowly, with the filter removed as it blows intensely.
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The idea for the section when Madeline was having a panic attack was an intense drum roll and cymbal crashing, with the eventual outcome being the roll of the drum slowing later on. I tried to make the cymbals chaotic, but it still ended up being too regulated and the balance of the whole section is just kind of harsh.
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Immediately following this is the slowing of the drum roll, giving way to the melodic drone that dominates the section. Again, I make use of reverb to imply space, or a clearing of the mind in this sense. The chords themselves are mostly harmonized but with a slight dissonance, blending together into a soothing drone after they're given ample time to stand alone.
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Like the first section, the last was also guided by a phrase. "Mystic factory". Not having played the game made me miss the context of this section as being inside the mountain in some sort of shrine, but with the robotic motions of the different obstacles I decided to lean on a more industrial tone. Rhythmic, metallic noise occupies the background while a warm guitar thrums in the foreground, creating an oppressive but strangely ethereal space.