Hey guys, wanted to give my two cents on this topic:
I feel that with the current music in thrive, and all the songs written for the future stages etc, there seems to be a lot of good work done and thought put into why songs sound like they do.
I do agree that there should be maybe a bit more variety to the songs, especially since others are noting that the 6 seem a bit similar. I’d like to make a few suggestions in light of the whole revamp idea we have going here, especially if we’re bringing on new composers/producers (which is awesomesauce!)
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We should set a suggested guideline for the type/genre of instruments to be used in compositions (I say suggestion because if I say “no jazz sax” and some guy comes up with a dope jazz sax theme that somehow works into the microbe stage, im not gonna say no!) Just something to give new musicians a good entry point, and get the ball rolling for their work. Basically be like: “here are some suggested synths, bass, string etc… plugins that work well”
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I strongly suggest in addition to this we bring in a unifying feature to compositions for this stage. Here are a few of my ideas, which I’d love to get input in from other composers:
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Work with certain scales or chord progressions. For example you could find a pentatonic melody and suggest that be in every piece (albeit thats a bit jazzy but honestly really good since pentatonic stuff i easy to compose to), or you could suggest lots of p4 p5 type progressions similar to renaissance stuff. I can go into more detail if you care
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Pick a leitmotif to work into every song. This is basically why undertale rose to fame with its music - it provided a really good connection between every song. Id even go to say that there should be a main theme for each stage that plays at the start (and possibly at random times) that has different versions of this leitmotif in it. The great part about leitmotifs is you can be super super creative with them, which again works great if you have lots of composers working on different tracks for one game.
Thats about it for my main 2 points on how we can coordinate our music. If we think this is worth more discussion i can probably discuss it more and maybe get some rules down.