Alright, thanks. I’m thinking (a dangerous habit, I know) that we should start building a set of stingers for different events in the game, since a lot of the focus at the moment has been on longer background pieces. Things like “predator spotted” or “nuclear bomb detonated” come to mind…
Yep, we’ll definitely need a lot of those for later stages. Unfortunately we don’t know the whole list yet, because we don’t know much about what will be in many of them. Create some anyway, and then we can just use the ones we need.
Here’s the fixed Robocracy Theme:
I won’t have a lot of time to work on Thrive for a while now, so expect this to be my only significant composition until further notice.
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Wow! That’s so vastly improved by the change! Like, improving a drum track is usually a pretty innocuous change, but the innocuous change here really changed the way the song sounds and made it like a bazillion times better! Good job! (also i actually really like the sound of that repeating bass)
Took a while, but here’s a new theme:
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This is a really delightful tune.
I’m in the middle of making an updated Main Theme, but it probably won’t be done for quite a while yet. I’ve decided to open it up to suggestions from others on what they think it should be like, plus any actual musical contributions from other composers. For reference, it’s in the key of F minor at 136bpm. If you want, create some musical phrases which fit to this requirement (probably only one instrument for each), post a download link to the audio and I’ll try and incorporate them somewhere. Alternatively, you could always just create interesting sounds without tempo to add to it.
Oh, I had already made a few scenes for the first intro and choreographed them accordingly, but I still have all the assets, so let me know how so you expect to finish the new theme, I can re-render the scenes and edit them to match.
To be honest it might be useful to work in reverse, i.e. organising the structure based on what you have in mind for the video. I realise if you’ve done it based on the old theme it’ll be pretty similar already, but it would be useful to know when there could be an extra crescendo or something.
I think the theme would turn out better if you had complete freedom. Like i said, the scenes can just be re-rendered, music takes much longer to change. All I really need is a soft ending, so I can mix the current intro sound with the new scene at the end.
I’d be happy to help! I just am not entirely certain what you need here.
Either:
- Short motifs of one or multiple instruments to fit into the updated Main Theme.
- Individual interesting sound effects for the same purpose.
To clarify, these would be in the form of audio files sent to me so I can add them to what I’ve got already and build off from them.
Here are some relatively quickly iterated cues.
Any that get okay’d will be developed so as to have the current version and an “agitated” or “action” version as well.
Let me know if these are too off-base (or if they are alright) or anything else that may be on your mind about what I’m doing! 
Cheers!
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Holy cow. These are great.
I love how understated they all are. A lot of our composers (me included) tend to get a bit bombastic, which isn’t always the way to go for video game soundtracks.
Excluding a bit of variation to extend it (but not much because its main draw is its simplicity), I think the first track is near perfect. It would work amazingly as an Awakening Stage theme, when your organism starts developing better brain capacity towards eventual tribalism.
One tiny nitpick with the second track is that the main melody feels a little ponderous at times. I’m not sure how you could fix it - perhaps playing with articulation by throwing in a few staccato notes? Other than that, it too is great, and in my opinion it doesn’t need an “action” version.
The third track conjures up images of the Victorian era, so I think it could work as an early Industrial theme. I would like to see a build up of tension in the finished version though - try and make it gradually grander as it approaches the end (brass, orchestral percussion, general increasing dynamics), before going back to that lovely string cadence.
I’m surprised I hadn’t considered anything like the fourth track before for the Industrial Stage, because it gives the feeling of a mid-20th century metropolis. It might not work as well as I’m hoping, but could you try adding some synth elements and a bigger jazz frontline as the texture thickens and volume gets louder? It works great as is, it just doesn’t feel entirely alien enough for an industrialised nation on another planet.
(Wow, those cues are amazing! I’m guilty as charged for bombastic composition, so many kudos for keeping the activity under control in those tracks!)
I wrote this as a theme for chasing prey during the animal stage. I was going to do one for being chased by another predator as well, but right now’s a very slow time for music production on my end and I wanted to get this up now, while it’s done.
https://soundcloud.com/visiblesoundscape/predator-thrive-animal-chase
I’m willing to recycle the themes into something less electronic if you feel this is a bit far off. My natural style just crept in while I was putting it together.
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Sounds great! I think rather than removing the synth elements, it might be better to embrace them and rebrand the theme as something else (maybe for late Industrial Stage combat?). For instance, I’d like to hear what it sounds like with some of the strings replaced with synthesizers and electro percussion.
I’ll take a look at making some edits! Thanks for the notes!
Edit 1:
To give a bit of context to my thought process for these:
Instinct - Using elementary instruments more closely aligned with protomusical structures (so that’s voice, basic pipe instruments, drums) with an incredibly simple/sparse layout that would work as chant or verse.
Civility - Again, I aimed for instrumentation of an era - namely that of the Romans around 1000 BC - 100 AD - I also went for a very structured, simplistic form that wasn’t super dense as it was the style of the time. (It’s easily my least favorite of the four, so I may take more liberties with this one and expand into some complex strings or something)
Enlightenment - I was aiming for a quasi-string quartet feel (thus the only instruments being two violins, a viola, and a cello), but I could see expanding it to include a more full ensemble (possibly a full orchestra, though I may stick to only strings and woodwinds to fit the feel of it all)
Globalization - This was more of a modern piece, so I used a lot of variations on small ensembles (jazz bands and the like - That’s why I lead with Marimba and Vibes, for instance) and more loosely used jazz scale functions in the structure of it. I could definitely see some scaling up in the latter portion of the cue to incorporate a few more reeds/brass and possibly some synths, so I’ll take a hard look at it and make some edits/additions.
Edit 2:
As for why they aren’t bombastic or “epic” as some would create - I feel that everything has its place, so I can do grandiose, if we need it, but I decided for lighter touches to start with as it better exposes (in my view) my style and thought process, so we can exchange ideas better on what is needed. I’m just trying to help out as best I can! 
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All my ideas were just suggestions of course. We could go with what you’ve got already and it’d work incredibly well, I’m just interested to see what could come of making some adjustments. Don’t feel you have to do any of them if you feel they wouldn’t work.
I’ve been working quite a bit on the updated Main Theme recently:
Since it needs to be the best it can possibly be, I’ve decided to upload a draft version so I can receive feedback before making a final version.
A couple of things I know are already wrong:
- The dynamic processing is all over the place. At the moment it sounds fine in my DAW, but the exported file has clipping all over the place. Any attempt to fix it results in either a dull or distorted sound. I’ll certainly have to fix this.
- This is only around half of the finished piece. Several notable sections from previous versions are missing, and I’ll get to adding those alongside ironing out everything already in place.
- Strings. Gah, strings. No matter what I do to them, they always sound fake and plastic. It’s a slight improvement from v8, which was itself a massive overhaul of v7, but God am I fed up with string micromanagement.
@visiblesoundscape
I included some of your snippets, though most are quite heavily edited. I hope you’re ok with that.
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