Mosh and Motif: Musical Iteration in Faces of a Stranger
In my current project, Faces of a Stranger, I’ve committed to minimal use of video game music for player phase map themes. More than that, however, I wanted to have more custom music than I’d ever put in a single project previously. This came with the fun challenge of having to experiment with the types of originals I created.
Scattered all over the current Faces soundtrack is a simple, two-part motif from an old original I made called Unsure Journey. It’s used for Chapter 7 of my older romhack, Doubled or Nothing. If you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s a short audio clip of the two main musical ideas in their most basic forms.
The first seven seconds (with the harpsichord) is what I’ll call section A, and the last seven seconds (with the organ and strings) is what I’ll call section B.
I used a re-arrangement of these two musical motifs in Tango on a Tightrope, the map theme for Chapter 8 of Faces. The map concept is similar to the initial context of Unsure Journey, so it was meant to be a cute musical nod. Throughout development, these motifs ended up becoming connected to the main antagonistic force in the story, turning them from a cute self-reference into the motif for major bosses and antagonists.
With this context out of the way, the remainder of this post will be dedicated to how I made the second “boss map” theme, and the various iterations it went through.
Part 1: A Waltz With Insanity
The first iteration of what eventually became the second boss map theme was called A Waltz With Insanity. I made it one day to take my mind off college classes, and the name’s just an inside joke in my friend group.
(A Waltz With Insanity.mp3. Exported April 25th)
This track served the important purpose of showing me how potent the idea of iterating on the same map theme could be. If you listen to Waltz next to Tango on a Tightrope, you’ll hear a ton of musical and structural similarities. They both start with Section B of the Unsure Journey motif, which then leads into new musical ideas. At about 0:42 in Waltz, the track segways into Section A of the Unsure Journey motif.
Note how even though Waltz quotes Unsure Journey there, the melody differs slightly (whereas the musical quote in Tango is more direct). This is just a consequence of me getting better at incorporating motifs without coming off as derivative, which is one of the biggest challenges with using them.
Now, you may ask why I didn’t use this. There’s a few reasons:
- I didn’t think this song fit the antagonist it was going to be used for. It needed to be heavier. More frantic, less deliberate.
- There’s still some very derivative sections. I made this in an afternoon, and it kind of shows.
- Despite having Waltz in the name, this song isn’t a waltz. Waltzes are in 3/4 and have specific annunciations. If I was going to claim that I was trying different styles, I should commit to actually doing that.
Part 2: Who Up Distorting They Guitar
For the next couple of days, I poked and prodded at this MIDI in the hope that it’d change into something I was happier with. Eventually, I decided to nix the Waltz naming and make the song heavier, to accurately reflect what I wanted for the character that would use this. I wanted it to sound less like a stageplay and more like a Maneskin song. In doing so, I came up with a far more rock/metal-style revision of the Section A quote, and slowly began work on altering the rest of the song to match it.
Fair warning, one of the lead instruments is quite high and screech-y for a lot of sections. It’s not ear-destruction, but it’s quite grating. Such is the nature of WIP mp3s.
([SPOILER]Map.mp3. Exported April 28th at like 2AM lol)
The first 20-odd seconds is musically identical to Waltz, just with different instruments in a higher key. The same is true of everything past 1:20 or so.
I’m of the firm belief that FE8 NIMAP’s capacity for heavy, distorted songs is grossly underestimated. There’s only one real Distortion Guitar sample, but it’s not bad, and there’s some sounds that can fill in for frantic rhythm guitar (Inst29, Harpsichord) and others that can fill in for an overdriven lead (SynthBrass1, Inst104). The section starting at 0:40 in this track was the real meat of this mp3. It was the part that I built the rest of the new version of the track around, as well as the part that I never got sick of listening to.
Part 3: MoshPit.mid
From here, I felt like I’d struck gold. From just one really cool section, the rest of the song took shape, leaving me with the best version of the track yet not even 24 hours later.
(Mosh and Murder4_28.mp3. Exported, you guessed it, April 28th.)
The new intro parts were heavily inspired by Chop Suey!, of all songs. You can hear some similarities with the initial lack of drums, before they come into the song with a tom-focused beat, lacking any cymbals/ride/hi-hat (if you’re not a music person, then that means that the initial drum part sounds poundy and not crashy).
The new organ parts were also something I was very excited about! Most of the new organ stuff is actually just cleverly re-used from other parts in this same song, but it sure doesn’t sound derivative or lazy.
It’s around this time that I came up with the new name, Mosh and Murder. It keeps the dance-style naming scheme established by Tango on a Tightrope and A Waltz With Insanity, but unlike Waltz, the name actually fits. This version of the track is still not finished. There’s a melody at 1:20 or so that ends prematurely, and the rest of the song after that is still quite derivative of Waltz, but this was definitive progress that I deserved to be proud of.
Part 4: Finishing Touches
Eventually, I did have to finish the rest of the song. But funnily enough, the back half needed less work than I thought. The difference in instrumentation already did a lot, and all I needed to do was touch it up and spin a few new ideas in. This type of thing may not sound intuitive to most people, but it’s the kind of thing you can only get a knack for through experience.
(Mosh and Murder5_3.mp3. Exported May 3rd.)
The main highlight is the new, less overwhelmingly intense section at the end of the song. It lets the track loop far more cleanly, and also sounds pretty distinct!
After this, I showed the newest version to a college friend when hanging out with him later that day. He has experience arranging video game music for orchestral use, and he’s also really neurodivergent about musical motifs, so he really enjoyed it and gave me a few ideas for polish. With his revisions, I inserted it into the ROM, and it sounded like this:
(MoshandMurder.mp3. Recorded in-game on May 4th.)
Sounds pretty cool, right? Because I record this one in-game, you can also hear how it loops!
Part ?: What have we learned archerbias
- Collaboration is cool.
- It’s okay to scrap something you worked hard on. If you have to trash it, its best to scrap it for as many parts as you can.
- Innovation is the best way to avoid coming off as derivative, even when you’re actively re-using your own work.
- You will fuck up. It’s a matter of what you make out of those fuck-ups. Like I literally named a song “Waltz” when it’s in 4/4 everyone makes mistakes you’re okay
Alright have a nice day
bonus bullshit i forgot
(mosh and murdered by the windows default soundfont amirite.mp3)
See the filename. This is the song in the Windows Default MIDI Soundfont. I made this for a joke that wasn’t even that funny, so I’m posting it here where it’s equally unfunny
(unsurewaltz.mp3. Exported May 20th.)
This is an incomplete attempt to edit A Waltz With Insanity into 3/4 about two weeks after finishing Mosh and Murder. It kinda sucks, and is a total mess after about a minute. I re-used the waltz concept for a cutscene theme eventually, but from the ground up.