Aims:
Tempo choice
Instrumentation
Song structure
The track Colossal by Joris de Man is a combat track used in the game Horizon: Zero Dawn. I chose this song for a multitude of reasons mostly because it is one of the main reference tracks we chose for our project to make a song similar to this one. I aim to find out more about this song by analysing and understanding its core elements so we can use them for our own project. Also as a junior sound designer music is a core element in video games and I hope to understand more about the structure of these track and how they are used in a gaming environment. Mainly I want to understand how our song can be similar to this and still have our own unique elements.
Tempo:
The tempo of a combat track is a crucial part of setting the right tone. Too slow and the player won’t feel enough tension or severity of the situation, while if you set the speed to fast it quickly becomes overwhelming and confusing. Colossal’s BPM is 160 which lends to the tension without being too fast, it’s a perfect speed and sets a really solid pace without being too frantic. Amanda Storey states,
“The higher the BPM, the faster the song, which is great for scenes that are joyful, exciting, or need to move quickly or intensely.” (Storey.A, 2017)
This is every helpful information for us creating a new combat track. Picking the right tempo is the first step in setting the right tone and pace for our song. We also chose to have our track at 160 BPM.
Instrumentation:
The instrumentation in the track is mixed blend of unique synths, tribals drumbeats and percussion and dramatic strings. These three elements combined convey the theme of Horizon Zero Dawn which is tribal humans meet huge robotic animalistic machines. The following list contains all the instruments used throughout the track
Deep bass synth ‘kick’ (very low around 100hz beats like a staggered heartbeat)
Tribal clap sticks and drums
Background ambient synths (whining, groaning, machine wind ups, wire noises etc setting an ominous mood, building tension)
Big steel drum
Techno synth
Sleigh bells
Tense strings
Shaker
Bass strings
In an interview with MVC Joris de Man, composer of this tracks was asked the question (which I was also asking),
“How did you identify the three pillars of the game to represent musically - machines, tribes, and nature?”
His reply was exactly the kind of guidance I was looking for when figuring out what instrumentation we should use on our track.
“The machine world was the easiest: cold, mechanical textures using circuit bent synths, glitching and stretching, and metallic overtones that were achieved running percussive loops through impulse responses of iron and metal objects being struck. With the tribes, the first thing we thought of is how tribal people would play music - it's likely that the first things they would do is hit stuff, blow on it or use their voice, so those are ideas we explored… Guerrilla made clear we should steer away from any music or style of playing that would pull it towards any particular ethnicity, so instead we looked at playing instruments in different ways - cellos with plectrums and the back of the bow, bowed guitars and piano strings, that sort of thing.” (de Man.J, 2017)
The article goes on and they describe numerous ways that instrumentation was used within the soundtrack and was a huge inspiration for us when we chose our instruments for our own HZD track. From this we chose our tribal drum beat, our winding and grinding synths and also strings as our main drama instrumentation for tension. (Joris de Man pictured below)
Song Structure:
An element to songwriting that I am still new to is song structure. Understand structure of video game soundtracks was something I really needed to get my head around before we started making this track. So below is a screenshot of Colossal in Pro Tools separated into different sections.
As you can see this structure doesn’t really follow a typical song structure as video game music is used in a very different way to film or normal tracks. When listening to a song or watching a film the music is always going to the same, there are no variables for what you listen to.
However in a video game a player is always going to do something different, whether they finish a combat faster or slower or run away from a fight the soundtrack needs to be able to adapt to the happens in the game.
So generally video games will loop music to fit what’s happening in the game. Obviously there is a lot to it which I won’t get too bogged down in but an article on The Music Maze written by Isaac Shepard goes explains it really well,
“When creating loops, you need to remember that the song arrangement needs to match the game play. Therefore, it usually makes most sense to split up the parts of the song into their own loops and then let the audio programmer mix and match them as appropriate. For example, you might have a verse loop, a pre-chorus loop, a chorus loop, and a bridge loop, and then let the game decide when to move on and play each type of loop.” (Shepard.I, 2017)
This is what’s happening within Colossal. There are sections that are designed to be looped over and over with built in transitions, tension rises and other variants so that this track can be used time and time again but sound totally different. Imagine it like this, you enter a combat with a pretty big and powerful enemy, if you had the same track play for the same type of combat and never change you would notice and probably get sick and tired of the out of sync music. Creating loops and flowable sections is the key to making great video game music.
Conclusion:
Through analysing this track and the decisions that went into I believe I have everything i need to get started on our own combat track inspired by Horizon: Zero Dawn. Some factors I now consider to be essential to my process are choosing the right tempo, instrumentation an synths to fit the genre, and making loopable sections of the track to accommodate the video game aspect of this track.
References:
de Man, J. (2017). Colossal. [Online] Amsterdam: Guerrilla Games. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqXngVvLH7s [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].
de Man, J. (2017). Behind the music of Horizon Zero Dawn.
Shepard, I. (2017). How is writing music for video games different than writing music for albums? - The Music Maze. [online] The Music Maze. Available at: https://www.themusicmaze.com/writing-music-video-games-different-writing-music-albums/ [Accessed 8 Nov. 2018].
Storey, A. (2017). What Are Beats Per Minute and What Can BPM Tell You? - Storyblocks Blog. [online] Storyblocks Blog. Available at: https://blog.storyblocks.com/tutorials/what-are-beats-per-minute-bpm/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2018].
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