First Level Music

Share this post:

Hello dear reader! my name is Dror Etzioni and I'm the composer and sound designer for Yanshuf team, in this blog post I share some of the process of writing music for our game 'Chapi's Impact'.

When I sat down to compose the theme for the Oil Monsters I put myself in Chapi’s point of view. A shaman with a deep connection to nature, arrives after a long journey at sea to an island clouded by pollution and overrun by plastic waste. The plastic and oil monsters are tormented by their own existence after fulfilling their purpose. Now they aimlessly wander the island, killing its environment and wildlife. I don’t know about you but it sounds pretty scary to me.

While thinking how I should characterize this feeling in the music I came across a note I wrote to myself in a brainstorming session with Guy and Yinon.

“Plastic Elements to plastic monsters?”

I didn’t remember writing it down, but there it was in my notes, and it made me think of cool plastic instruments I knew of. Plastic instruments are usually for kids and don’t sound very good, but I remember coming across Blue Man Group’s Tiny Desk Concert on Youtube and their use of PVC Pipes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTJfITfbYNA&ab_channel=NPRMusic

After a quick search I found a kontakt (kontakt is a vst sampler) library of PVC Pipes that fit perfectly to the hollow sound I was looking for. First I came up with an arpeggio part

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wsNHidLBy0WnPiToDr0e2d22eEE4FBtg/view?usp=sharing

For all the music nerds like myself, the chord progression starts with the tonic chord (Cm) and moves to ii° (D diminished) and back again to the tonic. By going back and forth between the two chords tension takes over the cue that fit well with the atmosphere I wanted to convey. I’m using the pvc pipes again but this time as wind instruments that are sent into a Hall Reverb and Tape Delay (which is also sent into a Reverb) and beautifully blend together into a pad.

You can listen to the result here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1upWLwRGC3io3nslsBYTT4zCPxlohPN3M/view?usp=sharing

For the drums to have a blend of tribal feel and the hollowness of plastic. I decided to sample a big, red plastic bucket I have laying around for cleaning my apartment and some plastic containers (mostly takeout leftovers) and processed them. For the most part I played with the pitch of each sample and then added a little bit of distortion /saturation and compression. The whole channel is then sent into a flanger effect that gives it a little extra twang, similar to the pvc pipes arpeggio.

This is what I started out with:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1epXQc8-4-a-K5q85jLkJMhCj_MGeXZz-/view?usp=sharing

And this is after the process:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zDpv9VKgqMOE0A1E7hi-TTyN1KkEXoOP/view?usp=sharing

So the big bucket sample acted as my kick drum and the plastic containers were my toms and snare. I wanted the rhythm of the cue to reflect the movement of the oil monster so I decided to make it a 5/4 beat which added a “dragging” quality to the music.

For the melody, I once again used the pvc pipe as a solo wind instrument, but this time with distortion! While having a slow theme of their own, again this melody is also based around the slow and tortured movement of the oil monsters.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k3VAW_WRTB-jAB1mrBaLSYPhNbx0H66n/view?usp=sharing