My Personal Project - Marc Hagan

For My Personal Project, I am creating an original soundtrack (OST) of five songs that could be used for a modern 2D platformer video game. These songs are meant to be from varying parts of the game in order to use different music theory concepts to create different moods in the songs.

I have used the software Ableton Live 10 to create this music, using classical instruments and synth with sound engineering controls. So far, I have composed the five songs I planned to, however, creating these songs has made me want to fix up these songs and create more than I had originally planned, meaning that my final OST may have two to three additional songs.

Screenshot of Ableton Live 10

From creating these songs, I have learned a bit about the thought process of composers for video games. For the longest time, I have been fascinated with how people are able to cause the player of a game to feel different emotions at different times of a game even with limited animation and dialogue. Through this project, I have learned that you have to take into account what the player is likely to do in a situation and the pacing of a certain level in order to have the correct intensity at the right times. This most heavily affected songs such as, Duel atop a Mountain, which is music for a boss level, as I originally had a long build-up section which I removed as I wanted the song to go straight into the action.

Original Build-Up Opening

Final Version of Opening

I have also learned how to take inspiration from other pieces of music without plagiarising other people’s works. When I was creating the first level’s theme, I did not know what style I wanted and as such, I listened to first level themes in other 2D platformer games such as in the Super Mario Bros series. Because of this, when I made the theme for the first time, the music had pretty much the same tune as the music I was taking ‘inspiration’ from. I realised this and, after watching videos about people’s analysis of the music using music theory, I was able to create a new theme that was similar in mood but not in melody.

Original Theme with Same Tune as Super Mario Bros. Main Level 1-1 Theme

Final Theme with Original Tune

Overall, this Personal Project has been an amazing learning experience as I have been able to understand the number of innovations needed in the drafting process in order to create a piece of work that is the best it can for the context. Also, I have learned more about music theory through my research and now can create my own themes instead of copying others.