Éalú Soundtrack Release

Hey all,

The game launches on steam on October 2nd, you can wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3560370/al/

(wishlisting helps the devs by boosting their position in the algorithm, which will help their project reach more players!)

The soundtrack will be released on streaming platforms on October 4th.

The soundtrack for Éalú is my first time releasing something I did completely by myself, with the exception of the master. I played/programmed all the instruments, recorded it, and mixed it. Mastering was done by Kevin Antreassian.

The track list is:

1. Disposed - 3:20

2. Is there Cheese - 7:12

3. What's the Moon Made Of - 5:35

4. Life Gets Shorter - 6:34

5. What's for the Best - 4:28

6. Right and Wrong - 0:37

7. Nature - 1:35

About the process:

My initial inspirations for the soundtrack came from the show Severance, because running through mysterious hallways. Although as I experimented, explored certain ideas, and learned more about the project, it obviously changed a lot...

I can't trace back all the sounds to their influences at this point, but having grown up in the 90s/00s and played a lot of video games from that time, I think certain elements of old video game music come to mind even when I'm not writing for a video game sometimes, so the flow felt pretty natural. The end result definitely feels like video game music, which I'm happy about considering the fact that I feel like my last soundtrack ended up sounding more like songwriter work than composing for the medium, and while I'm satisfied with what I provided for CH&T and believe they are as well, hindsight is 20/20 and I'm always learning.

I started off with a few new melodies, then combined them with re-harmonized and melodically altered versions of parts of Tomcat Disposables, withholding or using pieces of the song strategically based on where in the arc of the game the music would be playing. For instance, the chorus appears throughout it (sometimes in a minor key, sometimes major, sometimes some kind of modal thing I don't know the theory behind) but never finishes until the final piece. The music becomes more "foreign" or "exotic" sounding over the course of the levels to try and create a sense of adventure or urgency, but returns to the wooden feel of the piano-and-celeste sound when it makes sense thematically. The "songs" were written on piano or organ, and the instrumentation and final organization of the phrases and themes was done in ProTools.

One of the biggest challenges was creating incidental music that matched the action of certain "cut scenes." It took a lot of messing around with the grid in ProTools and lining it up to the video, and I probably did it the wrong way compared to how experienced composers do it, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to try it out and have a chance to start to develop those skills so I can do more like it in the future.

I recorded my Yamaha C6 with a pair of AKG C414's, because I wanted the organic but mechanical feeling for the lead instrument, which you miss in an overly-clean MIDI voice. I liked pairing that and an out-of-tune vintage organ with the MIDI voices I did use; I felt like that matched it being a video game sonically while also reflecting the unique stop-motion method of its construction by retaining the physicality and imperfection of real instruments. My piano might need some type of work to reduce the sound of the dampening mechanism, but for such a mechanical game I felt like it created a really interesting atmosphere hearing the clunks and zings pumping to the pulse.

The organs are a vintage Lowrey Microgenie, which went direct into the interface. The voices on the organ didn't have the sound I was looking for unless it had the auto-accompaniment playing, and due to its age and condition, I had to really finagle the beat using elastic audio and quantization without losing the melody. I really like how out-of-key the chords on the self-accompaniment are, they create a lot of texture and color without sounding totally out of place or dissonant. The musical context allows those spikes of slight dissonance to serve a percussive purpose while giving some character to the recording.

I also recorded the little bit of baritone ukulele on the soundtrack with those C414 mics. They're really versatile, and the rest of my admittedly limited microphone collection I felt didn't actually help me accomplish anything new. In the future I'd definitely invest in some little pencil mics to explore different piano sounds but for this particular project and for these instruments they served the purpose well.

Most of the MIDI voices are from the Kontakt 7 library. Some from Xpand. I considered hiring a string player, but decided I wanted to further explore the possibilities of using MIDI strings, and ended up really liking the sound of it. It sounds fairly natural thanks in part to the stupid amount of tweaking and automation I did, but still allows the piano to breathe. I might try out the plugin Stradivarius (it's supposedly able to create some incredibly natural string sounds by having like a bajillion samples and tools to mimic the nuances of real string-playing) for the next time I take on something like this, but for larger studio projects in the future I'd like to try and hire a live string section. I'd definitely save it for like a major full-length release though cause I'd like to just stay self-funded unless something crazy happens.

I used Protools and a MOTU 8pre-es interface/pre-amp. I mixed on a pair of AKG headphones and an embarrassing set of KRKs and ran tests on the Bowers & Wilkins speakers in my Outback as well as whatever they stuff in a Mustang, then with a pair of Sony WXH's and AirPods Max. A little bit of checking here and there on laptops and phone speakers too.

This was my first time handling all the mixing/engineering myself. While I had done some of the chores on ICIMI and CH&T, and I've been very particular about mixes since ICIMI, I hadn't ever done a project entirely by myself. I didn't feel super confident going into it, but when I sent it off to Kevin for mastering he said he liked the mix and that felt amazing. I think for larger projects in the future I'll still want someone else behind the console and be more a producer than an engineer, but I'm considering putting out a little throwaway album sometime in the relatively near future and I'd probably do that one myself to the best of my ability. Maybe not the drums though, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with that.

That's the cool thing though. Every time I take on a project that feels new or challenging, whether in my intentions or stylistic leanings musically/lyrically, in the context the music will be presented in, or in the process the project will require, I learn a lot of things I'll be able to use in the future. Taking the challenge of being a note-for-note composer for the first time with CH&T allowed me to do that for ICIMI and for this as well. Taking on the challenge of doing small engineering projects on those led me to this, and now I can more confidently compose/arrange and engineer/mix on future projects, including soundtracks that require the thematically strategic use and re-invention of musical motifs and syncing them to the events on a screen. I definitely hope to do more soundtrack work in the future, and feel like having learned or practiced these things will save time and money while giving me more creative control in future personal projects.

I'm really glad I had the chance to take this on. It was terrible timing, trying to do this while also on tour and trying to finish Slouching, but necessity definitely became the mother of invention when faced with such time constraints. I couldn't resist being a part of it when Ivan Owen told me he and Benjamin Orr were building a video game with the same style puppet as the mouse from the Tomcat Disposables video he directed. It's a different puppet and it looks slightly different, but it's enough where I felt like it could be really cool to be involved in. Almost felt like I had to. Whether the player decides its the same mouse having survived the story from the video somehow, or a prequel to the video, the same mouse in an alternate timeline, or another mouse in the same universe is up to them. However you view it, I'm really glad to have been asked to participate and have my creative voice heard in the storytelling aspect here and there. Looking forward to showing y'all what I made, hope you enjoy the game.

Thanks,

WW