Justin Bell

@jerf, how do you feel about expanding the reach of this pole to include a fourth option? Something along the lines of: Small ensembles and soloist recordings of live musicians please. Best of all worlds in terms of cost and quality. Is that even possible? It's entirely up to you though, and if you feel it would dilute the spirit of your poll I certainly understand and respect that!

In terms of cost, the range can vary quite a bit. I did say in that one post that Orchestras can be prohibitively expensive, and they can. That said, there are some Orchestras in Europe and Russia (like gakmen suggested) that are less expensive and will still sound great. I wonder though, what about just having some live musicians mixed with the sampled score? Small ensembles would definitely cost less and would still have a positive effect on the overall sound. That can add a lot to enhance expression and realism, in fact I did that on one of the campaign trailer tracks with some of the Horn parts... For those concerned about budget, what do you think of that as a solution?

Well, I can't fault tamimh for that. Mark Morgan is a great composer!

Quoting something from another thread. It clarifies some questions people have had:

Something I posted on the KS update page, thought I'd double post it here. Its sort of relevant!

Thanks everyone for your awesome comments! Super inspiring!

Well, the middle part of Predule is in d minor... so I guess that makes sense!

It might be the sample/bit rates. They are 48k 24-bit... Is anyone else running into a similar issue? Hahahahaha... Haha.. Ha... ha. hmmmm... (must resist pressure!)

Really like the Music so far though I hope there won't be a massive use of choirs in every song [...] Great comments. I would say that the "epic screaming choirs" (for lack of a better term) Prelude is more about the "litany" of classical RPG titles flying at the screen and Obsidian and it's history than it is about Project Eternity specifically. I just wanted it to saturate your senses, and that's the first thing that came to mind. That said, we know we don't want the entire score for PE will sound that way. I kinda hope the score will be a bit more creative and "experimental" (within the confines of the context of the game, of course, not going crazy with it) than what I heard in the tracks. Yes and yes! As a matter of fact, we have talked specifically about using non-traditional instruments in the actual score. We want the instrumental pallet to diverse and interesting, but also appropriate to any given moment in the narrative. Another way to put that; the story is the master and the music is it's servant. So if a part of the story calls for traditional european instruments, we'll use that. If it calls for an interesting texture, we'll use that too. In many ways, the music that you hear was really just written for the trailer and the message it was trying to send. Specifics of the story were just being developed (and still are in fact), so representing the actual sound of PE wasn't really that high of a priority. Though when we do finally get around to doing that, I can gaurantee we'll spend as much time as is necessary to really create that "unique" voice I mentioned in the update. You have good ears... I suspect you are a musician or have a musical background... Am I right? I agree with your assesment of the synthy strings, and I think I know which parts you're talking about too. Interesting note, I had sort of a digital orchestration "breakthrough" as I was wrapping up the music for the trailer, and those especially synthy bits were written beforehand. RE the bass drum... Low frequencies are such a tricky thing aren't they. I'm always wrestling with them. Those bass drums are really just sub hits more than anything. Truth be told, I rolled back a lot of low end right before we launched the campaing because I was concerned about how well the mix would translate across an untold amount of listening devices. I'll think about what you said though, there's probably a middle ground here that I just haven't found yet.

It's a reference to the fact that people's souls play a role in our game.

Mocking is completely unnecessary, just isn't my style! Things slip my attention all the time. That said, I'm glad you like it!

Why yes, as a matter of a fact you can http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/320485

Great question. Themes are incredibly important to me, and the fact that Mecanika is the only one with strong themes insn't a coincidence. Much of the music I write professionally is underscore. Meaning, it is meant to blend into the background. Mecanika on the other hand was one of those opportunities where theme was important for the developers, and I took advantage of that. The music is short just because its a flash game and everything needed to be compact in terms of filesize. BTW if you want to play Mecanika, you can do so free here: http://www.gameforscience.com/physica/ Just click on "Try the Demo!"

Celli are incredibly expressive, much like the human voice. I don't think it's too far fetched to hear something with them in PE... But who knows right? To quote myself "April 2013 is a long way away"

Thank you for listening!

Wow! That singer has quite an impressive range! I can see why you like this piece. It's gorgeous.

My pleasure. I think this is a great thread! It just goes to show how passionate everyone who has posted is about the music for games. Its great to hear what everyone's tastes are, such a diverse range of music represented here, and there have definitely been some pieces of music that have inspired me. As far as my education, we definitely didn't study video game music at UCLA or LAVCC. Those were focused strictly on traditional european art/concert music (i.e. classical music). I spent much more time studying Bach, Wagner, and Stravinsky (and everything in between) than I did anything related to popular media. Though I've always been a gamer, and so I just put two and two together on my own.

Q. Will there be (a) signature tune(s) for the game (e.g. Maybe, A Kiss To Build A Dream On for FO1 and 2, Baba Yetu for Civ4, Suteki Da Ne for FFX)? To have a particular strong piece deeply associated with and conjuring up images of the game is I think one of the most powerful things music can do. A. That's a great idea, but I would need to think about that a bit more. It would have to be done right, and wouldn't be worth doing at all if it didn't fit or wasn't great. Q. Will there be usage of leitmotifs for characters and/or locations? PS:T did that very well, not to mention the obvious power it had in Star Wars. A. Yes indeed! That's how you build memorability into music, and that's very important for us here.

Thanks for your curiosity everyone, I know you all have questions about the music for PE. As for examples of my music, ask and you shall recieve! http://soundcloud.co...tin-bell-music/ This material spans about 6 years of writing. Some of the tracks there are from popular TV shows and award winning Films that I can't really discuss publically unfortunately For those you'll find cryptic names such as "a tv show" etc. Check it out if you're interested! For those of you who are wondering about my background, I can definitely get into that in more depth. I've been studying and playing music for 22 years (I'm 35). I graduated from Los Angeles Valley Community College in 2003 with a AA degree in Music. There I studied music theory, classical guitar performance and recording arts. I was part of the LAVCC Classical Guitar Quartet for four semesters. In 2007 I graduated from UCLA with a BA Degree in Music Composition. There I studied music theory, music history, composition, orchestration and classical guitar performance. I was one of 6 students accepted in my class. Since graduating I've written music for primetime television shows as well as films and documentaries as a ghost writer. I've also written music for several smaller video games available on Wiiware, Wii, and Playstation Network. I made some minor contributions to music for Fallout: New Vegas and Dead Money. For those games I composed all the intro and outro musical transitions that lead into and out of battle music. I also composed the Pimp-Boy theme song, Ede's theme, the Wild Wasteland stinger, the 'Gassed' stinger at the beginning of Dead Money, and wrote the music and set the text for the song Begin Again, also in Dead Money. Most of the music I write now is as a hired gun. In other words, I usually have aggressive deadlines and very specific instructions, so there's not a whole lot of time to think too deeply, or tap into my "inner artist". PE's trailer music was the first time I've been able to do that in a while... As a sound designer, I've worked on about seven game projects including The Sabotuer, Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Money, Dungeon Siege 3, Treasures of the Sun, Project North Carolina, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and a bunch of smaller things. Oh, and I like watching sunsets and taking long walks on the beach...

Not to worry. The info on the soundtrack format is new as of yesterday night.

Great news for you FLAC lovers out there: From the KS page FAQ Q. What file formats will the Digital Download of the Soundtrack be available in? A. We are going to be offering both MP3 and FLAC formats for the soundtrack when it becomes available for download.

Really drawn the Gothic 3 soundtrack, thanks for posting this. There is a certain... refined quality to it's music that I find compelling. Haha, well.... Maybe not that difficult. Old habits are hard to break, and some of the most engaging projects I've worked on were with big publishers. It's just, different I guess. Though KS is definitely awesome I gotta say. Especially two thirds the way through. Cathartic and deep... Mark Morgan is amazing! Agreed, both soundtracks are great! Though I think I'm more partial to the soundtrack for BG1 than 2. There's a raw quality to it that feels very authentic to me...

I can't promise this because it's not entirely up to me, but FLAC sounds reasonable. Taking that a step further, I don't see why we couldn't do multiple formats since its just a matter of exporting the source in different ways... A good example are the humble indie bundle soundtracks which usually come in multiple formats. Again I can't promise this, but I'll definitely look into it more and post back when I can... @Cantousent Can I just say, your enthusiasm is pretty inspiring! I don't have a firm answer at the moment, but *hopefully* before mid 2013? It's just a matter of finding the time to do it right now. Lately I've been focusing on Stick of Truth, and that's taking a lot of my time... Anyway, didn't intend to thread-jack here... Carry on with the compression format discussions! Good question. It's hard to predict what the game is going to need, though if I were to hazard a guess, what you hear in the game is likely what your going to hear in the soundtrack. We'll just have to see how things work out... A lot of it depends on how we implement the music and there are a lot of steps that need to take place first before we have a clear picture of what that will actually mean.

Hey Armand. Just wanted to pass this on... People at Obsidian were sending your youtube videos around the other day, and those that I talked too really enjoy what you're doing. Thanks for being awesome. You've got a great singing voice, and your songs are great too. Looking forward to the next one!

Yeah absolutely. One of the great things about Kickstarter is that we get to be more open and forthcoming about whatever we want. It'll take some getting used to though! When working on games, especially when a publisher is involved, you have to be pretty careful about what you say because publishers typically like to control how and when information is disseminated. Honestly though, it's their prerogative to expect that.