The goal was to produce some retro-sounding music using a mix of old and modern production techniques, trying to get the best of both worlds. Having a completely sequenced music track is extremely convenient during the production phase as it allows to rapidly adjust tempo and pitch and to experiment a lot. A modern workflow was used to produce the music, although special care was taken to replicate some of the technical limitations artists faced in the 90s. That said, tracks in Guntastic aren’t played by sound modules while the game is running and have gone through proper mixing and mastering phases to ensure the best sound quality. In order to replicate that sound, no live performances need to be used. This was probably the main trademark of video game music from the early 90s and was a direct consequence of technical limitations artists faced back then. Everything Needs to Be Sequenced and Sample-Based Two main principles guided me throughout production. Orchestra hit from a Roland© SC module When possible, I tried to use iconic sounds from vintage rigs for the maximum nostalgia. limited polyphony, no – or very little – DSP, etc.), although some restrictions were kept for stylistic reasons. In the end, I decided for a mixed approach: I wanted the music to sound straight out of a 90s arcade video game, but at the same time I didn’t want to have all the technical limitations of those years (i.e.
When it comes down to writing music, sound palette is as important as rhythm, melody and harmony to me and that’s why I spent a lot of time searching for the right approach to use for the Guntastic soundtrack. And from my perspective it’s all about how it sounds. I don’t have any problems with that definition, but let’s be honest… Some video game soundtracks sound more like video game soundtracks than others. Wikipedia defines video game music as “the soundtrack that accompanies video games”.
Support the fast action-packed gameplay as much as possible.The soundtrack needed to accomplish two different objectives:
Since the early production stage of Guntastic I wondered how the music should sound, but it was only as work on the game progressed that things became clearer. In this post I’m going to talk about how we approached production of the soundtrack for Guntastic, our upcoming party brawler inspired by the 16bit coin-op games of the late 90s.
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