The musical score of Prophecy of Ahnket took 2 weeks to write and export stems, 2 weeks to break down the stems into modular pieces for the game’s quasi-generated music system I designed. It covered 5 zones with 5-7 POIs (Points of Interest) and a mood descriptor tagged in the zones to pull from 4 different emotional mixes of the zones exploration music! Typically this kind of work would take 3-6 months! I had another MMO to manage so I belted this out in 1 month!
Upon writing this blog, I’ve been working on RIFT now for around 9 years and have helped direct the music for the game and it’s numerous expansion packs over the years.
A few months before the expansion was due for release and right when we were going to engage Inon to start again I was told my budget was re-allocated and we had no budget for music!!! I was asked to just re-use content from earlier in the game to score 5 new zones! I also learned it was a paid $50 expansion and I couldn’t in my good conscience re-use music.
I decided I was going to write the music or die trying! Then it dawned on me – how am I going to follow on in Inon Zur’s footsteps and write something fitting for the game while stylistically remaining cohesive!!! It was a daunting thought. Luckily I had no time to dwell on this and I’ve been through this kind of set back more than once thus no stranger to the deep end! Swim or Sink!!
As I had been composing for TROVE before this and I had used minimal workflow to help with that project based on improvisation, I followed suit approaching this score. Having collaborated with Inon and working both from a creative music director and technical implementer I knew what the music needed to do.
After a little thought I arrived at the conclusion this would be no different than the process I would take with external composers and so this is how I approached it:
I had a good understanding of the various zones and lore of the expansion world. The most fun to start with was Scatherran Forest as it tied back to Silverwood in the original Rift world.
This particular forest has light and dark regions both artistically and through lore. I started with the theme for the forest in general. By having the game on the big screen I was able to walk around, hear and see the world alive. When we recorded Silverwood we used a lot of wind and chime instruments to depict the magical and Fae-based environment. This is where I started. I set up my sonic palette and started experimenting with melodies and textures.
After figuring out the zone theme, I went back and darkened it (minors and changed some timbres) to create the dark version of the forest entry theme.
After tackling the zone theme – I then started working my way through the points of interest and designing short stinger themes for those. By the end of this this process I had my full palette worked out and started weaving the melodic content and textures to create the exploration music. All of this I played live either on Midi keyboard or recording live instruments. Once I had the content down I was able to polish and mix it into a cohesive track.
During writing the sound track I pulled from my small collection of wind and string instruments which included a toy ukulele which one of the strings rattled and din’t hold it’s tune very well. I made good use of a vintage song flute which made up the bird-like sounds in Scatherran’s music
Other custom instruments included a rum bottle I had recorded and made into a Kontakt patch.
The full album can be found on the Trionworlds Bandcamp Store: