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.
This was the first time I was asked to write music. Man what a task! To follow on in Inon Zur’s footsteps and write something fitting for the game while stylistically remaining cohesive is a daunting thought. Luckily I’ve been through this more than once and am no stranger to the deep end having dived in head first many a time over both my careers. Mentally I thought that 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
Also a beautiful Laos Wooden flute which I picked up years ago when I had visited Laos. I am not a wood wind player at all, and so I had to learn the fingering and figure out how to use my breath to add emotion and articulations to make it sound interesting.
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:
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