How I voiced the game

Let me entertain you a little and tell you how an ordinary person can suddenly turn into a sound engineer, if the Motherland says “it is necessary”.

It was on the GamesJamMicrosoft hackathon, where we made a game about rainbow and shaggy eye on legs with a small team.


(this is Benjamin, meet)

')

Exposition

So, on December 6th, the hackathon started. We gave birth to a conceptual idea, and, therefore, began to actively try to benefit the project. Who as he could.

Personally, I do not know how to do anything - neither code to write, nor draw. But it is necessary to bring at least some benefit to society? So in the evening, looking at how the team works selflessly, I volunteered to make sounds. Left them to wither over the code and art, and went home. Why me? Sounds with us anyway, no one knows how to do - so no matter who.

Sounds at hand

But sounds are necessary, right? And what? Voice recorder is, the editor is. The sounds are all at hand - here's the glass rings. Here the lighter snaps. You can breathe into the microphone, again.

I thought so: the sounds do not come from nowhere. They are recorded by people. And then, if necessary, refined. Nothing too complicated. In our game there are shifting colors and shaggy eyes on the legs - no one knows how they should sound. As I think of it, so be it.

Here I need, for example, to write down the tramp - it is to knock on the table. And then speed up, raise the tone and multiply.



It is written in our backlog that you need to make a “sound of ice” - and what is the sound of ice?
With this in the kitchen - in the freezer there is a mold with ice.



The sound of a jump? It is necessary to knock on a tin bucket to get an echo, and then draw.



And as for all sorts of screams and squeals, everything is clear. And here I was inspiringly squealing, crowing and clattering into the microphone, knocking on the table and making other sounds - under the recording.
And then she sat for a long time, listened to all this nonsense and twisted all sorts of sliders in the editor, superimposed, cut, slowed down.
And in such an uncomplicated way, armed with a voice recorder, an editor, household utensils and vocal cords, I recorded 30 sounds for us.
Does our toy really need a lot? ..
In two nights I called the girls and said: Sounds are ready! Go? “Don't ...,” a dying voice replied to me from that end. - Get some sleep…

Music in the night

But to sleep, as you know, I did not lay down.

Instead, she decided to make music.
I generally have about the same attitude to music as a guinea pig to the sea.
That is, no.

In childhood, my mother, who wanted to play the piano, took me to a music teacher. From the lesson - the first and the last - I only remember that I must hold my hand, as if an apple are in it.
After the class, the teacher told her mother that I should try myself in something else.
Not in the music.

But there is nothing to do. After all, there must be music in the game. About music, I knew what? That hand must be held, as if it had an apple. But this, of course, did not save the situation.
The Great Encyclopedic Dictionary reported that music is “a type of art in which musical sounds serve as a means of translating artistic images.”

Hello neighbors

With this you can already work! Sounds I can provide. Arrange in a certain way too.

And I got all sorts of cups and pans, which vertebral, and began (and as time approached three) to knock on them. It turned out harsh metal sounds. But there was no poetry in these sounds. There was no feeling.
Then I took out my grandmother's crystal from the cabinet and poured water into it to different levels. The crystal is not mine, and my grandmother, too, as it were, so I decently ventured, knocking on the glasses with a table knife.
But everything worked out, and the sounds were recorded. That is, the first part is completed. Now I had to organize them.
In a certain way.

Applied sounds organization

I knew (besides the apple) that there are rhythm and melody in music. So, for the rhythm answered the sound of the pan, and for the melody - the ringing of glasses of different tonality. But this is at first, when I thought that I could compose a melody from several “tink”.
Then they all mixed up, superimposed on each other, then I recorded more sounds, then for a long time I twisted various sliders of an incomprehensible assignment in the editor. There was no time to find out what all these sliders mean. When time is short there is no time for friendship, only love.

Here you can listen to iterations (which are preserved) - from an irregular pan to the final version.



At about five o'clock, I soared to the realms of pure sound, where I learned to feel the difference between "zink" and "dzenk" and felt an almost Buddhist emptiness in my head. When the piece was finished, attracted the only listener who was nearby. The young man listened to my humble track8 with a stone face and said it was very conceptual. But he said it in such a way that I understood that they could beat me tomorrow for such a conceptuality. And we urgently need to do something.

And then I remembered about such a thing as an online piano.

But here bear problems rose to their full height. Which stepped on me, not sparing the ears. Sounds? There are sounds. And to organize them in a certain way did not work. That is, it worked, but this image was such as if an octopus with a violation of motor functions was brought to the piano. And then I came up with this.

We need some more or less meaningful sequence of sounds. And I have a computer keyboard - on which there are letters - and the keys correspond to the sounds. So, the sequence of sounds in this case will be the same as the sequence of letters? Well, I can. In the letters, I hoo! And began to print tongue twisters.

Quick zen (tink?)

And really! Some melodies appeared. Some more meaningful, some less. Well, in general, as ordered. Very quickly there was a tongue twister that sounded piercing and poetic on the piano, and besides, it was the best way possible to reflect my state of mind.

The most unpromising of the most unpromising.



It turned out that typing tongue twisters was no easier than saying. She trained for a long time in a quiet Word file, until she learned how to perform "hopeless" with the virtuosity of a real pianist. Looped and went to bed with a clear conscience. At the beginning of the seventh.

The team listened to music the next day, praised me for my dedication and did not beat the first track, and even took it as musical accompaniment - hurray!

And “hopeless”, filled with a feeling, remained to amuse us like a funny story. Other tongue twisters, of course, were also quite good, but with “hopeless” I was just incredibly lucky! Immediately in it and the depth, and feeling, and poetry - the one that I was unsuccessfully looking for in my grandmother's crystal.

If the present piano, then would be frightened - all the keys are the same, and it is not possible to remember where there is what sound. And I know my native clave far and wide, everything is clear - and you can not be distracted by finding the right key. You can even make unpretentious melodies - you know what kind of sound should be next, and look for it by the method of artistic poking (literally). And you can remember. Because “d” is easier to memorize than the “eleventh white key to the right.”

So, all the next day I was amused by the fact that I typed different words on the piano, decent and not very good, and listened to how they sounded.

That is very beautiful, for example, the word "cattle" sounds. And I made the melody from this “cattle”, poking the nearest letters.
Arranged sounds in a certain way, so!