My friend Paul J. Stales was writing a game as a portfolio piece to showcase his Javascript skills. He reached out to me to see if I was interested in making some music for it. The tracks here are the outcome of that.
I composed and recorded the music in LMMS, and did the final mixing in Audacity.
I used several VSTs from DSK Music, and some SoundFonts by Johannes Roussel.
If you want to try the game, check it out at No Longer Alone.
Introduction
For the opening screen, I decided to make a dark ambient piece that is built on a drone, synth pad, and sound effects. One of the really fun things about doing a sci-fi project was adding mysterious sounds that leave room for the imagination -- what exactly are the booms and alarms at the end? NLA-01-Title.mp3
Briefing from the Admiral
The menu screen music was written after the battle music. It uses similar building blocks but with less urgency. In particular, I replaced the bass synth with a drum cadence to give it a more martial feel. NLA-02-Briefing.mp3
Battle in Space
When Paul was describing his idea for the battle music, he specifically cited The Dream from Total Recall (1990). I started with a bass synth rhythm and orchestra hits (DSK Overture was great for this), and went in a different direction from there to make it sound tense and desperate. NLA-03-Battle.mp3
Game Over
A harshly distorted synth walking down an FMaj7 chord says you lose. Then there are freaky
alien noises. Is it laughter? Speech? Chewing? Maybe you don't want to know! Secrets of the
Amateur Foley Artist: I recorded myself rattling a handful of checkers from a backgammon
set, and then mangled it in Audacity.
NLA-04-Game_Over.mp3
Victory March - Col. Holubky
The drone from the intro starts and quickly fades while horns play the first notes of the Game Over sound. Before things get too "minor" sounding, it turns around into a D-Major fanfare. Then there's a meat-and-potatoes kind of march with a wind feature and a brass feature. The bass part is doubled by the same synth pad from the intro to make it sound otherworldly. It's over a little quickly. I think the drums sound a lot better here than they do in the briefing. NLA-05-Victory-March.mp3