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[acatalept]

I've been thinking about how to use music / soundscaping to detach the player from their "real world" surroundings, to avoid recognizable "signposts", cues or styles that might sound "good", but that are too familiar.  Sort of a thought experiment to imagine what music might sound like that would actually be commonplace and fitting in a setting in the future (whether 50 years or 5000 years).  So often I see incredibly imaginative games and movies that completely transport me away with the degree of creativity and novelty of their visuals, world building, etc... and then use a contemporary techno/orchestral soundtrack that just pulls me right back into my seat in my living room in 2014.  Don't get me wrong, it's often incredible music, too, but it so often breaks the suspension of disbelief.

I really don't want to go all avant garde and experimental and alienate the player either, but I fear that's probably what I'm doing.

What are your thoughts on non-traditional/experimental soundtracks?

Can you think of some futuristic games or movies that have done an "epoch-appropriate" soundtrack that really seemed to come from that future time and place?

Have you made music that "felt" like it was from another time and place, and/or made something you thought was too "out there", but seemed to fit better than a "safer" alternative?  Please share!

My work is pretty narrow in scope, but here are some examples of where I've gotten so far along these lines:

• Some very different percussion/"drums" (though relatively traditional strings and piano):
  http://acatalept.com/music/?ascoliast1e8
  
  
• Strange percussion (just a reversed rhythm loop):
  http://acatalept.com/music/?hatewhatyoukillandlovewhatyouletlive1g3c%20(reversion)
  
  
• Glitched?/non-traditional percussion sequencing:
  http://acatalept.com/music/?winter%20ocean1g
  
  
• And now for something completely different - no definite notes/rhythm/structure, but somehow still "music"?:
  http://acatalept.com/music/?deity4b

(Note: you should be able to click the progress bar at the top of the music page to quickly skip around within each track)

[EDIT: fixed links]

[Daniel Pellicer]

Oh my... This deity4b is really scary.

I wouldnt listen it at night   

Any ways very interesting indeed.

[Audiosprite]

Hey man, I dig your shit. I don't play horror games much because I'm a pansy, but this would work so well in something like Silent Hill (closest reference I have is the OOT Shadow temple/well haha). Do you listen to Yamaoka much?

I understand very much where you're coming from about alienating the player with really out-there stuff. But, I think (or probably hope) that the attitude of experimentation and utilization of new, unique sounds/sonic paradigms is actually encouraged in games. Lots of game music doesn't sound like anything else. Especially recently in the indie scene, with games like Trip and the LaGameSpace output which ostensibly give their composers lots of leeway to flex their creativity.

And if you alienate the player then cool, that's a valid intent and I honestly enjoy those kinds of reactions. The first comment I ever got on the internet on a piece of music was a death threat and I was ecstatic. BUT in practice I don't think that actually happens much in VGM. Audiences are much more open to dissonant incidental music than nonincidental music. Most people don't switch on Penderecki for leisure listening, but Hans Zimmer can use Penderecki's techniques in a film and it's the norm. It's one of the reasons I'm so into game/film music.

Here's a non-thing I recorded yesterday testing a new mic. Also switched to a wooden reed from a synthetic one for the first time in years and had a fucking blast. I want a game I can do bullshit like this for. Only, y'know, edited and more musically interesting and played better lol.

Also, is there a way to have the music play continuously through your whole catalog on your site? I want to hit ▶ and have this on in the background the whole time as I go about my day

[Aamp]

I think Super Metroid was probably the first game that with a great help of the music put me in that place.  The first Mass Effect did too.  I really found myself enjoying your music the more I got into it. 

The first one I listened to was Deity based on a comment above and it is downright scary!  Really liked the others, I'd say especially the winter ocean one.  The link for the second didn't work, but I found it easily in your list.  That one I found stayed in my head too.

[Jasmine]

I understand where you are coming from. The fact that music can sometimes take away from a scene/setting/ or emotion rather than accentuate due to familiarity.

 Ascosalist reminds me of a track that I enjoy from Ghost in A Shell's television soundtrack (not necessarily the timbre, but the rhythmic patterns.) Actually, it brought to mind a few tracks that I seem to vaguely remember!

Audiosprite hit a lot of awesome points, too. I, personally, think this music is fantastic, but when it comes to media, I feel as if it depends on 3 things:
What the developer(s) want
What the composer can do
What the composer wants the audience to hear
(though it's more like "hopes the audience will hear")

Not that I am trying to generalize us, but perhaps some composers want their music to be something that players can associate with at all times. Take them as far out as we can, but always give them something familiar to land on.

In truth, I think each of the tracks you linked are downright beautiful and, if put with the correct media, could do a whole lot of damage (even Deity, which I interpreted as a whale song, sung by a constipated hunmpback). Also, I wonder sometimes if many composers think of writing music like this. Not that we don't want to, but that writing music similar to this doesn't cross our minds.

I love ambient music though, and I enjoy weird pieces (unless it's performed on stage during music convocation), so I really took to your stuff.

Now you're making me want to try something!

[acatalept]

@EE: Thanks, I think! ;)  I sometimes tend toward the darker end of the spectrum...

@Audiosprite: Thanks, I'm glad you like it!  I'm a big fan of Akira Yamaoka's work on the Silent Hill series - the music was half the experience, and really helped raise it above other games in the genre.  That Trip game looks interesting, too bad I can't find out more about the musician (Benjamin Meredith?), reminds me of some old Bjork beats.  Sorry to say there's no way to continuously stream the tracks on my site at the moment, but you have my permission to throw a download manager at it and pull down all the MP3 files.  Maybe someday I'll splurge on a SoundCloud unlimited account ($100+/yr?) to upload all 12+ hours...

@Aamp: Never played Super Metroid (blasphemy!), but I agree on Mass Effect, a lot of that score really cemented the time & place.  And thanks for the compliment!

@M4uesviecr: I agree, it's important to find some middle ground between the developer's intentions and the audience's expectations.  But then I think of something like Gyorgy Ligeti's work in Kubrick's 2001:

  That just came out of left field, and I'm sure turned *any* viewer's expectations on their head, but in such a good way.  And I feel like in a way it's our job to make the audience a little uncomfortable, a little out of their element, when working in such a foreign/alien setting as the far future.  And thanks for the constipated humpback comment, I like it ;).  I'm glad I lit a fire under you, please share if you come up with something!

@ALL: I'm sorry if I wasn't a little more clear, I wasn't really trying to advertise my music (though I appreciate the compliments ;).  Here are some other examples (by some more talented people) of what I'm getting at: trying to transport the player aurally as effectively as the unfamiliar visuals/settings of a far-future (and/or abstract/surreal) game world:

• Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2:
  
  (whole album sounds like an alien robot dream from the future)
  
  
• Just about anything by Autechre:
  
  (that music almost inspires gameplay ideas ;)
  
  
• Or the opposite direction: back to basics, primal, ancient, timeless sounds: http://www.u2.musicline.de/de/player_flash/5055300375636/0/3/50/product
  
  
• And then the furthest extreme (and probably the most effective at dissociation)... not-music (pure ambience):