Last week, I said I would stop slacking on the audio/music part of the game; I think I delivered on the promise by releasing a rough mix of the very first song of the official Outsider soundtrack, Blue.

As the song was composed and recorded by me, it is technically part of the repertoire of my one-man music collective, Aesthetic Indifference, which, up to this day, had only released retro-gaming music covers! Even though I spent a lot of time working on gameplay this week, besides creating drafts of much of the game’s graphics, I want to focus on music in this update.

Visual art direction, as well as music direction, are essential aspects of any great game. They are about bringing cohesion to artistic assets, so your game isn’t, for instance, mixing Art Deco with Art Nouveau or using random music genres for your soundtrack. My musical training is primarily classical, and traditionally, most of my compositions were inspired by Romantic and Impressionist pianists such as Rachmaninov and Debussy, such as the piano piece I gifted my wife when we got married (the video is from last year’s remastering).

One thing I spent months thinking about was the musical genre selection for the game. Outsider Zero players will spend most of their time reading or thinking, and I never thought that purely classical songs were a great match for this type of gameplay. They tend to have wide dynamic ranges that can be startling; their rich melody can also be distracting if you are trying to concentrate. As a pianist, I’m not saying that classical music is bad, of course; it is just that classical music might not be the best choice for Outsider Zero.

I also considered using Ambient music for a long time. Not my area of expertise, but I trusted I could learn it quickly. The problem with a lot of pure Ambient music is that it can quickly put you to sleep, making it even less suitable for the game!

After a long search, I set the game’s musical direction towards Berlin School Electronic Music, a more “exciting” form of Ambient, and similar subgenres. I find that Berlin School creates an engaging sensation without distracting or putting the player to sleep. I’m not sure I’m right about that, but I’ll bet the game’s soundtrack on that thought. Alex actually “tested” the soundtrack by reading his usual phone nonsense while listening to my song… Never mind that I had asked him to pay close attention to it (he is a pianist and choir singer himself), but I guess this proves that I’m on to something!

Most soundtrack songs I will share in the upcoming months will be “rough mixes.” The reason is that I can only produce a cohesive mix once I have all the songs; I don’t want the soundtrack to sound like a collection of standalone pieces from random albums on iTunes. They need consistent level and equalization philosophies, so they will only be “done” once I produce the final master.

Productivity is very important with music, as with everything else. It’s very easy to spend dozens of hours micro-tuning the start times of every note, and I will not have time for that. The tune for original Outsider teaser video was around 30 seconds long and took around 10 hours to produce; this is equivalent to an abysmal productivity of 20 hours per minute of music! A 30-minute soundtrack, if done this way, would take over 600 hours of work!

Fortunately, and especially because I’m new to Berlin school, I picked a new electronic music sequencer appropriate for the genre, as well as how to create songs in this style efficiently. Well, I was supposed only to use simple chord progressions, and I didn’t do that for Blue – I think my classical roots show a little on this one due to the huge 40+ chord progression! Nonetheless, it took me just 12-13 hours to produce the mix. Considering it’s over 6 minutes long, I did around 2 hours of work per minute of music, which is sustainable for the soundtrack. If I can consistently do better than 3 hours/minute, I think we will be okay.