hello, if any folks from last week were interested in Bird Alone's waterfall audio setup...this is the thread. hey welcome. these are a mix of notes that @georgebatch + I collated, and it's ended up being pretty long so. Going to do an 'unroll' at the end of this too. 🌊🦜(1/16)
want to start by saying - goes with all audio system stuffs here - this was collaborative between George and myself. He was an incredible help with the technical side of audio setup whilst I did the more creative side of things! I'll be a better tech audio person...someday (2/16)
and we had a few music influences and references, too. with this scene specifically, the Electroplankton games for 3DS was maybe the biggest? I loved the Lumiloop + Hanenbow (one of them i'll share here). ty George for letting me know of all this! (3/16)
okay so. The Bird: has more of a complicated system to figure out the best sequence of notes (credit to George, again, for setting that up), but we know we wanted them to bust out: a theremin like sound. tried a simple theremin plugin at first but didn't sound quite right (4/16)
(ooh whee sorry for that gif quality nvm...) Ended up experimenting with something more synth-based. The bird's voice is from the u-He Repro 1 or 5 synth? One of them. Overall very inspired by this but more intentionally rougher around the edges: (5/16)
the Actual waterfall: two types of looping tracks that blend into one another, going from one side to another horizontally. One side's usually vibrato, the other not, or one side sounds smoother, the other's opposite. Experimented with synths that'd compliment each other! (6/16)
or, y'know, not. I wanted to make sure that felt as fluid as it can when sliding between notes, either way. The scale also ranges from the bottom of the waterfall to the top. Decided to stick with one scale too (C minor) because...it's a good straightforward scale okay (7/16)
(the real answer is that I think that would have been pushing the scope a bit with what we wanted to do, and it's probably good to have some familiarity in certain places? also working with simple limitations like this can be fun) (8/16)
with the waterfall and bird, a script was made in Unity to set up sections of pitch shift, or pitches generally (thank you George.......). I then calculated which pitches were set to certain values that can be played out by either of those! (9/16)
The lotus flowers: this time it cycles through scaled audio clips randomly. These and the next part of the waterfall simply have a component attached to play out those audio clips, so it's a more straightforward setup if I remember correctly! (10/16)
The lily pads: there's usually about four or five of them, with each chord going up roughly in a I-III-V-VII or so arrangement. You can select one of them, or a few of them, or all of them. Up to you, there. (11/16)
The pond: similarly goes through a cycle of sounds, though in a more descending order of scales. It is split into four sections horizontally so each spectrum of the scale can be enjoyed, too (12/16)
(partly a spoiler if you haven't played) As some folks playing may have clocked on, the waterfall, lily pads and lotus flowers change their tones and sounds over the course of the game, to reflect the seasons changing. Except for the pond sounds. The pond sounds can stay (13/16)
fun fact: we did try creating a more generative system using PureData. whilst we almost made it work, we put a hold on it since it'd mean a limitation to have the system/game only work on iOS, afaik. if any iOS-only folks want me to try give it a crack though then: hello (14/16)
but yeah, that all hopefully covers a lot of this? if any folks have questions I'll try my best to answer QRT with an answer and link it back to this thread? Otherwise I think that covers it a bunch for me. if anyone made it this far, thanks for reading?? wow (15/16)
will conclude with leaving my tweet about the soundtrack + game so....if you like the OST, go get it if you want to. if you want to try this out, get the game if you'd like (apps.apple.com/us/app/id14358…)! its your life (16/16)
okay sorry another one too! Here's a really good capture of the waterfall scene in action (also the tweet that inspired doing this thread at all) 🌱
@threadreaderapp unroll
