Encased - Music P1

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A new update for Encased talks about music. Encased is 52% funded with 24 days to go.

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Encased Kickstarter Update #8: Music - Part I

In today's update we would like to speak about one of the most important aspects for creating the atmosphere of the game - the music. And about the people who composed the main theme for our Kickstarter video.

Make yourself comfortable and get your best speakers, they'll come in handy! Now we're gonna show you how the track was being made.

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Encased Kickstarter Theme - Original Jazz Rock Version

Suddenly, there's a man responsible for the music under our Dome. Introduce yourself, buddy.

My name is Peter Salnikov and I'm happy to be on board of this campaign. As a composer, I wrote this Encased Kickstarter Theme with my bandmate Ruslan Eldoradovitch.

Peter, you're not telling us everything. There are no random guys under the Dome. You're connected to games, aren't you?

My career could be easily split in two sections. The first is media. After seven years in gaming journalism I decided to quit this profession, and for the last five years me and my partners run an independent lifestyle media called Disgusting Men. It's the biggest site and community of it's sort in Russia, we also run the biggest entertainment podcast of the same name. It's all in Russian, but if you feel like listening to it, check the episodes with Raphael Colantonio (Dishonored, Prey), Daniel Vavra (Mafia, Kingdom Come: Deliverance) - they were published in English as well.

We begin to see the big picture now. let's talk about music.

Aside of that, for almost a decade we play rock'n'roll with our band called Solar Deity. It's a real rock band with rehearsals, shows and tours, and its lyrics are in English, so this could be easier to check out. We also did some soundtrack jobs before. Being a curious and a stubborn person, I offered my help to Vyacheslav the way he couldn't refuse.

Let's think back a few days ago and recall how did it happen.

The week before Encased Kickstarter launch was pretty tough. We were live streaming, breaking down the musical plan we sticked to while recording the demo of this music. We then held a Skype call with Dark Crystal Games and that was the exact moment when found out that this Kickstarter page will go live on September 13th and not a single day later.

After that, you most certainly did grab you head, saying 'Guys, to hell with you, we don't have the time!' Was it like this? Or...

After a short panic strike we've mobilised all our forces to record this music live, as was planned earlier. We wrote the theme together with my band partner Ruslan but in fact there were a lot more people involved in this than the two of us. In a day we got all of them covered: the trombone player, the string trio, the sax guy, the drummer, the sound engineer and the studio fellas - all of them got their instructions, paper score, dates and details. In two days we stood ready at the studio. In short, it was a huge luck to suddenly be able to gather all those gifted (and thus - over occupied) people at one time and place and this fast. We did all the basic job in 24 hours.

Let's ruin the intrigue from the start: it was much more harder.

The problem was that the Kickstarter video itself wasn't finished by then, and when it finally was - it was almost seven minutes long vs. two and a half minutes of our music. But that was a part of the deal we made with the Crystals.

And still you managed.

This Encased Kickstarter Theme (sorry, it still has no name but it definitely deserves to have one - leave your suggestions in the comment section below) was built to be a «handcrafted procedural track». In short, all instruments and fragments were recorded in one tempo and key, and though the original track was only 2:40 long, all of its pieces and cues could be cut apart, arranged in any order and length and transformed into a longer track or a smaller jingle. Actually, we learned that playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption and watching this video after. So, after getting a Dropbox video link, we've spent a night and a morning bringing the demo music to needed structure. And then our sound engineer Artem brought the instrumental track to the same form.

When we were waiting for the track, we tried to guess, what will it be like... and we didn't. Although the result surprised us, in a good way. The video provides a sense how this track was being created, but the references and the internal working are still a mystery.

First off, when we had our first meeting with Vyacheslav Kozikhin, we were talking about the references, the vibe we need. We've played the pre-alpha build (and yes, we play a lot of CRPGs in general) and figured, why not make it something that would sound sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, western, and 1970's-ish at the same time? As a reference, we took Dune (1984) soundtrack, the music of The Last Man Standing (1996, a Bruce Willis movie) and mixed it up with our vision of our favourite game music (Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate, Fallout - there's a lot of «canon» features if you listen closely). But the main part was to imagine something like this to be played by a real band actually existing in this word of alternative history.

And, well, there you have it. If you'd ask us to think of an orchestra performing in a club somewhere outside the Dome, we'd think of this. Tell us what you think! There's a lot more job ahead than done, so your suggestions will be considered.

Project funding info

As of today $53,160 pledged by 1,494 backers! Thanks to all of you!