{"id":25675,"date":"2015-01-15T06:57:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T11:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=25675"},"modified":"2015-01-25T17:54:45","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T22:54:45","slug":"project-button-masher-reroute-kanal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=25675","title":{"rendered":"Project Button Masher: Reroute Kanal"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve done synth sounds for the past couple of weeks. This time let’s try something more modern. We’ll take a shot at the Half-Life 2 soundtrack by Kelly Bailey. <\/p>\n

Here are the distinguishing characteristics I came up with:
\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Use orchestral instruments<\/strong>: I know you don’t exactly think “Fantasia” when you hear the HL2 soundtrack. The next item on this list will explain that. The point is, unlike the other games we’ve been looking at, this time we need to dump the 80’s synthesizer and get ourselves an orchestra. (A virtual one. We are both poor and<\/em> lazy.)<\/li>\n
  2. Take those fancy-pants instruments and crank them through a distortion filter.<\/strong>\n

    Distortion is what makes a regular electric guitar sound like a heavy metal guitar. Originally this was accomplished by forcing too much electricity through a guitar amplifier’s valves. The sound caught on, and eventually we started building devices specifically to achieve the effect. Then the whole world went digital. In the old days, you had to plug your guitar into an amp to make this happen, but with our fancy computers we can plug anything into a distortion amp. Distortion violin? Piano? Bassoon? Sure, go for it. <\/p>\n

    Dang kids.<\/p>\n

    Anyway, a lot of the HL2 soundtrack has common instruments that have been distorted until you can barely recognize them.<\/p>\n

  3. Bass boost all that stuff.<\/strong> You usually end up with a lot of low-frequency sound when you’re using distortion. A lot of it is typically filtered out, but not this time. Let that stuff run wild. When stuff on your desk begins vibrating onto the floor, you have almost enough.\n

    Spoiler: I might have gone too far with this. <\/p>\n

  4. Use really tinny drums.<\/strong> A lot of electronic music has that pumping low beat. And some HL2 tracks do have that. But several tracks avoid (or filter out) the low frequency percussion, leaving you with AM radio drums. I assume this is done because the distortion is taking up all the low frequencies.\n
  5. Add lots of industrial and atmospheric sounds.<\/strong> Sometimes it’s a little hard to tell where the in-game soundscape ends and the soundtrack begins.\n
  6. No need for looping.<\/strong> Unlike our track last week<\/a>, this one is not designed to loop. The HL2 tracks are typically triggered by player movement, and end after playing through once. I don’t think there’s any music in the game designed to loop endlessly.\n
  7. Alternate chords with single notes.<\/strong> I discovered this by accident while working on today’s track. I hit a point where I hadn’t finished setting up one of the sequences. So instead of chord, chord, chord, it played a chord (say: E-G-B) followed by a single note (say: A) and I thought, “Wow, that really sounds Half-Lifey”. One note alone retains a lot of its musical flavor. But when you stack them together to make a chord, the overlapping distortion becomes really strong and it takes on a more industrial feel. Alternating between the two gives a nice texture and contrast.\n<\/ol>\n

    Here is the track I came up with:<\/p>\n