My participation in the Game Art exhibition at the Athens Games Festival '17.

Her past is a palace

A short theme for adventures across distant galaxies and near futures. No apparent ending as it is designed to loop indefinitely to serve as menu music.

Scifi short theme

The composition is based on 3 loops of music, especially written to be seamlessly superimposed in order to accompany the different phases of the gameplay.

For demonstration purposes the track starts with loop A (calm),then loop B (action) is added, followed by loop C (danger). Finally, all loops fade out to loop A again.

I wanted the music to have a presence without being intrusive in order to work well with the SFX. I find that the best way to do this is to utilize pauses and strong motifs. I built my first layer using very light instrumentation. A woodwind, some strings and basic percussion. I spread the two basic motifs (one for the woodwind and one for the pizzicato strings) along the track, creating some space before moving οn to the next layer.
For the second layer I added some high range percussion and a nervous movement on the staccato strings to add some action. I also filled in some notes to some phrases of the previous layer.
For the final layer I added some low brass dramatic cliches as well as orchestral and exotic percussion instruments. I really enjoy how the horns sforzando breaks the pattern and leads to the second motif. This layer also has some notes added to the previous phrases.

Image credits: Promise Of Adventure by Michael Ackerman

adaptive game music

After finally getting my hands on a classic Roland SC-88 sound module and getting to experiment a little bit with its sounds and interface, the first thing that came to my mind was of course to compose a track in the style of the game music of the DOS era!

UAC Keycard (retro game music)

Composed for the ADAM Audio 2018 soundtrack competition. Photo by Tobias Zielony, The Opening, 2005

The main building block of the track is the choir, representing the peaceful and esoteric elements found in the picture, exceptionally captured as a gaze of the protagonist.
The choir parts are contrasted with a drumbeat, chosen to represent the contemporary urban setting, accompanied by dramatic strings which often portray action, even though in this case the action is probably anticipated.

An Urban Elegy

a stellar friend

Tracklist:

1. A Stellar Friend (cinematic, orchestral)
2. Westwood Shadows (trailer, drama)
3. Interactive Action Music (game, adaptive environment, layered music)
4. Forest (hybrid orchestral-synth)
5. Railway Lights (soundtrack, noir, jazz)
6. Once Upon A Light (animation scoring)
7. Volcano (ambience)
8. UAC Keycard (retro game music. general midi music)
9. Scifi theme (full orchestra, drama, orchestral-synth hybrid)
10. Westwood Shadows (soundtrack)

Chris Spyratos

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