Borderlands 3: DLC 3 - Bounty of Blood

Borderlands 3: Bloody Harvest

Music from the campaign DLC for Battleborn.

Battleborn Campaign Music

Borderlands 3 - OST

A collection of some of my favorite works from over the years I've started keeping.

Featured Works

The tradition in BL2 so far is to provide music for slaughter arenas that highlight action and tempo of combat and so we try to put in something that is a departure from the rest of the style of the game and purely activity driven. So I was sort of going for a modernized 80's hero's theme as the combat music since it's basically a giant training simulator for badasses on Pandora.

Borderands 2 DLC: Digistruct Peak

Started writing some dusty ambient orchestral on my spare time. Had nothing particular in mind when I started this one and just let myself wander into the idea. I'd say it's a strange mix of wonder and melancholy?

Photo: Caitlin Chinn

Ambient LOFI - Haze

Begins with a brimstone character, the forge or formation of something new and then progresses into a mysterious journey and drift.

Ambient 2 - Formation And Drift

A few tracks that I wrote for the soundtrack to Borderlands. 

Borderlands DLC 1 - Toll The Wereskags

Borderlands DLC 2 - Bring Out The Badasses

Borderlands DLC 2 - Welcome to the Arena Suckers

A mildly dreamy 80's influenced backing track I wrote for a hummingbird wildlife short I shot at home.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjFvanyVNr8&ab_channel=RaisonVarner

Allen The Hurmngbrb

An experimental track using stems from a high energy EDM tune and then using Paul Stretch to turn them into these cloud-like textures. I then wrote some additional parts on top of the stretched source to create the music for this abstract visualization I shot. 

The texture of vapor is all real footage shot through a macro lens that then had color heavily pushed into it: https://youtu.be/jkWtv-a6ruc?si=ZRxVxJqcGDOyZ3UY

Tides In Light

The party leaps down to a courtyard and the ending of the demo introduces the spider sentry. This was the first prototype boss fight in a PvE map. The music entrance was timed to the Sentry landing in front of the player.

Battleborn - Unreleased - Tempest Demo - The Spider Sentry (Boss)

This was the introduction music for the demo. The beginning ambient section played while the party was waiting to leave a large chapel inside a "Techno Crypt."

The build and following arp section cue'd off the players exiting a hallway and hitting the environment reveal moment.

Battleborn - Unreleased - Tempest Demo - Introduction

The party crosses a giant, metal, floating bridge and comes across some shield minions and combat erupts until you get through the chapel and encounter a huge gap between platforms inside the tempest.

Battleborn - Unreleased - Tempest Demo - Fighting To The Gap

The party gets launched into the air and after they land across the gap, a mining ship flies in as hordes of minions pour into this section of the map. The music transitions as the players get above the fight and continue upwards.

Battleborn - Unreleased - Tempest Demo - Catapult Into The Hoard

Very early in development, I started exploring the possibility of a more classical orchestral approach to Battleborn's score. In the early days of Battleborn, we had a more serious tone to the writing and the lore. I spent about a week concepting all sorts of various style ideas and this one always stuck with me as one of the more interesting ones.

Battleborn Sketch - The Starmap

Written in 2001 as a young whipper snapper, this was my attempt at the greatest one can attain in epic cheez that one can imagine. Ever. 

Then Borderlands needed a song for Tannis on a Fish... Naturally. This is a marriage made in Pandora heaven. 

Tannis On A Fish

Children Inherit the Earth

The straight in-game version of the captain haunt boss fight. I do plan on creating an extended mix of just Phase 02!

Borderlands 3 - BloodyHarvest - Captain Haunt

Digby Vermouth's Universe Hit - Supernova Dreamsicle. 

Gettin you in the mood.

Featuring Julian Peterson on Sax. Julian is one of our audio coders and is also a composer in our audio department at Gearbox.

Borderlands 3 - Digby Vermouth - Supernova Dreamsicle

My arrangement of the ambient music for the Tazendeer Ruins in Borderlands 3. This is largely different from the in-game material that was designed to shuffle all 7 layers at random. In fact, all 3 tiers of intensity in music for this map are built that way.

Borderlands 3 - The Machine Crypt

This mix contains 3 of the 7 "suites" I wrote that cycle inside Desolation's Edge. Most of the synth work in this are custom Serum patches. 

There's a short bit of new material connecting the sections and an alternate "sparse" mix of what I call the "lullaby" of Nekrotefeyo at the front of the piece, this is a kind of representation of how this can break down to sparser arrangements in-game.

Borderlands 3 - A Forgotten Place

This is an arrangement of the high combat clips used in-game for the most intense combat section in Tazendeer Ruins.

Borderlands 3 - The Family Wants The Machine

The light combat section of music from Desolation's Edge arranged for soundtrack.

Borderlands 3 - The Arrival... Intensifies

Borderlands 3  - Action At The Machine

Soundtrack mix of the General Traunt fight in Desolation's Edge.

Borderlands 3 - In Case It Wasn't Clear... TRAUNT!

Heavy Combat arrangement for desolation's edge systemic music.

Borderlands 3 - Maliwan Is Here

2 of 7 "suites" of ambient themes for Desolation's Edge.

Borderlands 3 - The Arrival

An extended mix of the menu theme replacement that is unique to the bloody harvest free DLC event. Another almost pure Serum demo of custom patches.

Borderlands 3 - Bloody Harvest - Menu Theme (Extended)

An arrangement of the dark ambient clips that made up the systemic music for exploring the level.

Borderlands 3 - Bloody Harvest - The Tech Hallows

An arrangement of the layers and clips that comprised the combat music for the bloody harvest seasonal DLC event.

Borderlands 3 - Bloody Harvest - Maliwan Rises

The boss fight prelude that sets up the Phase 02 music.

Borderlands 3 - Bloody Harvest - Captain Haunt Phase 01

A track for the boss fight with Captain Haunt that mixes influences from Sebastien, Peturbator, Wolfgang Gartner, Benny Benassi and a little Justice au jus.

Borderlands 3 - Bloody Harvest - Captain Haunt Phase 02

The Ruiner

The boss theme for fighting Rose inside the crater.

Confronting Rose

The second suite of ambient layers tells the story of a lost and almost forlorn and forgotten area. The dryness of the Morin Khuur compliments all the old wood in this area.

The last minute of this piece are a few layers of me very lightly droning on the high string of the Morin Khuur while bowing close to the bridge.

Obsidian Forest Suite 2

The distorted tones are a mix of distorted Morin Khuur and serum patches. The brightest element is the Morin Khuur during the intro section of this. 

We wanted boss battles to maintain some of the electronic / aggressive personality of the main game fights. But for how dark we went with the score, something about Burial influenced garage felt like an appropriate direction so I tried to work some of that influence into this encounter.

Kormash

Ashfall Peaks Transition Segment

Originally an experiment at mixing up and pitching the same sets of clips that comprise the first combat cue to Ashfall peaks. I polished it up a little bit and included it in the soundtrack as an example of using the same source material to create variations in mood.

More Conflict at Ashfall Peaks

The tone setting track for me. This is also my personal favorite ambient. This introduces a loneliness and coldness to this area I just loved in the concept art.

Arrival at Ashfall Peaks

As much as I tried to recreate the way this music felt inside the music system in-game, I still enjoyed my in-game experience more than this soundtrack arrangement. Those "braam" like elements are two serum patches with an instance of fabfilter Simplon opening and closing the top end of both serum patches.

Conflict at Ashfall Peaks

This is the one track I was able to actually use more of the tuvan throat singing I learned for this project. I started learning the Morin Khuur from youtube videos about 3 months before this as well. 

This cue represents the alienness of the Borderlands universe and using ethnic instrumentation and techniques in different contexts to emphasize the wildness and harshness of the environments.

Climbing the Ashfall Peaks

An example of a slightly embellished progressive pluck inspired sound. This patch demos using an envelope on the reverb decay rate to get pitch movement on your reverb, but not you're base oscillators.

Prog2Step

GrainHorns

Demonstrating serum as a sound design tool. Basically just brutalizing a wimpy sound with the Zero-Square distortion. Originally started as a LFO sequenced bass patch but turned into this. Also shows how pitch effects patches performed higher and can result in completely different character.

EsperimentalSquelch

A patch full of very slow moving LFOs. Also built to demonstrate automating an aux input on a routing assignment so that you can fade the beating element in and out over time. Helps give a sense of independent movement from all your sources.

Chaos+Drift

This track accompanies the first circle of slaughter challenge you encounter in BL2. I went with a dance direction to keep the energy level high and give the player a fun track to slaughter to. It's also a bit of a nod to the music style for our 2nd DLC pack for the original Borderlands "Moxxi's Underdome"

Borderlands 2 Finks House Of Slaughter

The accompanying combat track to the wurmwater waste. Trentemoeller and Royksopp have definitely been big influences for me and a little bit of that comes through in this track. 

Borderlands 2 DLC1 Fighting In Wurmwater

Amidst the desert, we had this beautiful water and crystal cave hidden away and I tried to capture some of that heavily blue accented environment and echoing and watery caverns while still retaining some hallmarks of experimental electronica.

Borderlands 2 DLC1 The Watery Caves

A lighter side for a change! This track was inspired by some patches I made to run a serum tutorial for the Obsidian audio department. 

I thought it would be fun to do something a little different and upbeat and this was the end result. 

This track also spawned a new EP I'm working on that will be pretty different form this, but is a House/LoFi themed EP inspired by the process of making this one.

Break Me Out and Pull Me In

This is something I did as an exercise for fun testing some new sample libraires at home. I love the 40K and fantasy warhammer universes and thought I would try my hand at mixing some of that universe with some inspiration from Hans Zimmer's work on movies like inception and man of steel, etc...  Just kinda threw things together until it felt like I had something close to that idea!

Ended up sounding kinda cool, so I figured I'd post it. 

Brass: Cineamples Cinebrass Core/Exp
Strings: 8dio Adagio Bundle
Woodwinds: Orchestral Tools Berlin Woodwinds
Synth: Virus Ti Snow

Warhammer 40K Inspired

My part of the score for the 4th campaign DLC released today for Borderlands 2. Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. Borderlands humor and high fantasy had a baby and it's mother is TIny Tina... Need I say more?

Raison Varner

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