00:00Hello, my name is Olivier Essman and I worked as a composer and sound designer on Symphonia.
00:19Symphonia is a 2D platform game in which we play the role of a pioneer who aims to rebuild an orchestra in a fantastic world where music is the source of life.
00:29He will travel to different neighborhoods of the world of Symphonia, which are each inspired by a family of instruments of the Symphonic Orchestra.
00:45We were two main composers on this project, the other being Alexandre Bucafrançais, and together we shaped the artistic direction of the project.
00:53We spent a lot of time discussing the personality we wanted to give to each level and the way we were going to convey it to the player.
01:01The idea was to create something unique with very different references between each level and sometimes even between the biomes that make up the levels.
01:09Once we had set up the references, we distributed the compositions and we did a lot of back and forth until we found the balance we were looking for.
01:26In the end, we completed each other well, he was more sensitive to melodic and harmonic elements, where I liked to create more textures with the orchestra.
01:40We discussed a lot about the symbolism of the different families of orchestral instruments, what they evoked for us, what they represented for each of us.
01:52For each level, we deduced an atmosphere, a personality of characters, musical references used, different elements of scenery, different gameplay bricks, etc.
02:06Le Monde des Bois, for example, inspired us with a universe full of emotions, quite funny, disjointed, a bit funny, unpredictable, light, delicate.
02:17And from this feeling, we thought that a forest environment would correspond well to this level, with flowers for lightness, a lot of wind to recall the family of instruments,
02:29a spontaneous character, and a fancier part of the level, which also symbolizes the turmoil of this character.
02:38We therefore tried to put all the symbolism that we had released in our decisions.
02:44Moreover, our musical references are directly based on it.
02:47The idea was to question the family of instruments by using it a lot and in many different ways in the compositions of the level.
02:59A key point that greatly influenced the way we worked was the recording.
03:13The problem was that we had never done this before and it raised a lot of questions.
03:18It questioned our working method, it imposed new constraints, it represented a cost and a big risk
03:25because we were not going to master the final rendering in the same way and in such a precise way as we had done so far.
03:32And on the other hand, it was going to give a life and a unique personality to our level.
03:37Fortunately, we came across Scoring Production, which allowed us to make the link between the composers and the final version of the music,
03:57taking care of the whole organizational part of the recording.
04:01This includes partitioning, instrumentation modifications,
04:06getting the musicians in agreement with our project,
04:10being their main interlocutor during the recording,
04:13mixing, mastering.
04:15It really helped us to avoid all the mistakes of the beginners and make sure that the recording goes well.
04:22Basically, it allowed us to focus on the composition and guarantee a good result at the end.
04:27And frankly, we are very happy to have been able to work with them.
04:30It was really a blessing.
04:31As soon as we knew that the music was going to be recorded,
04:34we had to anticipate as much as possible the playability of the parts, the balance of the voices, of the instrumentation.
04:41We also wondered which parts were going to be recorded and which were going to have to be made from samples.
04:52We chose to compose linear music, that is to say that it does not evolve according to the player.
04:57But that was for the benefit of a composition that was always balanced,
05:01closer to the classical universe and film music than video game music.
05:07In the end, we recorded almost everything in 2D, except the soloists.
05:11We did not record the percussions, we used the samples instead.
05:27For the player's ability to improvise, we worked with an improvisation violinist
05:33in order to give life and naturalness to his passages.
05:36We really wanted it to be an improvisation and not a written passage.
05:42And so we did the triplet.
05:44It's a triplet, it's a triplet, it's a triplet, it's a triplet, it's a triplet, it's a triplet.
05:51We really wanted it to be an improvisation and not a written passage.
05:55And so we did the triplet on more than a hundred takes to have a certain diversity
05:59and that the player really had the impression that he could improvise to everyone.
06:03We tried to think of the instrumentation within the levels as something that sometimes grows progressively.
06:23As in the level of the strings, for example, we start with just a piano,
06:28then the more we go forward, the more the effect will grow with a string quartet,
06:33to finally end with the whole section of the orchestra, which represents 24 different musicians.
06:38This evolution symbolizes, it accompanies the progressive awakening of the environment
06:44as the player progresses, and it symbolizes the restart of the symphony city.
06:50Many small symbolic touches are present in the game like this
06:53to bring depth to our world and a little bit of musical subtext that would replace the dialogues in the game.
07:10For the concerti, which are the end-level concerts,
07:13we originally wanted to take the concept of musical dialogues,
07:17which is really the very definition of a classical concerto,
07:21and give it a narrative dimension in the game,
07:24as if the characters were talking to each other, but in music,
07:27and with their instruments rather than in words.
07:30The lines of dialogue would be replaced by musical sentences,
07:34and we had the idea of pictograms above the characters,
07:37which would have made it possible to understand the message and the relationship between the different characters.
07:44The player would have had a form of concert personalization.
07:49The idea was to give the player the choice of these musical sentences,
07:54as if they were controlling the dialogue, as if it were really something verbal.
07:59This idea was too complicated to push to the end,
08:02it would have required too many technical means for it to be understood,
08:07it would have required to work the music in a very modular, very flexible way,
08:13and it would have had a significant impact on the freedom of composition,
08:18and also, of course, on the mental manner.
08:21We would have had to record these different passages,
08:25so we abandoned the idea in the course of the journey,
08:29in favor of a more general story told by the music,
08:33and also by the graphical environment.
08:46The concerti were also a real place of exchange within the team,
08:51especially between the composers on one side, and the artist team on the other,
08:56because we really had to agree on the message we wanted to convey,
09:00that we were telling through both the music and the evolution of the environment,
09:04because as there is neither dialogue nor text in our game,
09:08it was important for us that the music and the scenery were in harmony,
09:12and had a particular meaning, a certain symbolism,
09:15as if we were guessing through these two elements the relationship between the characters
09:19and the impact that this relationship has on the world of Symphonia.
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