For drums, I started putting together a drum machine pallet consisting of some of the sounds from Ultrabeats’ Retro Machines and some 808-like tom and conga sounds that I made with the Retro Synth. I also used the arpeggiator and the ring shifter a lot. So Logic X’s Retro Synth became the foundation for the Smash Hit sound. In this particular case, I really fell in love with the Retro Synth, that while emulating an analog synth still was so much cleaner than my beloved Moog, Roland and Korg analogs that I had used for the sketches I made in March. I really love the feeling of how new instruments, new software, new speakers or whatever, can give you instant ideas, and make you want to experiment.
I have been working in Logic for a number of years, and during the summer a new version, Logic Pro X, had been released. Musically, I moved away from the sampled sounding beats, the fuzzy warm analog synths and the static, and developed a brighter, cleaner, slightly more digital sound.
By now the music was ordered in sections of 32 seconds, with 2 second intros and outros that made the mixing (all done in Dennis’s custom built software mixer) between sections smoother, and the transitions more interesting. Even though we all liked some of the elements from the last couple of sketches, I started over and came up with the minimalistic ambient track that later became the beginning of the track Start. Here was this beautiful, clean, sci-fi aesthetic that needed a soundscape to match the way it looked. I picked it up again after the summer, and the visual style of the game had really started to fall into place. After that, some time in March, I put the Smash hit music on hold, and focused on finishing Sprinkle Islands. After a while I presented a second batch of ideas, and this time we all felt that we were going somewhere, and I still think that there are som really nice ideas in there. Dennis and Henrik presented a couple of reference tracks, (Shigeto - Look at all the Smiling Faces, Gold Panda - Fifth Ave, Robot Koch - Water and Solutions, to name a few) that all had features they wanted for the music, big sounding spacey reverb, interesting drum programming, warm analog sounding sampled beats, a bit of static, and some heavier beats and analog synth stuff as well. I tweaked the sketches for a bit, but then we decided (thankfully!) to move on in an another direction. Dennis had suggested that the music should be divided into 24 second parts in 120 bpm, and that all parts should be able to be played in any order and still make musical sense. They were based around heavily processed drums, some ambient synth chords and some melodic arpeggio stuff. I did the first couple of sketches in February. Something I’m very thankful for, cause their feedback, ideas, references and the discussions we had made it all so much better in the end. It took a while while for me to find the right style, partly because of the fact that we worked on Sprinkle Islands at the same time, and partly because Dennis and Henrik were quite particular about the music. They knew right from the start that they wanted the music to be electronic, and that the style of the game would differ a lot from earlier Mediocre games.
So I thought I’d write a little something about that.ĭennis and Henrik started working on what would become Smash Hit sometime during the fall of 2012, and I joined in sometime in January 2013. And equally humbled by album downloads, spontaneous remixes, and questions from fellow producers regarding the inception of the music.
I’m very happy all for the kind words I’ve received through e-mails, bandcamp, soundcloud and other places.
And i’d like to think that the fact that we really worked hard on getting the music and sound design to fit the game really paid off too. A game that, thankfully, lived up to it’s name and became quite a smash hit indeed. Because of the enormous reach of the game, my music has been heard by millions of people that would have never heard it if it wasn’t in a game.
And in the end definitely the most rewarding. Writing the music for Smash Hit was probably the most challenging of all the games i’ve worked on with Mediocre.
Available for iOS and Android devices.Īlso available on 2 LP vinyl album combined with the soundtrack from PinOut from Pre-order now, ships early 2018! Official soundtrack from the game Smash Hit, by Mediocre Games.