The following is a guest blog post by Joseph Fear, the composer for the indie game, Tombeaux.
I’m Joseph Fear, the composer working on Tombeaux. Dave asked me to jot down some thoughts about how we arrived at a direction for Tombeaux’s music. I don’t blog for myself, but hopefully you’ll find a few interesting tidbits that will leave you salivating for more.
I’ve been writing music professionally for over ten years, but this is my first experience writing for a video game. Video games have been my main hobby since forever (and my first compositions were written with Mario Paint for the SNES), so I’m excited to get the chance to merge my two main interests into one career opportunity and close the loop, as it were.
Dave and I met at a game music conference in Saint Paul, MN, while stopping by the Minnesota Public Radio booth and chatting with Emily Reese, the host of the Top Score podcast (an excellent resource for anyone interested in listening to game music composers talk about their experiences writing for a wide variety of games). It was a bit of planned serendipity on my part, since as anyone in the game industry will tell you, most of your early career opportunities derive from networking at these sorts of events (if you are an introvert, remember: many of the rest of us are also introverts). We exchanged contact info, looked at each other’s work, etc., and found that our artistic voices aligned well for this project.
There were, of course, a number of ideas and sketches that went into the virtual trash can. Dave and I had talked about the inclusion of a phonograph player in the cabin that would allow players to revisit the music of the different levels/time period. It was a good idea, but ultimately one that we decided to put on hold at least for the first release of the game.
I have had a great time working on this project, and am pleased that the music is coming together and fits well within the context of the game. I hope that what you’ve heard will leave you wanting to hear more.
This post can also be found on https://tombeauxgame.wordpress.com/