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Soundtrack: FRACT OSC — solve the puzzle and the music grows back
The music Alex Taam (Mogi Grumbles) wrote for FRACT OSC is not playing as a finished piece from the start. Each puzzle you solve in its ruined synthesizer world switches on one more layer - a bass, a pad, an arpeggio - until the player's own hands have assembled the score. Using the composer's own statement that he kept every piece in C pentatonic minor as a thread, black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through a lens you can bring back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Q.U.B.E. 2 — Sound that is almost real, and not
The music David Housden wrote for Q.U.B.E. 2 is a calm, beautiful layer of piano, strings and synths. But the beauty has a trick in it. To match a premise in which an alien structure imitates Earth, he ran real sounds through synthesizers to make tones that are almost real, and not. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart the distance between first-person puzzle thinking and this sound, through a lens you can take home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: TUNIC — Music that turns like the pages of a manual
The 60 tracks Terence Lee (Lifeformed) and Janice Kwan wrote for TUNIC lean on the memory of retro game music without hiding inside the quotation. Built from samples of stray cats and summer wind recorded in the alleys of Taipei, it lives between the artificial and the organic. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart how this game of gathering fragments to read a world meshes with its music, through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Gorogoa — Every time tiles overlap, the music overlaps too
The music Joel Corelitz wrote for Gorogoa barely raises a melody or a chord; it lays down 'the feeling of a place' with texture alone. And the small pieces tied to each tile combine according to rules of overlap — the very puzzle of rearranging pictures is happening in sound too. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take its design apart in a form you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Portal 2 — Music a machine wrote, assembling itself as you solve
The music Mike Morasky wrote for Portal 2 is not something you put on and listen to; it assembles itself while you are mid-puzzle. Step on an Aerial Faith Plate, ride an Excursion Funnel, and the music adds another layer. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this score sounds like a computer composed it, and what you can steal for your own work.
Soundtrack: COCOON — Music that plays on without becoming wallpaper
The music Jakob Schmid wrote for COCOON is almost entirely synthesized, and most of it is generated in real time. It is neither a looped bed nor a vow of silence, but a third path. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this music can run continuously without ever turning into 'wallpaper,' through a lens you can take home to your own composing.
