Gameplay Music

The gameplay music actually came up first for Fish Heads (being largely inspired by the demo that ended up being used in the trailer). A high energy and partially chaotic march here- the goal was to match the energy of the infinite runner genre.

Menu Music

Coming from the gameplay music, you can hear how the main style was toned down a bit for use in the game’s menus. Still that alternating root/fifth pattern in the low brass and syncopated spiccato string hits, but now the use of melody has been toned down pretty heavily as well.

That was big technique I used to tame the energy in the menu theme: limiting the main theme to only 8 bars, as this allowed me to explore the music more ambiently. I could now get more life out of the vamp and play with melodic ideas introduced in the gameplay music. And this reverse engineering of developing ideas from the gameplay music (which plays after the menu music in game) solidified the musical identity of the game in a subtle way that, when bouncing between the menu and gameplay, gives players musical variety on a select number of musical ideas.