This was very heavily inspired by Lovecraft. There was this ambient mix for the game Bloodborne (which was also heavily inspired by Lovecraft), which featured songs by various artists, not the actual Bloodborne soundtrack. And these songs just sounded otherworldly to me. And that was something I wanted to recreate.

The Foundation

The sounds described here are almost the same throughout the entire song. Straight away I wanted to give it ambience and so I found sounds of waves hitting something and here and there you can hear a very deep thunder in the distance. You’ll need good headphones for that. Then, although it’s very faint, there are a few drums that play in a constant rhythm. Lastly, there is a bass, which is an edited choir played way too low. It’s the same note and actually never stops because a MIDI choir doesn’t need to breathe.

I feel like with these all together there was already a good foundation for otherworldliness.

The Musical Instruments

Although the bass and the drums are proper musical instruments, I put them together in the category of foundation as opposed to music. Why? Because in this song the bass keeps playing one note and the drums are in the background doing just a regular straight rhythm. Both are in the background. Personally, I feel like they don’t add much to melody or rhythm of the song. They add to the feel but not the music.

Now, I’ll have to confess that the first of the two musical instruments here also plays the same notes throughout the whole song and that is a very modified clarinet. It’s a sample of a clarinet with unison but played back and forth in a grain sampler very slowly. This is then played on the note C and E (so not even a full chord). Still, because of unison it sounds like there is quite a lot going on, but there aren’t clear notes to grasp.

Lastly, there is again a Cello but this one also has simply a unison effect and reverb (just like everything else in this song). Here and there, I automated the pitch.

Composition

In this song there isn’t much to talk about regarding the composition. I had a few MIDI snippets for the Cello as this was the only instrument that was going to actually have a melody. Not only did I place them rather randomly, but the notes within the snippets were placed randomly (time wise). Together with the constant rhythm and unvarying background noises, this was supposed to further remove a sense of timing.

The whole idea of this song was to get a sense of things changing and yet everything staying the same. The song should feel as though it doesn’t change but still keeps moving forward. Like it stayed where it was, but three seconds later, you suddenly realize that it went somewhere else. Doesn’t make sense? That’s exactly how it should feel.