It’s something that defines Pizza as a character, but the use of repetition changes over the course of the story to mean new things as it goes. To me it felt like a comparison of elegance versus eagerness, like a kid running to catch up to someone they look up to and skipping a bit before matching their pace. Rhythmically, they also differ a little: Chicory’s theme waits a quarter note, then begins on 2. It’s also the home of Chicory, but Pizza’s theme actually derives from Chicory’s in a motivic sense! While Chicory’s theme steps from Mi up to Sol, up a step and back down again, Pizza’s theme steps from Mi up to Sol, then repeats Sol three more times before following the same pattern. Writing their theme as well as Luncheon’s music went hand-in-hand since it felt right to pair the main character’s theme to their current home. While there’s no one “main theme” for the game, Pizza’s theme is as close as you’ll get for the first half of the game. It’s warm, feels nostalgic every time you return to it, and provides an emotional grounding for wherever you go from there. The Town of LuncheonĪ hometown is always a really important song in any adventure. At the end, she discovers the unattended brush and chooses to wield it in lieu of its owner, Chicory, creating a dramatic fanfare out of the mysterious hare’s motif. Second, a super rambunctious dramatization of her theme as she cleans and gradually gets more and more unnerved by ~mysterious things~ happening. So we get two very different takes on Chicory’s theme, all played in Pizza’s key instrument, the recorder: First, a slow and mythical introduction. To them, Chicory is the coolest thing since sliced bread, their entire world, and only gateway into who the Wielders are.
#SWAMP ATTACK PIANO FULL#
(The original An Afternoon in Luncheon EP split up these cues into a faithful recreation of the intro & ‘Entering Luncheon’, but Greg and I made the creative decision to combine them into one flowing suite so that you could hear them in a new context on the full album.) When I wrote these, I really wanted to channel the mindset of Pizza, the little dog that could, and their mythologizing of the Wielders. A Colorful TaleĪ Colorful Tale is a suite of dynamic cues that encompasses the introduction to the story and its plot, carefully arranged to be a bit less upsetting than it appears in-game, for ease of listening. Sitting in the back, too, is a distant orchestral pad sustain, giving a subtle tease to the instrumentation to come. It was important to have an interplay between the piano and harpsichord, even if the latter is only playing a light reverb’d sting. I wanted to keep the instrumentation light, focusing just on the melodies & a bit of accompaniment. I’ll get into the differences between the two later on, but for now it was important to establish both themes out the gate since how they play between each other became the heart at the center of the soundtrack. I wanted the title screen to reflect the themes of both major characters: Chicory in the first half, and Pizza in the second. It was such a perfect little painted intro, so I wanted to give it an arpeggiated flourish, in this case a major 7 chord with the 9th hanging out there at the bottom. I originally wrote the beginning of this track to accompany the animated title screen swoosh as it comes in.
#SWAMP ATTACK PIANO FREE#
The album cover for Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Original Soundtrack), painted by Alexis Dean-Jonesįeel free to check out the Chicory soundtrack on your service of choice if you’d like to listen along as you read through these liner notes! Blank Canvas Context means a lot, especially for the connections between melodies and the narrative, so check out the game if you want, first! These notes will still be here when you’re done ❤ But full disclosure, there will be spoilers in these liner notes. Maybe we’ll get into that a bit, as we go. It feels a lot like the legacy of the Wielders. I think a lot about western music theory. I didn’t want things to feel childish, but I did want the music that accompanied the entry into a game about pure creativity to start from one place with plenty of room to grow. Relating that to music got me contemplating my own memories of learning music: playing to colored dots on my toy piano, playing recorder in elementary school, singing solfege in choir. No real sophisticated tools, just a palette and ideas. It evoked a lot of memories of doodling in MS Paint. When I first started thinking about the music for Chicory, there was just a prototype: a little dog in a blank room that you could paint. Composing for Chicory - Motifs & Memories