Last year I participated in the Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp). There are prizes for the top entries, and people are asked to donate to the prize pool. I knew I would likely win some prize money (and I did), so contributing cash didn’t make much sense. Instead, I offered to write some synthesizer music, up to five minutes, for one of the winners.
Autumn Chen selected my prize for her game “The Archivist.” It’s a rather gloomy story, so I needed to compose some gloomy music. I pitched her half a dozen sketches, she selected three, and after a few months of delay, today I finished the mixes. There were all done in Reason, using quite a variety of synths and a few sound processing tricks.
Perhaps a word of explanation is warranted: My hearing is not that great anymore in the high frequencies, so while working on the mixes, I cheated a little. I boosted the highs so I could hear them better, and then turned off the boost before capturing the final files. If these tracks are too crispy, or not crispy enough, hey, I’m doing the best I can.
If you’re authoring interactive fiction and would like to talk to me about music, you can email me or send me a message on the intfiction.org forum.
Jim Aikin's Oblong Blob 