Delphinium

Artwork by @RewindzeVII on X (Twitter).

Description
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dLbl3v3gWn-ixz793TSDkvG97k4VNAcWaEKp_Df4mEc/...

Orchestral/cinematic piece, with touches of electronic sounds here and there. Runtime of 5:23. Made in Logic Pro with the help of the BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover plugin.

Hi - I'm Bhoom (or Bryan)! This is my first real 'composition' for my first composition jam, and I'm quite proud of how it turned out. I've been interested in music and composition for a while, but only this early September did I start trying to create. I learnt that itch hosted not only game jams, but also music jams - and I rushed over here last Thursday to find Lone Rabbit's OST Comp Jam. The good news: I was given an excellent idea to try and interpret. The bad news: I had two days.

I started by spending an afternoon on ideation - I liked the illustration a lot and decided to use it as inspiration and visual reference. I made notes on potential character ideas and interpretations of both the theme and the characters.

The large figure in the illustration appeared to be a robot (observing the joints), only appearing to be a human in a spacesuit at first glance. The girl, however, wasn't wearing any kind of suit. This suggested the environment was safe to some extent and the air was breathable. I started imagining a desolate, distant future where Earth's ecosystem had collapsed and sandstorms now frequented the surface, forcing humans into underground shelters. Very original. I know.

While planning, I wanted motifs/ideas for 1) the girl, 2) the robot, 3) humanity in general, and 4) the world. Aside from harmonic motifs, I also wanted to think about instrument choice to represent each motif. I imagined a wind instrument motif for the girl (to represent her frailty and fragility) a heavier metallic sound for the robot, an organized brassy sound for humanity, and a lonely string/wind sound for the world.

After fooling around on my MIDI controller (using a piano patch to start on a balanced sound), I found an alternating perfect 5th between F and Bb had a specific sound - a sort of 'childish' innocence - that I liked. I used that as a basis to create an 8-bar melody originally for the clarinet but eventually evolved to be for the strings. This became Delphinium's motif, and I immediately began orchestrating it, building up the rest of the ideas alongside the main one. An arpeggiated Alchemy synth was used as the robot's 'motif'.

I ended up not finishing the piece on time. At around 5 minutes to the deadline, I'd completed a basic idea and crunched out the 'beta' version. I bounced it and tried to submit it - only to find out the upload process wasn't as streamlined as I'd thought (AND I somehow hadn't verified my itch email yet, preventing me from uploading my audio file entirely. In hindsight, I probably should have prepared myself better). I sent a message to Rabbit afterwards, asking if I could make a late submission. After impatiently waiting for a reply, I decided to essentially give up on the piece. My life had lost its meaning. What was a man to do without his delusional writings?

UNTIL I later received a message from Rabbit stating I could make a late submission. Then came two more days of passionate writing where I patched up the unfinished version of Our Garden. What came out of it is what you can hear now.