Rhythm Doctor OST - Bitter Times

Composed by celesti whispers and ‪@Patricia_Taxxon‬
Lyrics by Kyle Labriola, Winston Lee and fizzd
Cole Vocals by ‪@snackswithyeo‬
Nicole Vocals by ‪@JuliaHenderson‬
Guitar Solo by Leo Aram-Downs

--
celesti's notes:
fizzd came up with the core beat — snares on 3 and 6.5 — and the whole structure, including the tempo change to make you play the same thing but faster.

i got very lost in the sauce trying to piece together a sample-based track using the stems of all the previous songs featuring nicole and cole. it just felt like the right thing to do. the problem is I actually have zero experience sampling things... i tried sampler plugins and beat slicers and none of the workflows made any sense to me. in the end the "all bit-bitter bitterness" vocal chops were done manually with items on the timeline and were the only part of my sampling detour that stuck around.

about 3 months into production i took a 3 month break and came back with a renewed fatigue. the passion and wonder for music half a lifetime ago when i wanted to read harmony theory books in math class has all dissipated. now i feel resentful, why is there still more to learn, haven't i done enough. it feels silly calling this burnout because i barely put in any actual hours, i stopped practicing and sketching for fun long long ago. this is less of a collaboration and more Patricia cleaning up my mess, thank you so much Patty, wish we could've worked together under better circumstances.

the part near the end where the kicks temporarily beat in 4/4 to throw you off was inspired by Yogev Gabay's analysis of "Double Faced" by Tigran Hamasyan    • "Double Faced" by Tigran Hamasyan EXPLAINED  
--

Kyle (dialogue/story) notes:
When we decided to make a night shift version of 2-X, we needed a reason that Cole and Nicole were going to slip back into old habits. One of our immediate ideas was that they were hitting a bump in their relationship, after falling in love during their 2-X duet. There's several romantic couples in the game, like Logan+Hailey and the Stevensons, and romance is generally conveyed in RD as a sweet and wholesome thing. I wanted to show that relationships are often complicated and turbulent, even in happy couples. After the "flirting phase" and the "honeymoon phase", two people have to adjust to being around each other even though they have different lives and priorities.

One of the biggest things that any couple has to navigate is how time and attention are spent with each other, and what to expect going forward. You're not just an individual anymore, you're also a team. Having there be a miscommunication and hurt feelings about a creative project deadline was…y'know, fairly relatable for me and others on the team. It seemed like a natural way for Cole and Nicole to get annoyed at each other. And it's especially ironic given Cole's desperate pleas in Act 2 to be able to do more and more work without distraction.

One of my priorities with Cole+Nicole (as well as Logan+Hailey) as a writer is to always make sure we're getting a balance of both their perspectives. I try to make sure both characters get screen time and dialogue, and that we know what each person is feeling. If I remember correctly, the original idea for Act 2 in general was more from Cole's perspective, but once we started fleshing out Nicole as a character and gave her two levels of her own, it made sense to have them "meet in the middle" literally on the Level Select screen.

For 2-XN, I labored over making sure that the argument didn't seem simply like Cole's fault or Nicole's fault, but rather a small rift between them. We were tweaking the wording of certain sentences here right up until the day before the game came out. Neither of them wants to hurt the other, but they're torn by how much they want to stay true to their own wants and needs. Having the music to work off of made the arc of their emotions even more natural to write.

--
fizzd notes:
The idea of hitting on 3 and 6.5 came from seeing a masterclass video by Nate Smith (paid: https://www.mymusicmasterclass.com/pr...) (incidentally he also has an incredible lesson about clapping on the 7th beat which people kept sharing to me    • counting to 7 has never been so hard   ). Anyway he starts with a steady metronome and makes that become the 3 and 6.5 by playing around it, what?!? That was my main pitch to celesti, who wrote the majority of the song, the beautiful verses and instrumental etc. Patty then added the intro juke to make the player start in 4/4, the ending polyrhythm section, solo section, and chorus, most of the sound design/instrumentation, and mixed it all. The VFX and window dancing effects soaked in metaphor were conceived and handled by Jenny.

thanks for listening! if youre wondering where 7-1 Blurred is, it's actually a licensed one so isn't in the original soundtrack. So it's not available officially right now, but we'll link to it when SKARBA posts it.