Rhythm Doctor OST - Unsustainable Inconsolable

Act 5 is out now!

Composed by ‪@Patricia_Taxxon‬

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Composer’s notes from Patricia Taxxon:

The direction I got for this track was very simple, fizzd had a set of mechanics that could emulate janky jungle rhythms and I was taken on to make some. There's a bit of humor in this idea, the realization that the set of tools you've created add up into a whole musical idiom, and I played into it a little. You might have noticed the subtle chopped up amen break sample in the mix, but there's an even subtler moment of audible humor in the moment where the snare follows the pattern of the amen break exactly — one snare on beat, the second one delayed — & in this moment alone I play it in full with no chopping.

I also had some direction for the story & where my track would fit in, and this is where most of my creative decisions came from. I'm aesthetically attracted to the rhythm game dichotomy of "hard because its fast" versus "hard because its weird," and following the former with the latter made perfect sense for this moment of hope and hubris followed by a painful fall. The last segment with the varying subdivisions was also for this purpose, I wanted the surprise quintuplet at the very end to provoke a panicked button mash in first-time playthroughs before the track suddenly crashes to a halt, like a sudden spike in pain and adrenaline before your body stops functioning.

The writing process was super fun, since Rhythm Doctor has deterministic audio cues I could simply load the sfx into my DAW and arrange them in there. The 7thbeatgames team were actually the only ones who touched the editor, even though I decided where all the hits went. This had a lot of benefits, it let me naturally work with both the design and the sound of the track without switching into different interfaces AND it let me easily mix the track to purposefully leave room for all the ingame sounds. Play it again, and appreciate how clearly the hitsounds poke through even though there's a heckton of stuff going on in the tune.

PS: I'm aware of the frums comparisons, they didn't directly influence my style (we're just both copying the same things) but I indeed envy their ability to launder experimental glitch IDM beats into thousands of rhythm gamers' ipod playlists. I want what they have, and I hope I get hired again after this. thanks!!

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Video made with FL Studio ZGameEditor Visualizer plugin
Effect author credits:
Linear - StevenM,Dubswitcher,Youlean
HUD 3D - Rado1
TextTrueType - Ville
Youlean Drop Shadow - Youlean