o***********************
o*** TRILBY'S NOTES ****
o***** soundtrack ******
o********* SE **********
o***********************
o***********************
o***********************
o***********************
o***********************
o******** by ***********
o*Mark "m0ds" Lovegrove*
o***********************
o***********************
o********2006***********
o***********************
o***********************

1. THE CONCEPTION

Devising the score for Trilby's Notes seemed
like an almost impossible task at first. With
the reputation of Yahtzee's games 5DAS and 7DAS -
which both featured a unique style with the
music he found for it, I thought it would
be hard to bring my own style into it.

With some titles, I can think up melodies quite
quickly, but this one had me stumped! I had a few
ideas floating and quickly recorded them on Sound
Recorder just to give Yahtzee a sample. I was
intent on sticking to the melodies used in them.

yahtzees_game.mp3 - is the first idea I had for
			the dark opening titles.

When I tried to convert it into MIDI, it sounded
awful! :p So I soon realised that tune, as nice as
it was - wasn't going to work!

yahtzees_game2.mp3 - the second original sample
			I sent Yahtzee. Sounds
			like a spooky fair! Actually
			the end bit is based on
			Ghostbusters :p

Yahtzee had give me a complete set of instructions
as to how he wanted the score to sound. I no idea
at first that it was going to be set so sparsley
around the game. 

Though the first tune for the menu screen seemed
quite dark and ominous (I thought it had a bit of
a B-movie feel to it :p ) I just couldn't get it
to work. It was styled on Predator by Silvestri but
wqasn't coping with the conversation to MIDI - but
that's probably just me sucking! Or forces beyond 
my control telling me not to mimic it!!!1

ycrap2.mid - some of yahtzees_game.mp3 in MIDI

yahtmor.mid - another test for the game. I composed
		it without really knowing where it
		would fit. Scrapped!!!! 

yahtz1.mid - when I realised the first version of the
		menu music wasn't going to sound that
		good in MIDI I tried writing this.
		It didn't sound dark at all.
		It ended up sounding a bit Indy! :p

YZZZZ.mid - then one sunny day a
		miracle occurred and I thought of a
		great way to put the words "five 
		days a stranger" into a melody. 
		Using my keyboard, I quickly wrote
		this tune to capture its sound. I
		knew this tune could not itself fit
		in Trilby's Notes, but the melody
		could be adapted.

2. THE SCORE

02. REMEMBER THE DAYS
I decided to forget about the bloody menu music for
a little while, this was the first tune I composed
properly. Although I was going to record the score
with my keyboard, I felt it needed finer tuning &
that unique sound - so I ended up plotting the notes.
I played with melodies on my keyboard :) This tune
worked out nicely, fitting Yahtzee's brief. The only
problem is when I listen to it back I hear a FoY 
tune with a similar structure! :p

03. PIECING IT TOGETHER
Now that I had a decent main melody for the game, I
realised there were two key pieces of music in the intro
to Trilby's Notes - and so I made it creep in. In the
first track (remember the days) a small part of it plays.
In this one, the melody is much more clear in the first
part.

You may be thinking "Why's the music saying '5 Days a stranger'
and not Trilby's Notes?". The answer is I don't know! :p 
This one works more epically. If thats a word!

05. DANGER

Some people may remember I worked on Rob Blanc for Yahtzee
quite some years ago. It's easy for me to remember how that
music went and some of it is employed here! Using a similar
chord structure to Rob Blanc I was able to make a kind of 
"get your ass in gear!" tune. The final result apparently
worked well for the "you're in grave danger!" situation.

The omitted tune features an abrupt ending, whereas the main
tune was later designed to loop. I would have liked to have
made it last longer!

06. DEATH

Just came to me.

12. END CREDITS

By this stage I realised the "5 Days a Stranger" melody was
in there quite a bit, so I decided to work on the final track
that really featured that melody before moving onto the
other tunes in the game. This tune was just a matter of making
the whole thing sound jolly and successful :) It needed a
slightly darker end which puzzled me for a while. Instead, I just
decided to repeat the middle section but in a minor key. Easy!

Fatman fans might like the ending, because its modelled on the
finale music from that game. I'm not trying to write the perfect
score, I'm just trying to make the ones I already have perfect!

08. HAUNTSICHORD

Okay, I couldn't keep the theme away!!

Requesting a scary melody on the harpsichord I came up with
something that I didn't think was scary at all. Either way,
Yahtzee didn't say he disliked it so it was used! This is 
the long version.

09. UNEASY NORMALLITY

When experimenting with ways to make the main melody sound
gloomy, happy, uneasy etc - I came up with this tune. I 
tried to give it a slight disorientation feel. & yes, I snuck
in the Rob Black theme at the end. :p

The omitted tune was the version with an abrupt ending, but
Yahtzee later requested it trailed out.

10. RESEARCH

He didn't ask for it but because I was gutted there weren't
more tunes to write, I based this on a tune I'd heard the
night before which I thought could suit a part of the game
he hadn't thought of music for. I had no intention of seeing
it included.

01. MAIN TITLE

So it was time to go back to the main titles and work on 
the creepy opening theme! It occurred to me the way to win
this one was using pitch bending. Deep low instruments
pitch bending, that would sound weird! Each bend works its
way up into that "5DAS melody" I thought up. I put in a
tubular bell sound so your ears could follow the beat and
perhaps realise the music was trying to say "5DAS"...

Even if that sounds stupid, it contributed to the sound of 
the score nonetheless :p

I really didn't think this tune was going to work. At this
point I was still doubting a lot of it - but Yahtzee had given
me positive feedback and said the majority of tunes had worked,
that only a few tweaks were needed.

All I had left to do was the music for dark world!

04. DARK WORLD

This track took TIME! And lots of tension to write!!! Hehehe.
I was really stumped about how to do this one. How to make
it sound disorientating & spine-chilling. Well, I'm not so 
sure it completely achieved that, but finally I chose out 
some of the weirdest instruments in MIDI (and some normal ones)
and combined them with random pitch bends, timings & of course
the 5DAS melody - to create this random section of noises.

This is the only tune in the game I composed directly through
my keyboard, as it has no specific time signiature. 

And once that tune was done, the score was complete!!! I posted
it all to Yahtzee and was able to play a beta of the game with
the music in there, and soon I realised perhaps it *was* going
to work!

OTHER TUNES IN THE ZIP ARE
> 5 Days A Stranger.mid

I was once asked to re-write the music for 5DAS. I don't think 
it was ever used but this was the theme I came up with. Although
it sounds quite "news" like, I don't think it would suit.

> 5DAYS1.mid

Is the original idea for the "5 Days A Stranger" theme when I was
asked to re-write the music. I wasn't asked by Yahtzee, by the way!

Was that you, Ed? :)

3. THE RESPONSE

There were quite a lot of comments about the music as forums were
flooded with good comments about Yahtzee's atmosphere in the game.
I noticed the "original music" was enjoyed by quite a few people &
it led to this special edition score with annotated ramble by me :)

Thank you very much for your support and for showing me you enjoy
and appreciate my music. It's only a hobby for me but it feels 
really good to know others enjoy it just as much as I do! More
scores (and Indy games) from Screen 7 in the near future, I'm sure!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

That's pretty much how Trilby's Notes was composed. Hope you 
enjoyed the read, and I hope you enjoy the music! Who knows,
maybe there'll be more in the future :)

contact Mark at
> speilbergjnr@hotmail.com

Please share but do not deface!
...or YOU will be de-faced...

 Screen 7 - www.screen7.co.uk