Introduction to Pause Play Stop’s Music – Title Theme

A game which revolves around the music… We have heard of them before.

But what about one where your decision on what you listen to changes your environment?

I’m Thomas Wilson and I’m the newest member of our team at Headless Chicken Games.

When first talking about Pause Play Stop, the team knew exactly what they wanted for the music: tracks conveying different emotions. Magical cassette tracks would interact with the environment around you, like Ocarina of Time, but now projecting those emotions into the world in which you are playing.

After going through many ideas in my head, I felt the theme needed to be wide enough to allow a large emotive range, but small enough to be intimate. While I scribbled down multiple themes, nothing quite clicked. Themes came and went with none quite malleable enough. They were too fast or too slow.

And then this hit, and stuck:

Finally achieving this theme, I wanted to think about all the possibilities for compositions. The team suggested I begin working on a Title Theme similar to the opening of Kingdom Hearts because of its memorability and simplicity. Keeping a tribute to that, I set the theme to piano.

I figured this would be the best place to exploit the simplicity and emptiness of the theme.  The notes of this piece fell into place, falling one by one, line by line. The simplicity grows more and more complex, multiple emotions are visited, before returning back to where it began. The voice-like synth part is all alone, but absolutely a part of this acoustical world, swaying and growing among the piano lines.

Without saying much more as to larger thematic relations between the music and game, suffice to say the music possesses a strong voice in the game. Next time, I’ll reveal more music, getting to the emotive cassettes, and how those will function in the upcoming demo.

Until then.

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