Hello everyone, I am Eric, the composer for Betwixt! Welcome to the first Dev Blog for "The Music of Betwixt!" In this series, I'm going to post intermittent updates and stories regarding the OST for Betwixt - from where it started, how it was made, inside details, to much more! I am excited to speak out on the process of making the OST and share with you all how everything has evolved into what it has become so far. Without further ado…

Today's topic will be "how it started, what changed, and where we are now."

When first discussing the idea of making a videogame, Alex, Sara and I were imagining a 2D side scroller similar to LISA: The Painful, Celeste, Hollow Knight, etc. Once development began though, it quickly turned into a turn-based, 3D RPG - quite ambitious for a first title! However, we were okay with that since we felt that this genre and style fell in line more with the type of story we wanted to tell. It was at this point that I started to create the soundtrack.

I knew that it was going to be a fantasy sound that we were going for. I didn't have much, and admittedly still don't as of this post, experience in a true electronic genre of music, so I shied away from those sounds. Most of my schooling was orchestral-based, and that's what I preferred, so that was the style we went with. As you listen to the soundtrack, you'll notice that there are almost no synths or other electronic sounds used; they are used very sparingly. This, to me, adds to the somewhat medieval fantasy quality of the music and only when we need to introduce something otherworldly are the synths present. What is used, however, are a vast array of textures all stemming from the orchestral genre - piano solos, string quartets, any combination of chamber ensembles, and all the way to the full orchestra. Some pieces may feature woodwinds, other pieces may feature brass. I think that this choice was the right call for the game when thinking about what soundscape would bolster the story and world the most.

At first, we sat down and talked about how much music we would need. We came up with a total of about 14-16 tracks: a few overworld themes, some battle themes, then some miscellaneous ones here and there. However, this number only grew… a lot. As we kept working, the game kept growing. As the game kept growing, more music was required, at least in my eyes. I would constantly say things like "this boss is going to need its own music," or "I know we don't have an area for this yet, but I made a cool piece of music that could fit in a place like this." Soon, we had 30+ tracks for the game! Some tracks still with no home, but they were made anyway. I think it's fair to say that some places were willed into the game by making some tracks ahead of the areas, for better or worse. And like that, the game kept on growing.

I won't speak much on this now, but I do want to mention a bit about the process of making music and how that evolved. I started out making the soundtrack solely in Musescore 3, and then that evolved to Cubase 12, where I figured out how to use VSTs which was a massive game-changer. Being an indie team, our budget is close to zero which meant that getting instruments live-recorded was essentially not an option for the scale I had composed for (some pieces being made for full-on orchestras). The problem with that is that for an orchestral-based sound, using electronically-based orchestral instruments isn't the most realistic sounding which always bothered me. Although I desperately wanted to get live-recorded instruments, I could get decently close using VSTs in Cubase which is where 90% of the soundtrack comes from now. When using the VSTs along the way, I found some nice vocal ones and I started to use those more. However, these always left a bit to the imagination. They didn't sound bad, but if the instrument itself was the human voice, then I really wanted an actual human voice. So fast forward a few months and I reached out to a vocalist who sung covers of my favorite soundtrack in the style I envisioned for our world. After a few messages back and forth, my collaboration with RinNoreen began.

At this point in development, we had around 40+ tracks which was already ~25 more than we anticipated. And now, we were adding live vocals! I was so nervous about everything at that point! I was worrying if my music was good enough for a live performer, I was wondering how the voice would sound in context with my music, and I was unsure how to mix live vocals back then. But amidst the uncertainty, I moved ahead anyways. I sent RinNoreen the first backing track and when I got that very first take and I took a listen, I knew then that her voice was a perfect fit. I remember smiling from ear to ear when taking that initial listen. From there, we worked on more tracks together and that process was a whole learning curve that I will speak about in another post! When we finished, I was overjoyed since her voice added to the sound what I always thought was missing - a human touch.

Although I finished all of the tracks RinNoreen was featured on, the soundtrack still, somehow, had some developing to do. The thing is that the creation of this music took place over the course of 5+ years. In those 5 years, I grew so much as not only a composer, but an audio engineer. So of course I would find myself going back to older works and touching them up. I did make sure not to completely overhaul them, however. Once a piece of work is finished, I think there is an important mindset to remember of "letting the piece be finished." If I went back and touched up everything that I felt could be even slightly better, I would never be done with the soundtrack. What didn't change since the beginning though was my habit of saying "wouldn't it be cool if this scene/area/character had their own theme?" With that, every area got its own unique battle theme. Once I finished those battle themes, I finally called the soundtrack completely finished at over 50 tracks and over two hours of music.

The entire progression of writing this soundtrack can be summed up like this to me: when making art you love, you don't want to stop and moreover, you want to do your best at it. From an anticipated 16 tracks to 50+ with live vocals, the soundtrack evolved further than I ever could have imagined and I truly loved every second of it. Thank you for reading.

-Eric Peterson