Hello readers! Vaan here, and I'm going to write a little about the original soundtrack for the first ever game we made here at Carnyx Studios; 8-Bit Monke. In this post, I'll be covering the aptly named "Monke See, Monke Move" track which starts immediately upon the player hitting 'play' in-game!
When you first play, you'll be thrust into the deep jungles as our little albino spider monkey friend, Eke. Mechanically, (and for the sake of this post), we'll call this place the Jungle Zone.
A different kind of jungle
The Jungle Zone was the first ever piece of music conceived for 8-Bit Monke, MANY, many years ago. The team and I were having one of our regular meetings discussing the game's development, and we got to talking about the soundtrack. Taking inspiration from classic platformers I played when I was a kid, namely, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon & Banjo Kazooie; I always wanted to make a track with a (hopefully) very memorable motif, and this was my chance!...
The team spoke for a bit and decided we didn't want to make a stereotypical "Jungle" track (in terms of instrumentation), such as the kind you'd hear from other classic games such as Donkey Kong (as great and memorable a franchise as that is!), or in other media with a jungle setting or aesthetic. Stuff like the use of Bongos, Congas, Marimbas and Pan Flutes etcetera.
As a lover of "slightly older school" electronic music and the like, it was not long before the idea of "Jungle" came to my mind; as in, the early 90's genre that emerged from Rave and Breakbeat music (which I listened to a lot of when I was younger!). This idea was a quick hit with the Carnyx Team, and so, I began making myself more familiar with the Jungle genre thanks to the many playlists findable throughout the internet!
Building the track
I already had an idea for the "motif" I spoke of earlier, and decided to take some influenced ideas from these playlists, and composed the melody on my Bass Guitar; it was catchy, memorable, and perfectly what I was looking for! Even better yet, it was easy to work with and easy to play!
Continuing this Jungle-genre influence, I got to producing the main drum score, adapting it to the way the game was planned to play out; quick to begin with and increasing in franticness representative of the player improving their distance and score over time as the deadly scrolling-screen of doom catches up to them! But of course, Eke the Monkey is adorable and enjoys the challenge! So naturally, the track wanted to be much the same; insert playful string-sections reminiscent of a synthetic 8-Bit-guitar with some slightly dissonant fill sections for my own challenge and fun!
As the team brought this game more to life, the artwork and gameplay convinced me to go back on our original thoughts (just a LITTLE...) and I really wanted to add some live percussion. So, I got my two different pairs of bongos out, my two little Goblet drums (a Darbuka and a Djembe), and my Cajon, and proceeded to record over about a week's worth of material; most of which didn't make it in because I primarily wanted to maintain the initial Jungle vibes we spoke of, so I instead added just enough percussion to drive the track and complete the last leg of its progressive journey...
...And speaking of that progressive journey, watch this space for when I might make another post (or a few), touching on the rest of the audio work present in Eke's journey! I learned a lot from it, and would love to share that with any and all who are interested!
Listen to the Jungle Zone track here!
