About the music for inMomentum, sample tracks + some screenshots news

"When faced with a game that essentially looks like a bunch of geometric shapes at first glance, it's tough to imagine what music might go there, especially for a game called 'inMomentum'. Momentum + Geometry does not exactly inspire musical images, but then I reminded myself of the bigger picture." - said our composer.

The Music Of inMomentum

The game isn't just about the art style, nor is it just about momentum, it is simply an interactive experience that is designed to be enjoyable. Challenging for the hardcore gamer, but simple enough and 'completable' for the new gamer.

While there are sound effects in the game, the ratio of sound to music is relatively low, and therefore music will play a large role in the players experience of the game. Before discussing the technicalities of how we plan to implement the music in-game, let's just discuss sonics first.

Sonic Palette

We decided to go with a hybrid sound of about 50% electronics and 50% acoustic. The music will essentially blend a cinematic sound (mainly strings and piano) with electronics. A good example is one of our tracks called 'Spacial Recognition':

This track encompasses almost everything we want to 'say' with the music for inMomentum. The music in the first half is a very good example of what might play 'ambiently' or when you have no momentum. The music in the 2nd half is a full-paced track that might play when you have a lot of momentum.

Also in this track you can hear the main theme for inMomentum. There will be a snippet of the main theme (often heavily varied) in every track of the game. Here it is in notated musical form:

As you can hear from the track above, we've used strings, piano, some electronics, and drums, and that's really about it in terms of instruments. The sound palette will be roughly the same across the game, but it's how we implement it that will make things interesting.

Implementation

The implementation of music that we are doing for inMomentum is nothing particularly revolutionary, but we do think that the music that will be written for the game lends itself well to the style that we are going for.

The music – especially for the levels of inMomentum – will heavily draw from the minimalist genre. Minimalist music makes use of repeated patterns which sound good on their own, but also when put together are even greater than the sum of their parts. Examples of composers that do this extremely effectively are Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams. A lot of IDM is based on this concept too.

Here is the track 'The Art Of Movement' from the game's soundtrack (not the final version of the track, but it's pretty close). This music is taken from the very first level (the tutorial) of the game.

The beginning of this track is an example of how minimalist music works. It starts with a string ostinato, and then a pulsing synth comes in later. Then another layer of violins comes in. More and more simple layers gradually come in which feature heavy use of repetition (a characteristic of minimalism). It doesn't sound repetitive, because the ideas are ever so slightly varied each time and the texture continues to grow and grow. At 1:10 the track breaks down and becomes more progressive.

We consider this will contribute to making the game a more unique, personal and enjoyable experience for you.

We hope you enjoyed this update. If you would like to follow our progress, you can Watch the project or tune in with one of our community sites. Thank you for your interest and support!