Conviction Chronicles blog post #16 - Song "Her Eclipse" has released!

 Link: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/michaelrichardlannon/her-eclipse

What is this?

So this is my attempt of making a main theme and sending it to two different vocalists to do work on it. The original idea was to have something darker as a base and then to send it to someone to remix it for refining.

The main idea behind the track was to 

1. Have female vocals of some kind to represent Bianca.

2. Have some sort of darker themes behind it to set the tone while keeping the lyrics safe for anybody to listen to.

3. Be good to listen to outside of the context for the average music listener.

This was more daunting than I thought since I am not good with vocals. 

Original Version (Without Vocals)

The original version was made to be darker and repetitive to fit a darker tone and story. It was quick to make and featured more instruments used in the game. 

First layer of vocals

I ended up contacting a vocalist named Mike Dawson to make vocals for the track. He focuses on heavy metal type vocals which was perfect for the darker tone I wanted to capture. There was ultimately something missing even with this first layer of vocals and the overall song needed more work to match what I wanted.

Remixing and second layer of vocals

I contacted a female vocalist and another producer to help with this where they added the female vocals to the chorus and heavily refined the track, replacing some of the instruments with more premium options and adding some effects to the track to really bring it to life. They also transformed the song I only planned to be 2 minutes long into something almost 6 minutes long. Everything they did made it feel much more premium and complete. The remixed version's producer and the female vocalist wanted to be anonymous. 

Track Album art

I went for a stylized and fractured image with a rotten apple in the middle. Very artistic yet simple.

Purpose of this track

Mainly for marketing purposes where it will be used in the game's intro video, the final trailer, and to replace the main menu music for darker piano to something that excites the player to get in and start the game. Not sure if I will have the version with vocals in the main menu or edit the project file to remove the vocals for a vocal-less version for the title screen as the main menu screen's tone was made off the original song's tone.

I learned with Aswang Detective that vocals really do help a game on Steam along with the soundtrack's sales through the platform, but I've never went back to do more due to the time and monetary cost involved with getting something that worked. But I wanted to invest the time and money to get this track right. 

Anything else?

This is a big piece for the bigger marketing related things I have to get right for the game, and I really like how it came out, where it should be heavily useful. It did cost me quite a bit more than what I would have hoped, but the value it offers is worth it. 

Right now I'm currently programming the evidence sharing mechanic for the player, but I've also come up with new ideas and mechanics to add after the evidence mechanic is fully added which will increase the dev time a bit. But it's something that I feel would improve the game heavily before adding the trials as they add more group dynamics to the game which would make the cast feel more whole and defined for their interactions between each other.


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