Oxenfree jonas mom tape player8/7/2023 ![]() So wind chimes on the porch of the Adler house, if you listen long enough, you can hear the melody played – so yeah, a lot of foreshadowing, that was a lot of fun.” “But the secret with that one is that I foreshadowed, so anywhere I could I used that melody in other areas of the game. ![]() “Because it’s the end credits, it doesn’t play until the end but has become the one that’s most meaningful to players – it’s one of the more popular songs,” says Rohrmann. While ‘Lost’ – a song that Oxenfree character Jonas’ mother sang to him as a child – holds “sentimental” value to Rohrmann, he says making ‘The Beach, 7am’ was particularly enjoyable to create. Though Rohrmann can’t pick a favourite from Oxenfree‘s soundtrack, two songs in particular have continued to resonate with him several years on. There’s that kind of…if you’ve played a cassette or a record or any analog medium hundreds of times, it just starts to wear away, or the tape gets wrinkled in the player, or you accidentally drag the needle across the record Taking all these textures and using them essentially to help write the music – it’s just kind of fun, right?” This goes back to some of the metaphors in the game of time loops, and repeating, and textures degrading over time. “‘Against The Rocks’ is just something I played on piano then recorded it on cassette, while ‘Against The Waves’ is that song played at quarter speed with new synthesiser parts layered on top of it. “An example on the soundtrack is ‘Against The Rocks’ versus ‘Against The Waves’,” the composer continues. There’s these vintage textures but the idea wasn’t ‘oh, I’m gonna make something on a reel-to-reel or a wax cylinder thing.’, what is this music? How can I make music that not only captures something from all these eras, but also goes back to them?'” So there’s a nostalgic element to it for sure. With how the music was created, using that as literally as possible was really important. “The game visually uses what looks like videotape glitches and static and radio interference, all these things that are very sort of fourth-wall breaking for the narrative you’re watching. “One of the cores of Oxenfree in that universe is the idea of time loops and things that are recorded or repeated,” explains Rohrmann. The cassette player in question is lifted from 1978, and as Rohrmann touches on in this video, he also roped in a radio from World War 2 and 200 feet of copper wire to achieve Oxenfree‘s spectral, haunting crackle. This was all since I’m recording through old tape cassette players and whatnot, so yeah – a lot of that stuff is in the game, what you’re hearing is some of the earliest demos.”Īs Rohrmann touches on, the composer soundtracked Oxenfree with a range of unique techniques, instruments and equipment. Since the nature of the Oxenfree score is sort of lo-fi, it was very easy to record, mix, perform and do everything then send something to them – then that ends up in the final game, unlike something that’s orchestral, where I’m demoing and knowing that it’s going to be re-recorded later with real performers. The first thing I did – I can’t recall which song it was specifically – the game. We’re already on the same wavelength, so let’s go! That’s when I started making demos. Krankel asked if Rorhmann would be interested in making games, and after trading playlists and discovering a shared love of Boards Of Canada, the pair knew the collaboration would be a good fit. Night School founder Sean Krankel got in touch with Rohrmann after hearing a mix CD made by the composer, which had been made 10 years ago and left in a mutual friend’s car. Oxenfree was just kind of…I get it! I just kind of soaked it in and was able to get up and running really quickly.” “I do a ton of research and explore ideas – whether that’s musically, instrumentation, themes – until I land on something. ![]() “I’m kind of a research-focused composer – I really like to dig in as much as I can about a game before I start work,” he says. ![]() Night School‘s haunted island is set in the Pacific Northwest, which is where the composer has lived since he was three. However, scoring Oxenfree came naturally to Rohrmann thanks to the game’s setting. ![]() “I always like to be adding basic musical knowledge, and I think that informs things and makes it fresher for me to work on – but fresher for the game as well, it brings more of a unique perspective to it…as opposed to the tenth version of this thing I’ve done nine times before.” “I can’t do the same thing over and over – every project has to have some aspect of expanding and learning, whether it’s a new instrument or a new style of music,” Rohrmann explains. ![]()
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