Outtake III

A rented mandolin and a Roland space echo do not a soundtrack maketh. This track was on the cusp of making it into the game, but, fortunately, I had the time to do better material in January 2000. Even though this track uses many of the elements which ended up being quite successful in the rest of the first Act, it still had more than enough problems to earn its place in the great musical recycle bin. Though I liked the sound of the mandolin, and ended up using mandolin sounds elsewhere in this Act, this piece suffered from a serious lack of harmonic development.

When you are creating a track which loops, chief among the things to avoid is a lack of harmonic movement. If you stay in the same place for too long, as this piece does with its simple mandolin open chords, you run a big risk of creating deadly monotony. This stasis earned the piece a yellow card that turned into a red card when stacked up with the echoing whisper effects which never quite worked, as they were much too obviously derived from the whispering voices used to such great effect in "Friday the 13th".