Create background music

Here’s the original version of the video.

Before I made the background music for the game showcase video, I had a discussion with Ahe about what kind of music he wanted. Initially, our general idea was to use the “Black Myth Goku” promotional video as a reference, and we wanted to use Chinese drums and flutes for the instrumental sound, and the mood had to be propulsive.

Reference Video

At the face turn, Ahe said he wanted to add a little different sound effect.

Communication message：

Then we met and talked about the ideas and specifics of both sides, and Ahe wanted to use a selection from the Peking Opera about Song Jiang as the opening and closing sound effect.

He found this video at the time:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1J1421Q7JN/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=506d800ea30f75e76e7f33968325bc50

But this video has additional background music, and the sound of the Peking Opera can’t be extracted.

So we searched for the full play of the Peking Opera ‘Yan Ling A’ and excerpted from it. The lines about the character Song Jiang in this play fit right in with the character’s state of mind. Ahe felt that the Peking Opera appearing at the beginning and then linking to the background music had a period + modern feel to it.

After determining the general structure I asked him what kind of emotion he wanted.

But when I was making it I realised that the Peking Opera selections were too long, about 20 seconds for a single line, and this line at the end was ‘recommending that I have a lot of brothers in front of Song Jiang’, and we were discussing how to make a natural transition to the end.

He made a rough sketch of it.

Then we move on to a discussion about the mood of the soundtrack and the feeling that the timbral choices give. The reference is still to the music of the Black Myth Goku.

Then I made the first version of the music.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10RPmm6geR_vv-cVBupz3hxa0k3c0UBSj/view?usp=drive_link

Here’s the link to the first version of the video.

He gives me feedback and send me his thought.

Sampling Peking Opera
- Sampling might need to be mixed a bit to give it an old CD feel (I know this can’t be done overnight).
- The first sample segment feels too long; I’ll shorten it further.
- For the second sampling segment, my idea is to start with a blackout, then during the blackout, introduce the second sample (I’ll make a simple sample of this later, and then gradually bring in the video).
Cue Points & Editing
- The cue points in the first half are my job. I’ll look at the length of each segment again, rearrange them, and try to better integrate the emphasis and rhythm of the face-changing moments.
- At the end of the last segment, it feels like there could be another strong beat.
- The sound of footsteps sounds great, but it feels like at the end, stomping on the ground could be emphasized (try to create a grand backdrop that showcases the character against a bright, warm-colored backlight, and before coming out, many soldiers shout “Ha!” in such a manner).
Music
- Overall feedback suggests the music is somewhat flat without much fluctuation; perhaps adding a suona (a traditional Chinese wind instrument) would help.

I asked him to come to the school to talk face to face about editing, volume, melody and tone, and to make changes in person.

He re-edited the video transitions to make the drums fit better, and I changed the melody and orchestration a little bit.

Here’s the link to the second version of the video.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Csx0RwS6xcUSUWX0ZlMcoBa2p0wUFBaD/view?usp=sharing

The problem now is that the mood still hasn’t moved forward, and we discussed this in our meeting and talked a little bit about the audio issues with the UE5 engine.