Album: Merry Christmas Alfred Robbins OST
Artist: Jake "o64" Milner
Release Year: 2009
Tracks: 5
Genre: Soundtrack
Length: 7 Minutes
Bitrate: 128kbps
Composed Using: Guitar Pro 5, Fruity Loops 8, Audacity
Copyright Jake Milner 2009

INTRODUCTION
It seems like a strange idea, creating a readme file for a short musical OST but this is such a monumentous occasion for me, I'd really just like to say thank you very much to everybody who downloads and listens to this, and that I really hope you enjoy it very much.

The reason this release is so important to me is that it is actually my first ever musical release out into the world and this little notepad file will provide information to myself, if not anybody else when I look back in however many years time and say "WHERE DID I GO WRONG?"

So thank you very much for downloading my first ever musical release, the soundtrack to Merry Christmas Alfred Robbins, which can be downloaded from the following link, and I do hope you enjoy it very much!

http://www.myrlik.com/alfred_robbins.html

For those of you who are interested at all in the thought process that went into the songs then please feel free to read on. I'm going to document a few notes here for the enjoyment of anybody who is interested in reading crazy ramblings.

TITLE
I really wish I could have come up with better titles for the songs but the time period in which the game was created was so short (literally a few weeks) that it was definitely the last thing on my mind. 

My primary goal with the Title song was to create an illusion of a happy christmas tune, with a memorable melody that would be recognizable as the overall game "theme." Of course those of you who have completed the game will also notice the effort I put into trying to draw those subtle horror undertones in what appears at first to be a fairly jolly tune.

I showed my first draft of this tune to a friend of mine who's immediate and only reaction was "I thought this was Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy." which was probably a result of my brain straining to create some kind of recognizable "christmas" sound. It's true, those first three notes are almost identical to the opening of Tchaikovsky's masterpiece and if the remainder of my song wasn't so radically different I would probably have dropped the entire thing then and there. I didn't however and I'm glad because I think it's actually quite an emotionally moving piece despite how rushed it feels in it's length and transitions.

AMBIENCE
The Ambience track was probably the one in which the most thought went into. Abe had asked me to really tone down on how intrusive the rest of the music was to the game, which was a great move on his part because it leaves the song feeling very empty and atmospheric. It has a lot of toy like aspects to it and I tried to sneak in some the Cello/Violin theme that I had been using with the rest of the soundtrack.

The aim of the tune, despite how complex it really was in the end, was that it would almost brush by you unnoticed. The instruments and melodies take it in turn to play their part and I think at no point there was ever more than three instruments playing at once, which was only during the last phrase of the song.

I'm really not sure where the last phrase of the song came from. After all this string cello ambience and toylike christmas music I burst in for one phrase of very intrusive crude Jazz music. An upright bass, some cymbals and a very heavily effected Saxophone riff, almost unrecognizable in how much it was edited. I feel this is the introduction to a much larger, more complex song but it just didn't go that way and in the end I felt like I should leave it at that one single phrase, a short pulse of energy juxtaposed against the rest of the song.

THE ATTIC
For such a short, seemingly simple piece of music, the attic ambience was surprisingly complex. There's not much to say about how to create this dischordant noise in a structured way without it being too painful on the ears.

You can also vaguely here where I tried to sneak in the christmas theme. The dischordant sleigh bells. You probably didn't notice it all but there you go, the crazy thought process that goes into creating this stuff.

FINALE
The finale is a very interesting piece. This piece is played during the shock moment of the game, the plot twist so to speak although it's not so much a twist as it is the result of what is hopefully a pretty climatic build up. I felt like the song had to be very uncomfortable, it's doschordant and has all these whines and drones. I hope it helps convey the mood of the scene correctly but I didn't want to make a piece of music that was shocking and horrific like something out of a 1930's B-Movie, but rather something that was softer and had a much more uncomfortable feel. Something that makes you feel like "Oh Yeah, I should have figured this out so much sooner..."

The mood that really came across to me from the writing of the game was that our protagonist, Alfred was suffering from this uncomfortable dizziness, headache and nausea. I don't think it's ever actually portrayed to you out loud but this "finale" tune is the culmination of those three feelings finally poured out to you in all it's audio-visual glory, or audio-visual "gory" in the case of Abe's marvelous art work.

CREDITS
Funnily enough the "Credits" song is actually the tune I used to audition for the composition job in the first place. It's been heavily edited since then as it originally came across as this epic orchestral score of string ensembles and choir vocals. After being accepted into the job the song was promptly cut and it wasn't until the very last minute that Abe said to me he wanted to bring it back. I fiddled around with it for a day or so and presented this version to him, which is very recognizable as the same tune but works better with the dischordant ambience motif that the rest of the soundtrack carries.

I'm really gad this tune was brought back in at the end as I am unbelievably smug about the very short Violin/Cello lead melody that kicks in around the center point and it was only by the skin of it's teeth that I snuck this bit back in after nearly cutting it from the song and game entirely. I think it really carries a lot of sombre emotion that's let loose during the end credits.

It's a very short piece and I didn't have a lot of time to really go wild with it, so I tossed up between the ideas of suggesting complete silence or resubmitting this tune like Abe requested. Although aesthetically the complete silence idea might have been really good, I always feel like suggesting it is kind of lazy on my part. Like I'm only suggesting it because I don't want do the work, so I played around with this song and I'm really happy with the final result.

CLOSING WORDS
To sum up, I'd like to say thank you once again to everybody who has downloaded and listened through this music, especially if you've read through my ramblings so far. Very well done to Abe and Babar who deserve a load of credit for the amount of work thrown into the game over the short time scale we worked on it, and also sorry for making such a big deal about something that's probably not a big deal at all, but I may not have the chance to do this again so this is my Oscar speech.