Tonight, Together Original Soundtrack Inspirations |
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| December 08, 2025 15:00 |
Current Yaffle: This text was originally posted in October 2022 on cohost in 3 parts, and has now been edited by me and rayzones into one long post. Hope you enjoy reading it!
current rayzones: i drew some new character sketches to go with this music post! their asses are listening together with you. :>
Current Yaffle: Here's a big link to the itch.io album page, so you could open it in another tab and listen to each track while reading about them:
Past Yaffle: Hi! I'm here to talk a bit about the music from our Cartomancy Anthology game "Tonight, Together", what were the ideas behind it, and what were the main inspirations for each track.
Let's start with the characters' tracks first.
If you played our game, you already know there are three main characters you can dance with at an improvised rave: Sedge (she/her), Sorrel (he/him), and Malva (any pronouns). When designing these characters we wanted to define their personalities not only with their visual looks and dialogue, but with music as well. And since each character can be danced with up to 3 times in the game, we also wanted to build some sense of progression in the character music for each dance. In the end, I had to create 3 separate music loops (one for each dance), but I had to make sure that I could later mix them together into complete tracks for the soundtrack. You can still hear this 3-part structure in every character track in the final result.
Another thing about the characters' tracks I want to mention right away is that I wanted them to be inspired by some particular genres of the 90's - early 00's club music that I love and have always wanted to try my hand at. And this game and its story were a great opportunity to try just that.
01. Doomsurfing (Sedge Mix)
Past Yaffle: Main inspiration for this track were the '90's drum'n'bass and jungle music scenes that for this project I decided to dive into properly by listening to dozens of hours of records released on Creative Source, Good Looking Records, Legend Records, Timeless Recordings, Trouble on Vinyl, Metalheadz, Tom & Jerry, Dee Jay Recordings, while I was busy working on the game's code. For Sedge I was looking for a particular sound that could be described as calm and soothing but at the same time something that is very dynamic.
In the end of this search my main inspiration and the base for Sedge's sound became these tracks:
- Q Project & Spinback - Pleasure Principle [youtube]
- Funky technicians - No mystery [youtube]
- Q Project - Champion Sound (Doc Scott Remix) [youtube]
- Dillinja - Sovereign Melody [youtube]
Of course, no way I could really achieve a similar sound these tracks have (especially the rhythm section), but they all were a guiding point for my track.
Another idea for this track that I thought would combine nicely was adding sounds that are highly processed through a flanger controlled by an LFO for a greater sound texture. Here are some of my favourite examples of this effect that I mostly heard in hip-hop:
- Pete Rock, InI - No More Words [youtube]
- A Tribe Called Quest - Like It Like That [youtube]
- Fat Jon - How You Feel [youtube]
Finally, when it came to the last dance with Sedge, I wanted to make it more exciting and eventually tried to add electric piano layers to what I'd already had from the previous loops, and it instantly reminded me of the Ridge Racer Type 4 OST (which I love very much) so I went with this idea. This track is probably the best example of the sound I mean when I'm talking about electric piano in the Ridge Racer Type 4 soundtrack:
- Asuka Sakai - Garage Talk [youtube]
And that's basically everything I can list as inspirations for Doomsurfing (Sedge Mix).
current rayzones: Past Yaffle doesn't know this, but in the future (a.k.a. past, from today's perspective) she chose the motorcycle model for Sedge's sketch: Izh Planeta-4.
02. Rivals (Sorrel Mix)
Past Yaffle: Right from the start we knew that Sorrel's music should have been the most dynamic and chaotic out of all three characters, and somewhat more aggressive. And I've already had examples for this sound in my head the moment me and rayzones finished discussing the character vibes:
- Peshay - Predator [youtube]
- Fumie Kumatani - For True Story …For Sonic Vs. Shadow [youtube]
- Squarepusher - The Modern Bass Guitar [youtube]
And so, my main ingredients for this track were: breakbeat, loud basslines, and noisy distorted guitars. Fun fact: it was the first time I recorded myself shredding power chords on an electric guitar for a music track. It was also the track I spent the most time mastering... T___T
03. Happy Vibes (Malva Mix)
Past Yaffle: I was happy to finally try my hand at happy hardcore, because it has always fascinated me as a club music genre, but I've never got deep into it. And so, as we were thinking of something cheerful and blasting to accompany Malva's personality, I decided to give it a try.
Honestly, before making the soundtrack for this game I only had two main points of reference for happy hardcore. One of them were the tracks I knew thanks to some of my favourite Stepmania files:
Another — one of my favourite music releases of 2021:
I also must mention one of my favourite Ragnarok Online tracks, which is technically a happy hardcore track, too:
- soundTeMP - Come, and Get It! [youtube]
Current Yaffle: I've crossed out the example above, because I think it really stretches the defining characteristics of happy hardcore as a genre. I guess I could instead mention some of the Ragnarok Online DJ UNKNOWN remixes from the two RAGNA-BEAT [1, 2] compilations by COOL&CREATE, that I technically used to listen to back in my late teen years — these tracks just weren't my favourite on those two albums (I changed my mind recently though):
- DJ UNKNOWN - Be Nice'n Easy (Using potato mix) [snippet on the COOL&CREATE website]
- DJ UNKNOWN - Rag All Night Long(EP2.0-UTI Rave mix) [youtube]
- DJ UNKNOWN - Dreamer's Dream(Mine's groover mix) [snippet on the COOL&CREATE website]
- DJ UNKNOWN - Believe in myself (Clock tower mix) [youtube]
Past Yaffle: While looking for more references I started digging a bit into the history of the genre and found more tracks that I could use as inspiration for Malva's music:
- Dougal & DNA - Dream Of Heaven [youtube]
Yes, it features the same vocal sample as the Street Fighter remix I shared above, and I think the lyrics work great as a trans metaphor :) - DJ Codeine & DJ Unknown - My Love ('96 Revamp) [youtube]
- ABYSS CHASERS - Jungle Labratory [bandcamp]
This one is a bit more experimental than older happy hardcore music, with a lot of breakcore parts. I strongly recommend checking out all Casper Mcfadden's releases, especially the "LUCKY!" album
I knew from the start that I wanted this track to have a vocal part, and writing "authentic" lyrics was pretty easy. I guess we were making too much fun of the lyrics on "She Loves Me Not" by Papa Roach around that time, and I can't stop thinking how they kinda share a similar DNA, lol. Another funny trivia bit: when I wrote the initial melody for the vocal part, turned out all the notes were basically "Megalovania" by Toby Fox, just a different rhythm. It was a pretty disappointing revelation (since Megalovania has been stuck in my head for years), but, luckily, fixing that wasn't a problem. ^__^"
04. Rejected
Past Yaffle: This track, like multiple other tracks in the game, was made entirely using only my beloved microKORG. It was made for the game's introduction part, so I wanted it to be all ambient and to set a melancholic and a bit anxious tone to fit the inner monologue of the game's protagonist. I also used my favourite delay effect manipulation in this track for that hint of anxiety. Not much else to say here, except — if you like this particular sound you might also enjoy my 2019 release on Lillerne Tapes that was almost entirely recorded with the same microKORG:
- "Lying on the Farthest Side of Bed" by Yaffle [bandcamp]
05. Lonely/Tired
Past Yaffle: This track plays on the dancefloor before the first dance and after the last dance, so, basically, after you get rejected, and after you've exceeded the number of dances that are possible in the game — and that's where the name of this track came from.
This is another track that was made only using my microKORG (and the DAW of course, sorry for not mentioning it before). It's also another ambient track in the game, and when I was making it I was thinking about all the different ambient intros DJs usually have in their mixes before hitting listeners with beats. Here's one example:
- CFCF - Re-Utopia [bandcamp]
I'm sharing a link to the full album here because it is basically one big mix cut into several tracks, and it has several of these quiet transition moments (not only its intro) that are hard to highlight by a single track
06. DJ Dropha’s Remix (Extended Mix)
Past Yaffle: Like the previous two tracks, this one was recorded only with a microKORG. Again. But! Unlike the previous two tracks, this time I used standard microKORG presets, not altering them much or doing any experiments. This one should resemble house music, but I didn't want to blast any beats into the player's ears while they are exploring the place and talking to people (this music, like the previous track, also plays in the background), so I decided not to add any drum section at all. And I honestly don't have any inspiration examples for this track (as I was inspired by the sounds of the microKORG itself), so here's a classic video of Dorian Concept fooling around on microKORG:
- "Fooling around on Micro Korg" by Dorian Concept [youtube]
One more thing though: it has Extended Mix in the name, because I had some unused recorded loops lying around in the project file and, when I was mastering this track for the soundtrack release, I decided to double its length because the initial loop was too short.
Oh, and also, it's called DJ Dropha’s Remix, because it's the track that is playing in the background when one of the partying people tells you the original version of this track is actually made by them. So... the one that is playing at that moment is a remix by DJ Dropha. I should have probably removed the "'s" from the name, now that I'm thinking about it, as usually it would be just something like "Cool Track (DJ Dropha Remix)"... Well, whatever!
07. No Raid Zone
Past Yaffle: Another background music track where I just used microKORG's built-in prefabs and didn't add any drums to avoid it being annoying to the player. This one probably would be a cool '90s breakbeat hardcore track if I wanted to expand it. If you are interested in what kind of music I'm referencing here — this video about popular rave stabs is a must watch:
- "Origins of the Rave Stabs" by Luke Neptune [youtube]
The title of this track is referencing police raids at various rave / club locations that have been so frequent in the game's recent past. And also in our own recent past and present. Fuck that. This time it's a No Raid Zone.
08. Reflecting Shadows
Past Yaffle: This track is playing when you're dancing with your shadow, so it needed to be dark and heavy. And, by some ridiculous coincidence, by the time I decided to start working on it, this song came out out of nowhere:
- My Chemical Romance - The Foundations of Decay [youtube]
Not only the tone perfectly fit what I wanted to achieve with my music here, but also the lyrics were basically saying similar things the shadow is telling our protagonist.
Anyway, I couldn't stop playing this new MCR song on repeat before I started recording my track, and honestly I'm glad if the result reflects some of their influence.
09. Today, Together
Past Yaffle: Finally, the epilogue / credits song! This one initially was supposed to sound nothing like this. Liquid drum'n'bass (Makoto, to be precise) was my main point of reference:
- Makoto & Greg Packer - Pleasure [youtube]
However, I was so burnt out by the end of my game music creation process that I just couldn't handle an attempt to recreate this sound in any capacity... So I took my guitar and started fiddling with my amp parameters. What I stumbled upon eventually was the sound that reminded me of a song that, just like "The Foundations of Decay", was very relatable to the context of the game:
- The Cleaners From Venus - Johnny The Moondog Is Dead [bandcamp]
I've always loved the warmth of music in this song in contrast to absolutely desperate lyrics, but for my track I decided to only borrow the warm feeling.
In the end, I think "Today, Together", in a way, became the title track of the whole game. Music filled with sadness, melancholy, but also hope.
#tonight together #soundtrack
