"Iaijutsu" Game Soundtrack
Composed April 2021
Description
All music was composed for the indie game Iaijutsu. Extensive research was done in order to respectfully fuse the two musical styles of traditional Japanese music with American Hip Hop. The fusion of these styles are meant to represent a traditional old samurai stuck in a modern day world. [Level Themes] The three Japanese instruments heard in the menu theme and the two level themes are the Shakuhachi, Shamisen, and Koto. These three instruments are playing in heterophony, meaning they play the same melodic line, just in their own way. The two level themes also play in two separate traditional scales. When approaching instrumental techniques, you may hear several pitch bends, which are common in the two string instruments. Traditional Japanese music also doesn’t use measures, so when writing their part on paper, I did not use measures and used various techniques like feathered beaming to convey a sense of rhythmic freedom. [Boss Themes] The Taiko pieces consist of an ensemble made of a Shime-Daiko keeping the “Ji” (or constant rhythm) while the Chū-Daiko or the main set of taiko drums play the main part. When composing these pieces, I thought extensively about use of motive and structure to give each piece their own sense of originality |