AUBURN project notes (+ a preview)
Scoring a story for 3 people
Since my previous major music project, Noecelia, I’ve been spending my time experimenting and exploring with a range of sounds some of which I’ve published/intend to publish and most of which I am keeping in my projects folder (probably forever lets be real). All the while considering what my next big project is going to be, something I eventually decided to stop forcing it.
Eventually, however, an idea came from an unexpected source: A new game of Lancer I started with 2 friends. If you don’t know, Lancer is a TTRPG published by Massif Press where players create and fight in Mechs. It is absolutely up my alley, it’s sci-fi, has political themes built into the world, and also its got giant robots. I had been meaning to run a game of Lancer for a while now but hadn’t found the group or time to do so until this most recent game. It has been incredibly easy to organise and run, both due to the game itself but the two players involved.
The idea that eventually came to me was based on thinking about making score for projects and how that would differ from my usual experimentation. I usually make playlists of varying moods to play under different scenes in my games, for this Lancer game I made a selection of Spotify playlists to switch out as the tone of the game demanded, usually played over a discord bot that you can ask to play specific playlists. As we played though I figured that it might be interesting to create original pieces for this game: scoring specific characters, factions, and events. There was also the practicality of it, I had the ability to put things on Spotify and the bot we used pulled tracks from Spotify and I was able to make music, so it really made total sense to create unique and specific additions to the playlists
The process was pretty smooth all in all. I already had a range of playlists to serve as reference/inspiration, I had specific focuses that I was trying to represent, and the only indicator of success would be if I personally felt like it represented the particular character/faction/etc I was scoring.
There are going to be 6 tracks in total, I think there is definitely potential for more and the people/places/factions I chose were sort of at random, things that took my fancy once I decided I would be scoring this game of ours. Choosing an order was also a consideration, I figured the options were to go in a loose chronological order, as the subjects appeared and happened, or to aim for a better flow from one track to another. I wanted the narrative to come through somewhat, to encourage further speculation but I was also conscious of the fact that, to most people, this would only be an EP and so I did also take into consideration what it was as an experience. I think I’ve found a decent middle ground, however I’m sure I’ll pendulum between either end a lot before I eventually publish.
There is a certain transformation that will happen when these pieces are heard outside of the context of this game, a context only 3 people actually have. Much like Noecelia there is a lot of open space for a listener to “fill in the gaps”. Its for this reason I am intentionally keeping who or what the names of these pieces refer to. I think the mystery of giving a name, telling someone that it relates to a wider story and then only allowing them to listen to the score for that person/thing creates a really interesting space for audience interpretations.
I’m also conscious of how, once again, I have made a project about meaning and narrative. I think having my start in audio drama has had a much more significant influence on my creative work than I had previously estimated (at least in a more symbolic/meta sense, my aesthetic influences are a completely different bag). I’m curious to see how this is gonna affect my work in the future, both in fiction, sound art and music production. I expect these will become merged more and more as I progress, but I really truly have no way of knowing, which is pretty exciting