Developer Blog: Main Theme reveal + Interview with Lawrence Steele (Satsuma Audio)

Interview questions written by Ken Coghlan, writer for Selaco.

Q: What's your favorite thing to eat for breakfast that isn't a breakfast food

A: Cake, although that is classed as a breakfast food if you’re in France.

Q: At what age did you start to make to play an instrument/make music? What influenced you to do so?

A: Around 17 I think, my brother and friend Shaun (who went on to become dubstep/EDM artists Flux Pavilion and Doctor P respectively) were in a band and Shaun suggested I tried playing the bass guitar.

I’d never really considered making music before but picked it up and enjoyed it a lot, the 3 of us made a band called ‘The Brotherhood of Funk’ and played dodgy James Brown covers in his shed.

Q:Have you ever had musical training or did you learn by yourself?

A: I basically taught myself, I did a course at uni on Music Production but that was more about the engineering and mixing side than the actual playing and composition side.

After playing bass guitar and doing band stuff we (as in me, my brother and other friends from the small town I grew up in) all started messing around with Reason and making electronic music. We were all massively into Drum’n’Bass and a lot of terrible d’n’b beats were made back then.

I always liked making random weird stuff though, and was heavily into Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and that sort of IDM stuff. Here’s an album of that sort of stuff I made wayyy back in like 2008. It’s a pretty mixed bag quality wise.

Anyway, through doing all that stuff I was learning as I was going about synthesis, EQ, mixing/mastering, music theory, composition etc etc. There’s a lot to learn and it’s a continuous process!

Q: How did Satsuma Audio come to be?

A: So after I finished University I had the idea that I wanted to be a video game composer, it seemed the best fit for my love of just making random and unusual music, plus I have always been into games since I was a kid and in fact before music my ambition was to be a games programmer.

However at the time I finished Uni it seemed a super hard industry to break into (there wasn’t the mobile/app scene and the indie game scene was a lot smaller) and I was kinda burnt out on music and was super into cooking and wanted to be a chef so I worked in restaurants for a couple years.

Then around the time the iPad was released, my brother (who was doing pretty well as a dubstep producer by this point) very generously bought me one for Christmas. Checking out the App Store there were tons of small games all made by small studios and I realised, they all need music! It seemed much more achievable to break into doing video game music this way than approaching studios making PS2 games or whatever.

So I decided to give it a proper shot and quit my restaurant job and took a job working as a breakfast chef in a hotel, I would work 5am - 1pm cooking breakfast and then come home and work on music stuff in the afternoon. At first to build up a showreel I would download games from the App Store and play them on silent and then try and imagine what music they should have and try and make it as a practice exercise. Here’s one of my earliest showreels from 2011 which is mostly just random pieces I made set to clips of existing games.

I try to be as versatile as possible and compose in any style of music as well as doing sound design, a lot of it was learning as I go and my skills have improved a lot over the past 10 years for sure!

After a while I was getting more regular commissions and went down to 4 days a week at my breakfast chef job, then I quit that and found another job 2 days a week and then eventually left altogether to do Satsuma Audio full time and I am thankful for it every day!

For the name ‘Satsuma Audio’ I just thought it sounded cool, no other reason really, except I wanted a name like that instead of just ‘Lawrence Steele - Composer’ as I thought it might help me stand out a bit and seem more professional, not sure if that works or not!

Q: Now, I’ve been making music for seventeen years and play a variety of instruments, self-trained. I’ve never taken the time to learn to read music. So tell us, do you? And if so, do you recommend other budding musicians take the time to learn?

A: I don’t read music no, I did try having piano lessons at one point and part of that was learning to read music but I got too busy and couldn’t keep it up and it never really progressed.

I think it depends on your background and training really, if you learn music the ‘proper’ way then reading music is a big part of it, and to be honest I imagine it is a valuable skill to have. I think to be able to read a piece and play it on piano easily would be useful from a compositional point of view as you could easily analyse what is going on in terms of harmony, theory etc and get ideas you can apply to your own writing.

It’s something I have always wanted to learn more of but never quite got round to it, though I wouldn’t say it’s essential to play or compose music at all, especially not when we have computers that can do a lot of the work for us!

I often load up MIDI files of pieces I want to analyse, if I’m researching a certain style for example and view the music that way to learn from it. Also I am always using online resources to look up chords, scales etc.

Q: What was the first instrument you learned to play and what was the progression from that instrument to the others you play?

A: As I mentioned before it was the bass guitar, but then once I moved on to making music on the computer, a keyboard is a big part of that.

My skills on the keyboard have just kind of naturally grown over the years as it’s the primary way to interface with the computer and virtual instruments, synthesizers etc. though I am by no means a virtuoso and still try to improve and practice as much as I can. When I have time (which unfortunately isn’t too often) I like to try and learn to play pieces that are above my skill level to improve my skills that way.

Also around 10 years or so ago I started playing the Ukulele, just the small soprano one at first but now I prefer the bigger Baritone Ukulele. I actually find it a really great instrument for composing and coming up with chord sequences, as with just 4 strings, pretty much everything you play is *some* kind of chord! Plus the visual style of moving chord shapes around is more intuitive to me than on the piano some times, which probably comes from my guitar background.

Q: Who have been the most influential musicians to you?

A: Frank Zappa is a big one (my dad was a huge fan and we were saturated with his music as kids and it’s definitely had a massive influence). He was a guitar god and all round musical genius and also one to experiment and mix different styles.

Aphex Twin, when I first heard ‘Flim’ it was a mindblowing experience for me and eye opening as to the potential of what electronic music can be.

Of course there are tons more, game wise all the SEGA Genesis stuff is a big influence, I love the sound of that thing!

Q: It’s Friday afternoon. You’ve had a hard week and you’re excited to finally start your weekend. What album do you blast on your car stereo on the way home from work?

A: Well luckily I work at home so no commute! And also after a week of listening to stuff I can often be a bit burnt out on music and don’t necessarily reach for it straight away.

That said it would probably be some old jazz vinyl or something like that :)

Q: What’s your creative process? When you start a new song, which part do you focus on first?

A: It really depends on the context and what the track is for.

For an electronic track, like for Selaco for example I will often start with drums, to get a groove going and then just jam over that until I find something I like.

Although I’ve been using a bunch of my modular synth gear on Selaco so far and for a couple of tracks I’ve started off with a repetitive synth bass line and recorded it while continuously evolving the sound and then used that to build the rest of the track on top of, which has been quite effective.

If it’s like an orchestral piece I will often start with strings and just try and find something, either a melody or little harmonic idea that I feel sums up the mood I’m going for and then just start to build the arrangement out of that, adding various layers and then if often just sort of naturally grows and builds from there.

I think once I find the ‘seed’, that sort of core melody, or sound, or texture, it can be anything really, just something that captures the mood or feeling I’m aiming for (I often have the game visuals on the screen when I’m working on initial ideas to see if it feels right) then the rest grows organically out of that.

Q: How do you know when a piece of music is just missing one little thing to be completed, and how do you find it?

A: I guess it’s if it just feels empty or a bit too boring or repetitive at one point. Though I think I can sometimes be guilty of overcomplicating and adding too many layers and elements when sometimes repetition can actually be a good thing, especially for more background type music.

As for finding what it’s missing, sometimes I’ll just find myself humming or singing a melody over the top or like miming air drum fills or something like that, so I try to recreate that and put it in. Other times I’ll just try messing around with various synth patches or instruments over the top until I hit something that feels right.

Sometimes it flows easily and sometimes it feels like pulling teeth but it usually comes together eventually!

Q:What was the first piece of music you were actually paid for?

A: Yup here it is! - https://soundcloud.com/satsumabitsforsite/magnetz-theme

It was the theme for a mobile puzzle game called ‘MagnetZ’ I did in 2011 where you have to move balls around with magnets to get into a hole or something. It had a sort of electricity theme to the visuals so I tried to mix that with a general fun, casual game feeling.

Q: What piece of music are you most proud of (not including anything you’ve done for Selaco)?

A: This is a hard one! Especially as Selaco’s music so far is definitely shaping up to be some of my best!

I’ve made hundreds of tracks at this point and have loads of different bits and pieces I like scattered throughout them, for example the organ solo at 0:28 in this spooky jazz track for a Halloween slot machine theme I did in 2015 remains one of my favourite things I ever did!

That said some of my proper favourites are:

This IDM/Glitch track I made mostly on my modular synth, feels like the logical conclusion of the Aphexy stuff I was trying to make way back in 2011.

This track called ‘Breezy Day’ from the soundtrack of upcoming Australian farming game ‘Dinkum’, I think it has a real nice peaceful acoustic sound, and I love how the melodica line at 0:37 just flows along so naturally, I just randomly improvised that in one take, no idea how!

Q: How hasthe process of writing Selaco’s soundtrack been for you so far? Or more specifically; how did you approach the main theme for Selaco?

A: For the main theme, there were a lot of things I wanted it to ‘hit’. There’s the retro aesthetic, with the game being built on the Doom engine and everything, and then all the neon lights and stuff in the visuals, the female main character and also the dystopian futuristic setting.

Also at the time the game was called ‘Ominous’, which I was bearing in mind but I focused more on having it match the neon aesthetic.

I started off with the bassline that you hear first in the intro, it’s actually very loosely based on the classic opening riff from E1M1 in the original Doom. That sort of bouncing back and forth from a bass note to a higher note effect, just feels right for that retro FPS game feel. I recorded this bassline on an analogue synth and played with the filter cutoff for that classic evolving squelchy sound.

From there I added the sort of jazzy chord stabs you hear coming in at 0:07. These help to highlight that neon lights aesthetic I wanted to get in there. I knew I wanted a bit of an 80s vibe as well, that mix of sort of shimmery synths and guitars, and the classic 80s electro tom fills you hear between each section.

The main lead melody line just came from messing around on the keyboard over the top, that sort of piercing vibrato synth lead sound mixed with guitars helps to give it both the ’80s neon’ and ‘retro video game’ vibes at once I feel.

Once I had this core base, the rest just sort of wrote itself really!

One thing I’ve been liking doing a lot on this soundtrack is adding lots of evolving synth layers from my modular synth rig, you can hear this in the 0:37 section. This sort of thing features a lot more heavily throughout some of the other tracks which are intended to be a bit more ambient/background.

Q: How did you decide how Selaco was going to sound? What influenced your process?

A: As said above, the neon lights aesthetic as well as the retro Doom engine and Dawn as the main character were all major considerations. I agreed with Wesley early on as well that the soundtrack should be heavily synth based with a bit of guitar mixed in as well.

I think for the theme I focused more on the retro aspect of it but as the soundtrack has progressed I’ve tried to focus more on the story and setting and make it more of it’s own thing rather than being too ‘retro referencey’, if that makes sense.

The game itself, while the GZDoom aesthetic is a big part of it, it also has a lot more going on in terms of story, setting, characters, gameplay etc. and I want the OST to be a part of that as well.

Q: Top 5 all time favorite albums?

A: Sorry gonna pass on this one as it would take me way too long to work out and I’d definitely end up forgetting something! Plus I tend to think more in terms of individual tracks than albums, I think ‘The Stranglers - Black and White’ would almost certainly be in there though.