Behind the scenes: Creating music for Pony Town

Hey everyone! 

Our composer Wandering Artist would like to share some insights about the process of creating the music of Pony Town! Enjoy! 

(This post was originally available with exclusive early access on Patreon and was later made available to the public)

Writing the music for Pony Town’s Market update

I began working on the music for Pony Town’s market around the beginning of July 2021. Pony Town has a very rich soundtrack by now (more than 50 tracks),  so lately I’ve decided to add music only when a new area or gameplay feature (like building) is added to the game. With the new areas, like the bakery or the beach, I tried to give them an unique sound and feel: the bakery for instance has jazzy music featuring accordion, while the beach is mostly guitars and ukulele accompanied by tropical percussion. 

I always start by searching references from other games' soundtracks, mostly classic games like Zelda or Final Fantasy, just to see how great composers interpreted the same theme and to research what people expect from music in similar locations.

First attempt

At first, I imagined the market being more like a “country fair” thing, festive and full of energy; this brought to my mind a beautiful track from the game Tomba (Tombi in Europe) called Baccus Village:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xViJMxG9YlQ

From this track, I really liked the choice of instruments (harmonica that sounds like a fiddle + guitar), the country style and the simple pentatonic melody. So with this reference in mind I started working on the first sketch for the market music:

https://soundcloud.com/wandeermusic/pt-market-fiddle-ruff/s-WYFEjxtYmkd?si=094041a652a74d2094fcebd408744bf

I really enjoyed programming the violin part in this with all those slides and cool effects, but after hearing this first sketch, devs made me notice that this would probably be too much for background music, so I was asked to tone it down somehow and make it less “adventurous”.

Home-made instruments

Another cool thing that happened while working on the market music was the creation of a custom instrument. Chira, one of the devs, was so kind to record her toy glockenspiel so that I could sample it and make a Kontakt instrument to use in my music.

The result turned out quite good, and I’ve used it in the final track, too. Initially, it was mostly featured in the first draft of the night track I did:

https://wanderingartist.bandcamp.com/track/market-night-sketch

First revision

After presenting the first sketches, I usually gather feedback from the devs and start editing the songs accordingly. For the first revision, I changed mostly the daytime track (Fiddle), making it slower and less busy in some parts. This was the result:

https://wanderingartist.bandcamp.com/track/market-fiddle-sketch

The night track was mostly ok, but I wanted to make a new one from scratch anyway, and this was it:

https://wanderingartist.bandcamp.com/track/market-fiddle-night-sketch

The new version of the daytime track was much calmer, but at this point a new problem arose: the melody was too symmetric and repetitive. Changing the melody at this stage is very hard and could result in disaster, but in the end, it was what led to the final and better version, in my opinion.

The first revision was ok, but I felt like it couldn’t improve much from this point, so a rethinking of the melody was necessary to open new paths.

Melodic surgery

A melody or theme is a very dangerous thing to handle: If you make the theme too complex, you can’t develop it later. On the other hand, if you make it too simple (like in this case, where it was too symmetric), it could become repetitive and predictable. I tackled the problem on paper by writing the original melody and its direction and then experimenting with all the possible variations. This is what I wrote:

The first two staves contain the original melody, and the following bars are my attempts to destroy the symmetry. This was useful to break out of the original melody, but I didn’t end up using any of those solutions. The solution arrived when I decided to start everything from scratch.

Final melody of the track with movement analysis

Back to the beginning

We were now at the start of August, and I started everything from scratch. First of all, I searched for new references: maybe the “country fair” style was blocking me from trying new things, so I searched for more inspiration and stumbled upon a great track from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgv8W4jfSA4

and another classic, the shop theme from Ocarina of Time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLAekpsclQY

I think these songs really captured the feeling of a comfy place while still being funny and energetic. I took two elements from these songs: the bass and the overall groove. So I ended up with the final track:

https://wanderingartist.bandcamp.com/track/bazar

The melody is still a descendant of the old one (4 bars out of 8 are the same), but it flows better with the new musical background. I was really satisfied with this; it was much more simple and funny than the original version.

Second revision: instruments poll

At this point, the main instruments changed, too. The violin-fiddle was now replaced by the combo of recorders and Chira’s glockenspiel. Once again, recorders were present in the very first version, too, so there was some continuity.

Recorders and glockenspiel ended up being too harsh on the first mix, so at one point we experimented with the possibility of changing instruments. I made short demos of the beginning of the track with different instruments, and we voted:

https://soundcloud.com/wandeermusic/pt-market-instruments-test/s-IPWBFsrF4VJ?si=a903d50dbe82479587d937c583af5afa

In the end, the original idea of recorders + glock won, but with some better equalization to reduce the harshness.

The final mix was done on the 13th of August, and the final master was delivered on the 5th of September.

Conclusion

So yes, this is the work that usually happens behind each Pony Town track (inspiration/references, sketch, revisions, final mix, master).

You could feel sad to throw away your initial idea or work, but being able to revise the music or to rethink it from scratch really improves the music itself, especially for me. If I compare the initial sketch and the final song, I can see how bold and messy I was with the first idea and how elegant and smooth the final version has become.

You can follow Wandering Artist on Twitter and find the Pony Town OST and his other music on Spotify, Bandcamp and YouTube.