“The music in iCarly Groovy Foodie is fantastic. I love listening to this game while playing it.” clashentertainment.com
iCarly Groovy Foodie
Notes on the Soundtrack
iCarly: Groovy Foodie's (Nintendo DS) classic gameplay and art style presented a new challenge -- I hadn't yet had a chance to fully explore that sound in my other projects. The music was a lot of fun to write and I learned a lot in the process.
One of the main chord progressions in the soundtrack is a simple major I to iii. Some of the transitional textures between the main thematic statements follows a lot of stepwise root motion. The main melodic ideas in each piece often shift up a minor third or down a major third. Here's the music from the first level, The Groovy Smoothie:
One of the main chord progressions in the soundtrack is a simple major I to iii. Some of the transitional textures between the main thematic statements follows a lot of stepwise root motion. The main melodic ideas in each piece often shift up a minor third or down a major third. Here's the music from the first level, The Groovy Smoothie:
The above melody comes in at 14s and makes a couple of appearances throughout the track. One my favorite instrumental sounds comes in at 7s -- it's the 'Strawberry flute' from the Fab Four. I think it might be hard to notice it on a first listen but that mid-range kind of 'fake' flute quality adds a nice flavor in quite a few places throughout the soundtrack.
The sound palette throughout is a pretty crazy combination of instruments from East West's Fab Four collection. I'd previously used some of the instruments in other soundtracks (Shop-n-Spree Family Fortune) but not to this extent. In the Webicon track below there's the addition of the electronic texture elements from the Albino 3 synth and the percussion is mainly from Hyperocity's Evolve.
The flutes from the previous level come in again at 6s and contrast that buzzing synth.
The flutes from the previous level come in again at 6s and contrast that buzzing synth.
The high school level was especially difficult to capture musically, but fortunately with a bit of trial and error it worked out nicely. The rock drums come out in full force, as do the rock guitars. Ministry of Rock collection was of huge help here.
The Prison level was quite a bit of fun as well. The reggae idea came from Wayforward's incredibly experienced in-house composer, Jake Kaufman, who helped a lot in getting me started with the project and wrote the game's intro theme (which plays in the trailer below).
There's a cool chromatic element from 4s to 6s in the opening melody, comes back in a couple of times. The music is pretty weird -- intentionally. It's a nice change of pace from the High School level.
There's a cool chromatic element from 4s to 6s in the opening melody, comes back in a couple of times. The music is pretty weird -- intentionally. It's a nice change of pace from the High School level.
The mall level was a lot of fun to write the music for -- the music cuts loose. In a shopping mall kind of way. Below is notated the primary melodic element for this piece. All of the instrumental elements from previous tracks, including the synth elements from webicon, have been brought in and are further energized by some strings.
This next piece gets pretty weird, the best of ways. The music comes in during special events in the game where the atmosphere gets more and more frenzied. It gets quite chromatic!
And here's the final piece, the boss track. It makes use of one of my favorite progressions: i-bVI-bVII-i -- I attempted to go for that classic boss battle sound. Those Fab Four instruments are combined with the Ministry of Rock elements to create a pretty intense track.
And here's the launch trailer!