There you can download it in high quality, and it’s a pay-what-you-want: you can get it for free if you want, or pay what you feel like and support me. Either way, I’m happy that you enjoy it!
The music should also be on Spotify, Apple Music, and most music streaming services within the next 24h.
A bit about the process of scoring Size of Life:
I’ve worked with Neal before on a couple of his other games, including Absurd Trolley Problems, so we were used to working together (and with his producer—you’re awesome, Liz!). When Neal told me about Size of Life, we had an inspiring conversation about how the music could make the players feel.
The core idea was that it should enhance that feeling of wondrous discovery, but subtly, without taking the attention away from the beautiful illustrations.
I also thought it should reflect the organisms' increasing size—as some of you pointed out, the music grows with them. I think of it as a single instrument that builds upon itself, like the cells in an increasingly complex organism. So I composed 12 layers that loop indefinitely—as you progress, each layer is added, and as you go back, they’re subtracted. The effect is most clear if you get to the end and then return to the smaller organisms!
Since the game has an encyclopedia vibe to it, I proposed to go with a string instrument to give it a subtle “Enlightenment-era” and “cultural” feel. I was suspecting the cello could be a good instrument because of its range and expressivity.
Coincidentally, the next week I met the cellist Iratxe Ibaibarriaga at a game conference in Barcelona, where I’m based, and she immediately became the ideal person for it. She’s done a wonderful job bringing a ton of expressivity to the playing, and it’s been a delight to work with her.
I got very excited when Neal told me he was making an educational game—I come from a family of school teachers. I’ve been scoring games for over 10 years, but this is the first educational game I’ve scored.
In a way, now the circle feels complete!
(if anyone wants to reach out, feel free to do so! You can find me and all my stuff here: https://www.aleixramon.com/ )
My friends make a cocktail with Malort, White Monster, and C4 preworkout. They also have a multi-year running gag where they offer me a bottle of fine whiskey or bourbon at a campfire but it has in fact been replaced by Malort. Then, when I am choking and gagging someone else offers me some water to wash away the taste, which is in fact also Malort.
Years ago I modified the Postgresql source code (8.xx).
It's something I was terrified of doing.
But once I got in there and started poking around, I realized it was just ordinary plain-vanilla C code. Not C++. Just C code.
With my local copy, I started to hack pg_dump to do something special that we wanted at the time. Even after 30 years of coding, I'm not that especially good of a programmer. But I ended up getting our own special version of pg_dump that did what we wanted at the time and it went into production dumping hundreds of gigs of data every day!
But what I'm not, is afraid. I'm not afraid to try anything.
And that's what it takes to do deep, systems level programming.
Don't be afraid.
Those bits are just bits. And it's just code... and most of it was not written by wizards. Just ordinary people like you and me. Don't be afraid man.
Clone the repo and setup a workable build environment and start tinkering and compiling and running to see what happens.
You would be totally shocked to find out what you can actually achieve.
With pleasure! Although my main recommendations are "analog" musicians, which is of course is a misnomer since most of the tone generation chain is digital, except for some vibrating strings and vocal cords!
There's ortopilot who is perhaps the best musician I have found on twitch. His studio setup is absolutely stunning, both for its audio quality and the visual appeal.
Another one I've discovered recently is EmmaMcGann whose studio is also visually stunning. Definitely worth a look and listen, too!
I also like SydHeresy although that stream is more focused on repairing digital music gear, with the occasional modular synth live show.
Then there is TheTangerineClub. Absolutely amazing music skills with a decent studio setup.
German-speaking folk might hop over to SvenDorau who has a nice studio, too.
Happy watching! and don't blame me for the hours spent listening to those guys play ;)
Since some of you asked, here’s the soundtrack on Bandcamp: https://aleixramon.bandcamp.com/album/size-of-life-original-...
There you can download it in high quality, and it’s a pay-what-you-want: you can get it for free if you want, or pay what you feel like and support me. Either way, I’m happy that you enjoy it!
The music should also be on Spotify, Apple Music, and most music streaming services within the next 24h.
A bit about the process of scoring Size of Life:
I’ve worked with Neal before on a couple of his other games, including Absurd Trolley Problems, so we were used to working together (and with his producer—you’re awesome, Liz!). When Neal told me about Size of Life, we had an inspiring conversation about how the music could make the players feel.
The core idea was that it should enhance that feeling of wondrous discovery, but subtly, without taking the attention away from the beautiful illustrations.
I also thought it should reflect the organisms' increasing size—as some of you pointed out, the music grows with them. I think of it as a single instrument that builds upon itself, like the cells in an increasingly complex organism. So I composed 12 layers that loop indefinitely—as you progress, each layer is added, and as you go back, they’re subtracted. The effect is most clear if you get to the end and then return to the smaller organisms!
Since the game has an encyclopedia vibe to it, I proposed to go with a string instrument to give it a subtle “Enlightenment-era” and “cultural” feel. I was suspecting the cello could be a good instrument because of its range and expressivity.
Coincidentally, the next week I met the cellist Iratxe Ibaibarriaga at a game conference in Barcelona, where I’m based, and she immediately became the ideal person for it. She’s done a wonderful job bringing a ton of expressivity to the playing, and it’s been a delight to work with her.
I got very excited when Neal told me he was making an educational game—I come from a family of school teachers. I’ve been scoring games for over 10 years, but this is the first educational game I’ve scored.
In a way, now the circle feels complete!
(if anyone wants to reach out, feel free to do so! You can find me and all my stuff here: https://www.aleixramon.com/ )