@xophnog First of all, thanks for the detailed criticism on all pieces prior and including my own. The potential for a thematic score is HUGE in this game. It’s the reason I pitched for it in the first place. To me it’s more than just a ‘wintery’ electronic pad or a fiery drum to capture a mood, location, person, etc. It’s in the notes!!! Complimentive melodic writing has unfortunately been lost in most of today’s scores with very few exceptions. I’d do everything in my power to give this world the musical glue it deserves to sit comfortably in the game as the players explore for the first time or the 100th time. As I said before, Zelda is such a great example of this. Everything has a theme, literally, and it makes all the difference in the world when you visit those places.
As for my own musical selections that I have posted, they are merely just examples without much development (and purposefully so; it’s a pitch).
Noble Serenity - Something like this isn’t designed for “in game” music. This would only work for something like a menu or a cinematic cut. However, it is the melodic material that could be borrowed from to bring an element full circle in the game. Like, “HEY, I know that music! I heard it when I started up the game.”
Dwarven Dweller - I was looking for an earthy and dark tone in this one. The melody is purposely fragmented in this example, begging for an extension to tell us what kind of dwarf’s we are dealing with. Simple changes in just a few notes could tell the same story of dwarf’s, but of an entire different culture.
Celestial Terrain - This piece carries a quasi ternary form of a simple cantabile melody to help sing in the subconscious of the player to be soothed and lulled into joyful tranquility. It’s like telling the player: “It’s okay to build or explore here. You are safe!”
With that being said, in the end, these pieces are considered pitches only. If I were chosen to write material for this game I would start from scratch and with close work with the developers begin to unravel the musical mysteries of this world and deliver the best tailored score I could for this game. Along with having a degree in Music Theory and Composition with honors, I’ve spent countless hours studying the masterworks of both the concert hall and the media industry to build an arsenal of compositional tools to accompany moments as told by the visuals. The collabrotive process is also incredibly fun to be a part of. It really takes a team to drive these things home and I’ve already had the chance to write for some of the best young directors in the United States
@SteveAdamo Thank you very much for listening! Always appreciated.
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I disagree on the Bit by Bit. I feel like that song may have been the best, and it would fit well, because it has the tone of building up your settlement, bit by bit. Cheesy joke, I know, but what can I say? The title doesn’t do injustice.
There, I took out the “slowly”, @xophnog.
I agree that “Bit by Bit” has a great sense of building something, but I disagree with the word slowly. The base line becomes very quick tempoed, putting me in mid of time-lapse construction, as I said. But everyone is entitled to their opinion. I never said I didn’t enjoy the tune.
@CaseyEdwards
I think it would be a herculean feat of composition and programming, but awe inspring also, if everything had a theme and those themes wove into and out of the soundtrack as those things came into or went out of focus in the game. For example, if the Bunnies and Goblins had their own theme, then as you interacted with one race their theme would rise in the music. If you started to interact with the other race as well, their theme would be added to the music so that you would hear both themes in the composition.
The example I keep thinking of is “Peter and the Wolf” by Tchaikovsky where each animal was represented by an instrument. The difficulty would scale with your thematic breakdown of Stonehearth. If even objects and classes had their own themes, this would get very complicated, but would be wonderful to hear someone do successfully.
@xophnog Herculean? Nah! But definitely a creative challenge. 
Composers since Wagner have been using full on melodies and motifs in regular practice for specific representation. As for Peter and the Wolf, what a wonderful example to bring to the table! (Although it was written by Prokofiev, not Tchaikovsky) You talk about themes overlapping, and while that’s not quite my idea, it could be done if the proper moment was presented. You run into problems with monotony there because all music would have to be written in the same key (or an extremely close complimentary key) in order for this to work. However, with that said, if stages in the game require more than one race to mix, who’s to say said themes couldn’t be written in counterpoint with each other? Or perhaps the dwarven rhythm we’ve become familiar with now carries another races leitmotif fragmented amongst it’s own. This would be an easy audio stem to program into the game and actually a pretty neat idea! I’ve done this in concert pieces before and it’s quite fun. In fact, one of the new Zelda themes is the exact same main theme we’ve known for years exactly backwards (retroversion). I feel like I’m rambling now so forgive me. I really do feel passionate about the creation of this game and how the music interacts with it. Making enough noise to drive that point home to the devs.and future players is my purpose here.
To show off a quick example of melodic interplay here is a short I scored for NODE Studios in LA that involved the Elder Scrolls universe as its subject matter. I had an immensely small time to deliver this score considering its density and length (ONE DAY! I still have nightmares - haha) and was able to deliver quickly because of using motifs, altering the vocal melody at the beginning for the outro and fight scenes, and giving characters themes for the Nightingale and the Daedra Warrior. I had read the script and knew the deadline was near, so instead of waiting for the final cut I fashioned out melodies on paper for the important moments and tailored them to video when it was finally sent in. They’re not all obvious on the first listen and that’s the point. You can get more out of less and still convey an entire spectrum of emotions and it’s usually more effective this way.
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wow, what a different a decent set of speakers can make… i really enjoyed each of these tracks quite a bit… stellar work here…
right around the 00:36 mark on dwarven dweller? those drums are just plain awesome…
and celestial terrain is aptly named, as is absolutely fitting for the night cycle…
Oops. I failed to look that one up before posting.
This is the type of thing I was thinking and avoiding monotony is why I said it would be a herculean feat. Very difficult to compose themes that compliment each other without all sounding the same, but wonderful to hear when someone succeeds. And I think it could be done by mixing signature segments of themes together. It takes just six notes to recognize the Mario Bros. theme and those notes can be mixed into a composition in any key with a little thought. (If you put them in a minor key, are they still recognizable?)
It would be more difficult to do this in a spontaneous way where the themes enter the soundtrack in response to player input instead of in some pre-scripted fashion. For example, as you scroll across the map, different themes would rise and fall in the soundtrack as the camera panned over their in-game counterpart. Maybe this is too much to hope for.
Thanks a lot, Steve! And yes, a good pair of speakers makes a huge difference! 
I couldn’t imagine anyone writing on anything other than flat response stereo monitors at least! Thanks again for listening and the kind words!
Ah, I see what you mean. It’s not too much to hope for as long as it works with the game. Honestly, I couldn’t say a single thing about how this would work until it was tested. Much like film, a game will tell us if something doesn’t work and regurgitate it right back at us! haha It’s weird how it works like that, but as I get further and further into my career I realize that the projects I work on, if done well, have a tendency to talk to me without actually saying a word. And boy…they don’t lie when I mess up. 
For the hell of it, I’m going to throw this track in here as well. Imagine 8bit music slowly turning into a modern game orchestra sound for the intro. The rest is just drama for drama sake.
https://soundcloud.com/caseyedwards/game-on
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brilliant… tell me you didnt just “whip that up” on a whim? you cant help but be thrown back about 30 years when listening to the first 20 seconds… absolutely loved the vibe and transition into the orchestra portion…
by intro, do you envision having this play as the player sets up a new game, or tools through the opening menus, etc.?
@SteveAdamo I absolutely did NOT just whip this up. This was just some practice I did a few weeks back and decided to pay homage to gaming and how it makes me feel. By intro I was just referring to the literal introduction of the 8 bit music. Ever since I saw this game I thought that the proper mix of orchestral themes lightly sprinkled with contextual synths would be a great fit. The synths would have to be very sparse though, otherwise I get the feeling we’ll dig ourselves into a niche that is undesirable.
nods knowlingly
aha, yes… that would have been my interpretation as well… 
here’s the deal… you make music… you make really good music… Stonehearth is going to be a kick@ss game… the two should twine… how we make that happen, i havent the foggiest… but i am looking forward to said twineage… 
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It would be a personal and creative joy to work on this world musically with these developers. Thanks again for the extremely kind words and taking the time to listen!
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I’d really hate to see this thread die, so I thought I’d offer someone to give me a request. I’d like to write something Stonehearth inspired from the current info we have on the game. What would you guys want to hear? Menu music? Battle Music? What race/character/villian would you like to hear represented musically? It could be any of this and more. Throw something at me and I’ll give you my musical reaction.
I think the skeletons need a theme. But it has to match Stonehearth skeletons. Something minor, but upbeat maybe? And see if you can work in the rattling bones.
thanks! thats an extremely generous offer @CaseyEdwards…
as the goblins are the main adversary we know of, perhaps it would be fitting to hear some additional battle music?
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I actually have a cute’ish idea for maybe tying in both together. I have to skate on thin ice of making sure we know it’s a lethal confrontation, but at the same time this is a bunny hopping voxel world. Thanks for the suggestions guys.
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Love this suggestion!
This might be difficult, but as we know in some battles a sort of boss mob will appear.
I will take a wild guess and assume that this boss will approach an ongoing battle and sort of become the culmination of that fight.
So @CaseyEdwards maybe you could do a version of the goblin battle music, where you can hear an underlying greater threat as a separate track this would be awesome.
I imagine hearing it in the game, desperately trying to get the upper hand and then that music joins in and I am all like “uh oh”.
@PDanford Actually, this kind of thing is pretty standard in games. The procedure is sort of start by reverse engineering what you write by using what we call “stems” to bring music relevant to the action going on in or out according to the programming. I’ll do my best to throw this in there because it sounds like a good way to show how music is integrated without the actual integration. Thanks for the suggestion!
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I’ m really proud of your music. Hope they get implemented into the game!