Composer Todd Baker on Building Upon a Meditative Vibe in Monument Valley 3
For over fifteen years, composer Todd Baker of London has contributed music and audio design to innovative videogames for mobile, console, and VR platforms.
By Jerry Jeriaska of The Ongaku
Todd Baker contributed sound design and audio implementation on Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation Vita exclusives LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway. Those roles, supporting the Media Molecule development team, led to broader-ranging collaborations as a freelancer.
More recently, the musician composed the introductory theme for the company's user-generated content sandbox, called Dreams, along with leading the musical development on Tren—a puzzle game, wherein players navigate the twisting tracks of photorealistic vintage train sets.
Kudos from listeners abounds in the comments section of Baker's YouTube channel, where he provides commentary on his custom-made audio for interactive media.
He tells us, "I still feel the biggest compliment beyond 'This is a great soundtrack' is 'This is a great game.'" It is, therefore, perhaps unexpected how often praise comes from those who have not experienced the accompanying videogame, itself.
"I've had many messages from people who said they love this music," he mentions. "It's one of their favorite albums, but they've never played the game."
Monument Valley 3 Original Game Soundtrack premiered on July 1st
Fostering a Unique Musical Identity for Monument Valley 2
Mobile app developer Ustwo Games, also based in London, came to prominence in 2014 with the release of Monument Valley for Apple smartphones.
Presented with Escheresque dioramas, the player guides Princess Ida through cleverly designed mazes that bend reality to match the perspective of the observer. For instance, aligning two paths separated by a distance so that they appear to connect allows the on-screen heroine to magically traverse that gap.
The original Monument Valley is set to music by Stafford Bawler, Obfusc, and Grigori, all implemented by lead programmer Manesh Mistry. Baker began composing music during the pre-production phase of the sequel, in the wake of collaborating with Mistry on Ustwo Games' VR title Lands End, which had launched via the Oculus storefront in October of 2015.
Monument Valley 2 portrays the emotional twists and turns of a mother and child embarking on a journey of discovery. Baker's score builds upon the predecessor's artistic foundations, while also placing a high priority on fostering "a unique and original musical identity," in the words of the composer.
The Monument Valley 2 console port arrived in April for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch consoles
Prototyping the sequel's sound design involved involved concepting audio on previously released levels. "The early demos were just overlaying sound to footage of the 'Forgotten Shores' expansion," Baker says of these experiments. "A couple levels, and me just doing sound replacement treatment—thinking about 'How would I want this to sound,' and showing that to the team."
"There was something about that experience of doing a sequel and having the luxury of being able to visualize an entire project," he recalls. "I knew how it felt to sit down for an hour or so and play that game. I knew how the game was paced. I could critique what was there and think how I might do it differently."
In just two weeks' time, the musician recorded a concept album, polished enough in its presentation to encourage Ustwo to publish the results officially through their netlabel. Much of "Early Conceptual Works," wherein the composer is credited under the artist name "Soundcircle," appears in-game in some form. "When I was working on these sketches, there were a lot more amorphous ideas around what the project actually was," he recalls.
The contents include an early draft of the music track "Child." "'Welcome Rain'" is the early demo of that composition," he explains. "That was part of the series of sketches and explorations I did just to get the team some juicy stuff to listen to while they were working on the design."
Early Conceptual Works by Soundcircle, published by Ustwo Games
While not trained as a pianist, Baker composed "Child" with the piano in mind, and inputted all the notes in MIDI. "Much of the Monument Valley 2 score was an exercise in making something sound more live and maybe grander than it actually was..." he says. "Grander than just me in a studio with the instruments I had at hand, and a computer, which is what most of that project was."
Musical peers noted that tracks, including "Gamelan Rain Melody," sounded convincing as live ensemble recordings. "In fact, it was just me layering percussion elements," he explains. "Some of the metallic elements were me multitracking myself in a studio with a tongue drum, and also some good multi-sample gamelan instruments that I could sequence."
Baker's intent at the outset was to capture an array of musical concepts to accompany several equally significant but separate stories. Originally, different narrative strands were planned to intersect midway through the game at key plot points. In the lead-up to the game's reveal at the WWDC 2017 keynote, the development team decided on honing in on the most compelling story arc.
The title of the track "Interwoven Stories" dates back to this period when the game was comprised of interlinked narratives. "The big U-turn to just make it a mother-and-child story was I think a very good decision," Baker says. "Despite the fact that we probably weren't going to meet our deadline for the Apple event, it was just a more universal and relatable story.”
"Gamelan Rain Melody" from Monument Valley 2
"Interwoven Stories" took on a new purpose as a central unifying motif, which the composer mentions in his liner notes "echoed at several key moments throughout the game, before eventually swelling into its full form over the final credits."
Both the original Monument Valley and Land's End utilized the audio plugin Fabric for audio implementation. One of the key innovations introduced by Baker on Monument Valley 2 was his suggestion to license Wwise—an interactive audio engine used on many AAA games—allowing him more technical autonomy, and a wider array of options for implementing dynamic audio.
In terms of the playful tonality embedded in many of the interactions, he credits Mistry with formulating the concept for the original Monument Valley, prior to his extrapolating upon it: "Just the idea that there is tonality in scales when you move some of the interactions around, that was something that Manesh added on the original game."
Another choice inspired by the original game came in the form of the musical note that sounds when the player taps on the screen to guide the on-screen protagonist. "This idea has evolved through the sequels, as well as offering opportunities for subversion and narrative context," Baker observes. For example, by blunting the musicality of the nav pings just after the pivotal departure sequence in Monument Valley 2 transpires, the audio design came to mirror the monochromatic landscape and the melancholy of the story beat.
He explains: "Having spent the whole of the game with those two characters—for the first time, you're just the one character. It's the mother without the child. Visually, it goes to this grayscale, 'empty world' feeling. The color starts to come back into it, slowly. It was just a nice subversion of the nav ping to strip the tonality out of that."
Todd Baker's Deep Dive on Monument Valley Series' Navigation Pings
Adapting 'Child' for Live Performance on Stage
Following the release of Monument Valley 2, Baker seized the opportunity to bookend the "Early Conceptual Works" album with a retrospective self-arrangement. His acoustic rendition of "Child" marked the melody's third iteration—from demo to on-stage performance. The musician can be viewed on the YouTube channel of Lydian Collective, accompanying his fellow band members on guitar.
"I would not claim to be able to play that piano piece well, at all," he says, "but my friend Aaron (Wheeler) from the band, the keyboard player, quickly learned to play it. We rehearsed it a little bit, just the two of us. We tried with Ida (Hollis) and Sophie (Alloway) as a four-piece arrangement. It was a nice way to link those projects, and a nice marketing beat for Ustwo at the time, to put out a different take of one of the tracks that might be familiar from the game."
One highlight for the musician was hearing the arrangement selected by Everyone's Gone to the Rapture composer Jessica Curry for her BBC radio program. "It was interesting to complete the loop—the voyage of that track," Baker recalls, "from that early demo actually being released."
He hastened to add, "In terms of the life of that particular composition, the ultimate realization of that is a collaboration we then did with the Capital Orchestra. It's a London-based collective of great young musicians from various music conservatoires here. I'm really proud of that—to see how that takes on another life of its own."
Lydian Collective Arrangement of 'Child' from Monument Valley 2
Baker says he is satisfied with the results, and pleased by the positive feedback from Monument Valley 2 players. "I know it's had success with the soundtrack because it has a deep, meditative sort of vibe," he observes. "People love it for concentration, meditation, and study. It has a consistent vibe, such that you can just put it on and it occupies a comfortable space."
The composer welcomed the decision, having mentioned in a 2017 interview for A Sound Effect that storytelling had become "the most exciting aspect of a project" for him to pursue. "There's no doubt that the new game is not as smooth and dreamy," he says of the Monument Valley 3 storyline.
"Obviously the vibe has a lot of similarities, but it's not as 'safe' as a listening experience as Monument Valley 2. It has these darker corners and edges to it."
Monument Valley 3 now available for Windows through Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox consoles
Navigating the Twists and Turns of Monument Valley 3
Monument Valley 3 launched late last year, published through Netflix Games' subscription service for smartphones. In this latest chapter, players guide protagonist Noor through optical illusions inspired by existing art and architecture.
In writing and recording the music score, Baker welcomed a frequent collaborator on board to serve as co-composer and audio designer. Previously, Lucie Treacher had contributed instrumentation and vocals on Baker's scores for Alto's Odyssey downloadable contents and the "Lost Forests" Monument Valley 2 expansion.
"With Lydian Collective, there's a track where Lucie plays nyckelharpa," Baker says of their prior collaborations. "I was watching her get better and better as a composer, in terms of the music she was putting out... Whilst she has a different creative voice than me, her sense of taste in what she creates—while aligned to me—I just trust her with: whatever she makes is going to hit that bar."
The emotional turbulence of the storyline pivots around a flood encountered in the early portions of the game. Baker recalls, "there was this idea of a ‘pre-flooded’ world that is quite opulent and sort of oblivious to the impending disasters. We thought it would be lovely to accompany this with romantic sounding string arrangements."
Commuters Waltz recording session, via A Sound Effect
Having the advantage of an increased budget, together with the involvement of Lucie Treacher as a classically trained co-composer, Baker challenged himself to capture something of the grandeur of the Capital Orchestra arrangement of "Child" in scoring the "Commuters Waltz" theme.
"That's slightly in the back of my mind when I'm approaching that, composing a track like that," he says. "The strings add a real rich lushness to it. [Monument Valley] really does work in that palette."
In an effort to dramatize the game's Edenic pre-flooded world, Baker and Treacher expanded the scope of the instrumentation, enlisting the help of specialized musicians. "When we spoke about the strings session, with her on board, she just made it happen," he says. "[Lucie Treacher] booked the studio, booked the players. She has a very collaborative mindset and more experience in the classical, ensemble world than me."
He adds, "And, of course, just a personal sense of ease of working with somebody is really important, as well. I just get on well with Lucie."
"That [collaboration] enables things like the string recording session, and, as you'll see credited on Monument Valley 3, a bunch of soloists—Kadialy Kouyate (a West African kora player), Charlie Grey (a hardanger player from the Highlands), Tamar Osborn (a woodwinds specialist in Hastings), Jan Hendrickse (a bansuri player.)"
Animated short film teaser: "The Lighthouse," featuring "Lightkeeper"
Baker's co-composer encouraged the subversion of expectations that made the "Departure" sequence stand out in Monument Valley 2, including the return of those previously encountered audio techniques throughout the chapter titled "Vaiku."
"With both myself and Lucie, [there was] the chance to do these kind of special case levels," he says, exerting "twice the horsepower, in terms of both of us working on the project creatively... [One such case was] the level IV 'Origata Artellier' that Lucie worked on, that was like a complete bespoke treatment. There's not really anything common about the sound in that level versus the rest of the game. As soon as you enter that world, all of the core sounds have been subverted. That's fun, because that's what's happening visually, as well."
Ustwo Games gave the composers direct access to design elements that would affect the tempo of the gameplay, even extending to camera pans, fades and movements in some cases. "What maybe people wouldn't assume about working on a game like Monument Valley," he says, "to some extent, I myself and Lucie actually had control over aspects of the game's pacing and flow that were way beyond just audio and music.
"For example, in the 'Commuters Waltz' level, all the fades between levels, including actually the color of the fade-out, is stuff that I set up. The default fade would be just one-second out, one-second in. It just feels abrupt, so we were given that freedom... We were trusted with editing that ourselves. The team never disliked what we did. It was actually quite welcome that we took responsibility for that."
Monument Valley 3 Console & Steam Launch Trailer
In adapting the game score for a standalone soundtrack album, both composers worked intensively for several weeks on elaborating introductory passages and codas that appear in-game.
"There was the same challenge as Monument Valley 2," Baker observed, "in that you have to extend some pieces of music, like the trailer track 'Impossible Worlds' was a one-minute piece of music that I turned into a three-minute piece of music, just to make it more of a listening experience."
He says of the album, "The music that you hear on the soundtrack is the music from the game, but sensibly structuring that into soundtrack-sized pieces of music requires a bit of editing...You just want to create a coherent listening experience that has the right kind of emotional flow to it."
The soundtrack also features an expanded variation on "Lightkeeper," which serves as the end credits theme on the animated short film. "It was a lovely part of this project," he says. "There's a lot of music!"
The composer looks back at the project with a sense of accomplishment: "My favorite part of working on Monument Valley 3 was the collaboration with Lucie," he says. "We worked incredibly closely together. We were arguing about tiny little mix details that only us will ever notice anyway. That's part of the fun, I guess!"
Todd Baker's Deep Dive series is streaming on YouTube, featuring a guest appearance by co-composer Lucie Treacher
Todd Baker is a composer and audio designer based in London - and frequent collaborator of Ustwo Games – soundcirclemusic.com | Spotify Artist Page | X.com