Shadow of the Moon, Leitmotifs and Themes Music

My name is Taylor Borgen, Lead sound designer for the indie game, Shadow of the Moon. I have been hard at work on the score for Shadow of the Moon, and am excited to show you all what I’ve been doing/thinking with the different leitmotif ideas I have been creating!

I’ve been working closely with Creative Director, Jamison Stone, and I'm happy with these ideas the way I’m tying things together in order to help tell the story. I'll upload the (somewhat confusing) map I’m working on for the different motivic/thematic ideas, along with an .mp3 of the piano playing each melody separately at their most basic conception. The melodies show up in the same order I wrote them out on the sheet music side of the map if you want to follow along.

Hopefully you can hear the connections between characters, settings and the general connection of melodies within each category to themselves/their character. The arrows on the back help to show how certain motifs are built off one another. For example the Tetragar Tower "Power/Darkness" is what spawned the motif for Nemesis' "Desire/control" as well as the Fallen Soldiers "Desire of power."

But the Tetragar "Power/Darkness" also ties in with the thematic ideas used for Zera/Rahu, so there is this connection of power and you can hear how its somewhat neutral in Tetragar’s motif, but the way Nemesis and the Fallen took it was darker and more sinister, while Zera/Rahu also took from it, but it was in a much more heroic positive way

Another thing being the Zera and Rahu Arkai motifs for the "Fighting Spirit", they are both very similar, Zera's being a call to the Arkai and Rahu's being the response. Eventually the themes can be tied together as one piece as she finally becomes the Shadow of the Moon!

Nemesis, the Fallen, and parts of Tetragar/Arkai's power are all going to be in a non-functional harmonic language, which creates that sinister affect and the somewhat tainted/broken ideas of power they share, whilst Zera may have some similar sounding material, however it will fall into more of a functional harmony in order to show her being able to differentiate between the light and dark(edited)

Likewise, the music for Nemesis and Fallen will often be in odd meters, and even have some poly-tonal aspects which will further create their sense of "losing humanity" or what have you. You can also hear a connection between the Rahu "Folk/Market" theme and the Fallen Soldiers "Desire" which is another way of saying, the Fallen were/are regular humans that once lived like the commoners of Rahu, but they have been tainted and in the words of Dio, "Thrown away their humanity!" (lolol sorry had to include a JoJo reference.)

To give you an example of what a draft song in its final stages sounds like, here is our Rahu Castle Theme below!

There are many other connections and things I can go into detail with, but this was a short run down of some of the ideas! I think it's going to work super well once things become more finalized and clear. Stay tuned for more!