I Won't Go

Made for OST Fragments Jam #3 with the fragment "Canon" and theme "Refusal of the Call." 5 short tracks, or download them all together in a single 7-minute mp3. 

An old bullet hell hero settles down to retire at a farm in a small town. By day, they grow their crops. By night, they fight their demons. In their worst moments they struggle to refuse the call, but in their better moments they know the call will never come for them again. What will it take to find peace?

Combines classical, chiptune, and experimental elements into a number of canons.

Track 1 - Opening Ambiance (1m): -A soundscape that makes use of the backing piano for the main theme, reversed and digitally modified. Combining piano and digital sounds to introduce us to the different timbres and chords we'll hear in the rest of the soundtrack, so that it's less jarring when we later switch between piano and chiptune.

Track 2 - A Bittersweet Retirement (1:45) - Classically notated piece for piano(s) and viola(s), introducing the "I Won't Go" canon theme. After playing the theme twice, the third time the canon is introduced with a delay of 2 measures and at an interval of a fourth below.

Track 3 - Bullet Hell Upside-Down Cake (1:43) - Chiptune taking the theme into a faster tempo, this time introducing the inverted theme, and then also later adding the theme at the 4th.

Track 4 - Dissociation Delamination (1:10) - An experimental piano "canon" that plays the "I Won't Go" theme 9 times simultaneously, with each copy stretched an additional 5%, affecting both time and pitch. Because of the composition of the theme and the phrasing of the performance, the listener can hear as the copies delaminate from each other, and follow the eighth note climaxes as they descend from voice to voice.

Track 5 - Confronting What's Behind You (1:25) - Chiptune that uses the 2nd measure of the "I Won't Go" theme---the climax of 7 eight notes---as a motive in the retrograde. It is repeated every measure in one voice while other voices layer in a number of variations, starting with one a 6th up, coming in on the 4th eight note, and halved in time. It ends with a repeating combination of the motive and the motive a 7th down, coming in on the 7th eight note.

• Piano and viola recorded and produced in Audacity
• Chiptune notes written in multiple Beepbox.co files and assembled/mixed in Audacity
• "A Bittersweet Retirement" score written in Sibelius

Sheet music for track 2 is available for download, but be aware I notated it in a way meant to be useful when I was recording (separating the different piano voices) rather than notating it in a way that would make sense for performance, and it's unpolished in terms of expression and other markings.

No AI was used in the making of this work, and I do not give permission to use it in AI training of any kind.