Shadows Of Doubt – Intro Rescore

Shadow of Doubt is an immersive detective sim that left early access recently.

I decided to attempt a rescore.

Luckily, composition will receive all of my attention, as the instrumentation is a given:

I had bought the game on sale but elected to wait until the 1.0 release to play. The game is set in, "a fully simulated sci-fi noir city of crime and corruption," as reported by it's Steam page, which I found novel. I also was intrigued by its art direction, I hadn't really seen anything like it before.

Throughout playing, there were many things I was both impressed and disappointed with.

By the time I was done, though, things would have ended up "settling" on one of those two feelings.

Everything except the soundtrack.

"Arpafall", "LD Celts", and "On Hold" are all excellent ambient works. Despite being primarily synth pieces, they fit the setting and mood really well. "Basspump" slow is almost too synth-punk to belong, but due to its use in the game being only for combat situations, it works. Unfortunately, the entire soundtrack is synth pieces.

The setting is equal parts sci-fi and noir, but the soundtrack only sci-fi.

After thinking about it for a while, I remembered the first impression: the intro cutscene. It appears that during early access, the sequence featured no music. The music that's there now? It's lacking. It feels like an introduction for a villian, not the setting.

The soundtrack features some extremely good pieces.

I wondered why.

This would not be easy. I have never attempted jazz.

Keys, Double Bass, Mute Brass, and Light Percussion.

I wanted to inject a slight synth feel into it, though. I decided to do so with the brass. I didn't use a synth–its a oneshot–but I made it sound like a synth. Maybe just a little too much, but I think its fine.

I started with the chords, which maybe I shouldn't have.

I kept feeling the chords were too simple and formulaic, but I didn't want to even think about trying stuff like substitutions or signature walks for my first jazz attempt. I eventually remembered my other option for adding complexity is harmonic rhythm.
I pulled out a lot:

The worry the chords weren't fitting weren't eliminated, but suppressed. I decided I'd have to just settle for them for the moment. It ended up being the right choice.

Once I brought the rest of the instrumentation in, it all came together.

Suspensions, Anticipations, Dotted Rhythms, Chord Hits on "AND"s

Obviously, this score doesn't fit with the existing soundtrack super well.

It's an entirely new direction that should have been one of two foundations for the soundtrack as a whole, the other being ambient synth.

This stylistic dichotomy could have worked really well toward reinforcing game themes:

The Noir vs. The Sci-fi

The Connected vs. The Isolated

The Good vs. The Evil