Super SpaceMail Devlog #2


Oh, hello there, traveler!

Today let's talk about music! I'm working on my next boss theme, so I decided to share the process with you~

First, I open beepbox.co. I do all the soundtrack and sound effects there (except the bubbling sound that came from my nebulizer). I'm not a professional songwriter or anything, I just tinker with things until I'm satisfied. One thing that has helped me is saving sounds I created for future songs (I think they're called "samples").


When opening a new project, you will get a set of 4 channels that can be separated into 2 types: Pitch channels and drum channels You can change the number of channels in the channel settings screen:


Since we are talking about settings first, these are the settings I recommend:

Now that our software is ready to go, let's start from the beginning. I make my boss songs at 170 bpm because they are more frenetic than my normal gameplay. Another difference is that in normal music I put what I call "breathing pauses" in the middle of the song, making moments of silence or fewer sounds in addition to variations, so the player doesn't get bored easily. My boss's songs are 36 bars long, so I'll end up with something like 1:40


What now?? Let's get funky!

+ add the background rhythm + place some notes that feel right (according to the theme and speed of the song) + place notes up and down to help convey the idea + now see how it feels and make adjusts


Since it's a boss, I started with the intro of the song. For this one, I used Jaws as a reference (since the boss is a shark). Due to the urgency I need to demonstrate, I used the background tu tu tu tu tu to make the person feel that the shark is close to them


A good tip I got on the internet is to try to keep the notes in the same octave and make the music in major (the easy :) on Beepbox). Always putting the musical notes in this way will also help a lot!


In the end, my songs look more or less like this (for the boss). I think I'm finally getting the hang of it after 19 songs~

Thank you so much for reading, Traveler! See ya next time~

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