Making the Motifs Fit the Background Music

As the first bars of real game music came together, it occurred to me that my decision to steer clear of all chord features could land me with the same problem as with my earlier non-DirectMusic attempts. Along with the background music, I was writing a number of small motifs to be played on top of the background music. In order for the motifs to work together with the background music at all times, the background music needed to be uniform. After all, if the motif was written in G7 and I refused to let DirectMusic alter it in any way, when the background music played in say, B, we would have some less-than-appealing note combinations.

I went for the middle ground, writing the music using one scale and a wide variety of chords based on that scale. I found that my motifs would work equally well on a C minor as a G minor or an Fsus4, so long as I stuck to my scale. Even if the background music was currently playing an Fsus4 (which doesn't contain a G), if my motif had a G in it, that was fine, so long as it didn't include a note that was outside of the scale.

I picked a scale to work with and made highly melodic music using plenty of chords. My motifs played successfully on top of this music without ever having DirectMusic change or tweak a single note of music that I wrote. Now I could really get down to work and write the real meat of the music content for Worms Blast.