I'm noticing lots of interesting things about the music at thehansofoundation.org. Obviously, when Persephone has hacked a page, there is a specific sound that replaces the music there, they're definitely tossing aural clues. But I just noticed some rather more subtle, and sometimes very subtle differences in the music from page to page.

Now me, I'm a trained (some might say over-educated-- two masters' degrees) musician who serves on a college music faculty, so the fact that I just noticed these page-to-page differences makes me wonder if there has been some change to the music there.

They have a sort of "modular" structure to the soundtrack, by my initial count, using six or seven different layers which can be coherently assembled in any combination. I'm going to start recording and transcribing these layers and cataloging which are used on which pages, to see if they change from time to time. So far, the layers I've heard are

Percussion backbeat
16-to-the-bar percussion track
Slow synth string chords (C Maj7 - F Maj7, but with some other tensions which I haven't worked out yet)
Guitar
Second guitar (?)
Main melody
Countermelody

If anyone else has noticed anything odd in the music, I'd love to hear about it. And if there are other threads concerning the subject, I'd love to be pointed toward them.

By the way, the fact that sometimes the music doesn't shut off, and that sometimes more than one soundtrack will play at once is an anomaly in the way Flash ActionScript handles sounds.

Been meaning to post something about this, but never quite got it together :rolleyes:

The thing I was going to post was that each section has a slightly different musical background, kind of a theme in the way they do for characters in films - BTW I always like Darth Vader's theme in SW over the others :biggrin:

The different themes could convey some sense of what the project is like, light and airy for good stuff, dark and sinister for not so good stuff.

Still need to get a better handle on it, though it's probably just mood setting.

Glad someone finally shook the tree and motivated me to reply.

im not to good with music, but one thing I did notice is that when you enter the site it says msuic is of when it is on and if you turn the music off it says on. :lol: it has nothing to do with the complicated stuff that you are talking about, but it still has to do with the music.

I noticed the ON/OFF button too and it bugs me! LOL! But the programmer prolly just meant for it to be such that if u wanna off the music, press the OFF button. But it still bugs me.

As for the different music on different section, I think it was done plainly to add variations so the page won't be too monotonous. Like the green spheres that move around each time a different link is clicked upon. There are a few layers of audio as EdMuse pointed out, and for each section, a different combination of audio clips get played. I believe i've heard the different music for section ever since the site was first launched.

As for the different music on different section, I think it was done plainly to add variations so the page won't be too monotonous. Like the green spheres that move around each time a different link is clicked upon. There are a few layers of audio as EdMuse pointed out, and for each section, a different combination of audio clips get played. I believe i've heard the different music for section ever since the site was first launched. I agree the music may well work like the spheres, but independent of the spheres. I have paid some attention to the music on the "non-persephone corrupted" pages and noticed:
1. the music changes (seemingly at random) as you change pages.
2. the music does not change when you click the sphere-moving button in the lower left corner
3. if you leave a certain page and come back to it, you may get different music on that page (i.e. each page is not tied to a specific flavor of the music).

I do not know if certain "paths" (sequences of pages) always give the same music.

I do not know if the sequence of musical changes as you change pages is always the same the way the spheres sequence is. (There are 5 arrangements of spheres).

I have not thought about multiple audio layers playing simultaneously, but just assumed there were a finite number of musical clips.

Some of these could be answered by flash decompile. I suspect the answers will be everytihing is random, but worth a look.

Ive had a look at some of the files in the flash site and the music is divided into many files. i.e. the beat is one file the other parts of the music are each in their own file, meaning the can be played in different combinations to give subtly different audios. Quite clever actually.

Ive had a look at some of the files in the flash site and the music is divided into many files. i.e. the beat is one file the other parts of the music are each in their own file, meaning the can be played in different combinations to give subtly different audios. Quite clever actually.
Excellent! Do you have these files, or can you point me toward how to find them?

And thanks for all the replies, all. I look forward to testing some of the ideas that have been posted here, myself. It probably won't turn up anything to help with the game, but I'm a budding Flash programmer, myself, and it would be neat to see how such a well-crafted Flash site handles its soundtrack.