Building the Beats of the Wardrum

Hey Wardrummers!

We've heard you, in the comments, reviews, video clips and streams, you love the music and sound design that is featured in Wardrum, and we wanted to give you more of an insight into how it was shaped, formed and created.

So, that's why we recently got to chat with Ben Ridge, Lead Composer & Sound Designer at Unfathomable Audio, to chat all about how they brought the beat of Wardrum to life!

Wardrum is a rhythm game, which means it needs to have great catchy toe-tapping music to fit the gameplay that you want to enjoy for many hours at a time. What is your process for creating such iconic beats for a game of this genre?

In early discussions, it became clear that the aim was going to be a fairly straight, simple drum beat most of the time that's very easy to follow. Then we’d add little bits of ornamentation around that to make things slightly different and more interesting between tracks, but making sure that main driving 1, 2, 3, 4 is always felt.

We also decided to use a kind of droning/pulsing bass for a lot of the music. The bass spends a lot of time on the same note, without much moving around. While quite basic, it helps to avoid having a melody that could become distracting or annoying over time. We were instead able to make it more interesting by blending multiple layers of organic textures (including throat singing/chanting) in with gritty synths.

Another way we created variation throughout the tracks without too much focus on melody, is through varying dynamics. Each battle track moves through different intensity levels quite regularly so it doesn’t feel too static.

We did still need to include something to add interest on top of the rhythm section, and one of the biggest breakthroughs for that was realising that fiddly rhythms on the “melodic” instrument parts worked best. Whenever I used fewer different pitches, the devs responded really well. So I leaned into instruments with short, fast attacks and used them very rhythmically instead of traditional melodies with longer soaring notes. Again, these were often like 90% just playing around on one note!

That approach reinforces the rhythm-focused nature of the game and avoids overly repetitive melodic hooks. I’m a sucker for a super-cool catchy melody, so this was a very different approach for me. It’s definitely an option I’d carry forward into other rhythm games.

Where did you take inspiration from for some of the tracks from Wardrum? Other films, music genres or games?

Interestingly, I didn’t rely heavily on other game soundtracks for this project. Every now and then the devs brought a game soundtrack to the table, but it was more to show the intensity they’re after, rather than the actual musical style.

The geographical setting isn’t fully defined in Wardrum, so we didn’t want it to sound too much like any specific region, yet we did want it to feel like a tribal style that resembles real world musict. This made it quite tricky to figure out what direction to take. Myself and the devs explored a range of instruments and styles from around the world, trying to select specific aspects from each.

I’d say one of the main references was Danheim, whose music helped shape the pulsey droning, rhythmic foundation. But then we also had to avoid sounding too nordic!

A great source of inspiration was actually sample library demo tracks. Some of them were very close to the sound we were aiming for. For example, one of the virtual instruments I used is called “Groth” by Wavelet Audio. Some of the demo tracks are SO cool. It leans largely to the viking side again, but there are plenty of instruments and ideas in there that could be used for our purposes.

I think being a fan of heavy metal also helped shape the sound - especially in terms of weight and intensity. However my love of progressive metal and disregard for common song structures/formulas definitely caused a few setbacks. During development I also discovered some more folk metal kind of stuff like The Hu, which brought in that tribal energy. Loads of cool chanting there!

How do you adapt to creating different music for different in-game biomes? For example. How does creating music to fit the tone for a Swamp level differ to creating music for a Desert level?

All tracks share the same core pillars - simple driving rhythm, droning bass, and minimal harmonic movement. From there, we adapted the tone for each biome.

For the desert, we explored Middle Eastern-inspired sounds, but avoided being too literal. For example, my immediate instinct was to reach for scales like Phrygian dominant - usually quite a trope in eastern or ancient deserty scenes. Instead it was better to grab the tropey instruments, but use them mostly in a way that matches the rest of the soundtrack.

For the swamp, we were thinking “ominous deep south” (just now realising Swamp Thing might’ve been a good one to check out!). We experimented with guitars, dobros, banjos etc, alongside atmospheric textures and whispery vocal elements to create a sense of something lurking. This one was a collaboration with fellow Unfathomable Audio composer/sound designer Aki Knaappila (who also created a large chunk of the SFX). He did the main bulk of this track and came up with some gross (in a good way) riffs that are a bit more melodic than the other tracks, but they work SO well. Makes me feel like I need to change my socks.

Did you use any unusual music instruments or production techniques in the creation of the music or sound effects for Wardrum?

I experimented a lot with unusual instruments. At least unusual for me. One of the most coolest was a guitar my grandad built, which I now use more as a sound design tool than a traditional instrument. It’s an enormous acoustic with loads of depth to it, but it’s almost impossible to actually play as a guitar haha.

I slapped a didgeridoo for percussion, and have a collection of rattles n’ things picked up from holidays. For the “melodies” I sometimes used things like ukulele, mandolin, and an old, rusted harp/psaltery thing. I don’t really know what it is, but it was found in an attic and it’s HAGGARD. Some of the strings are hanging off, and they rattle in the coolest way. I played them all in every way I could think of - using picks, fingers, both sides of a violin bow, and hitting the strings with objects like tremolo bars.

It was easy for some of these, and a lot of my sample libraries, to start sounding too much like a banjo. That can be a bit too comical, which we wanted to avoid. I eventually found a sound myself and the devs really liked for the plains battle track - but amusingly can’t remember how! I wanted to use it again on one of the other tracks and I tried all of those exact experiments again but couldn’t recreate it haha.

For sound effects, the goal was often “powerful tribal magic.” We tried to avoid overly whimsical sounds and instead leaned into deeper, heavier elements like low drums and reverby throat singing/chanting

One I particularly enjoyed was designing Sentinel’s war horn, which needed to feel kind of broken and hacked together. Creating that unstable, rattling quality was a fun challenge. There’s a pitched-down very-aggressively-played kazoo in there, that sounds like it’s about to shatter. It’s layered with different materials scraping, some air pressure stuff, storm sounds and all sorts.

Which of the tracks for Wardrum would you consider to be your favourite?

My favourites are… Weirdly, probably the tracks where I added my own voice! I’m not a singer, so for a lot of the vocal work we used various virtual instruments - but sometimes I had to layer or replace them with my own recordings to get the result I was after.

I was trying to do throat singing stuff. If there’s a specific technique to that, I don’t know it, so this was probably more like just gruff chanting. I was essentially making a choir out of multiple takes of different approaches, so it got pretty painful for the ol’ larynx after a while.

I was particularly happy with how this turned out in the hub track and the main theme/trailer music. For both of these, I wrote “lyrics” of made up words/sounds and - after removing the parts that turned out to be Finnish swear words - went for it. I was partially inspired by the Sardaukar chanting in Dune, and the processing behind it.

If I had to pick one, it would be the main theme. It has that simple catchy BOSHBOSHBOSH that feels pretty fun haha. I’ve seen a weird amount of people online saying it “slaps”. I’m hoping that’s good!

We can hear sound effects in some of the music tracks. Is that a deliberate musical choice?

This is something I actually love to do whenever I can. I remember trying to use pig sounds rhythmically in Sheltered, but there was an understandable request to remove those! But one time I worked on a game called Cavity Busters where I sampled my teeth clacking together to use as drums, and I made a little shaker out of my extracted teeth too.

In Wardrum, it was a request from the developers that I was more than happy to run with. In the swamp, you might hear splashes or flies; in caves, there are crumbling pillars, rocky slabs, ghostly laughs and bats. We used much of this rhythmically to enhance some of the beats, and also they were used along with rising buildups and big hits on the transitions.

Finally, how did you get into video game music creation in the first place?

Straight out of university, I lucked into a job working on music and sound effects for online casino games. I hadn’t done much sound design before, and very much learned on the job.

At the time, I didn’t think it was very exciting. In fact at the time I think I was still more interested in trying to become a film composer. But looking back it was incredibly valuable. I worked on around 100 - 200 games in every genre I can think of, which gave me a really broad skillset that’s been super useful ever since.

Alongside that, I was working on very small indie projects and game jams with friends. One of those projects, Sheltered, eventually became a funded Kickstarter game, which led to connections with Team17.

I built up my portfolio on some other projects at Team17, went freelance, and gradually grew my network. Kind of got that bit the wrong way around really. It took a good few years to become stable, I think I did a lot wrong and was very inefficient. But over time I found a handful of repeat clients.

It has now been about 12 years since I started freelancing. Several years ago I began hiring subcontractors to help with my workload, and then I started Unfathomable Audio. I’ve found a really cool team of audio wizards, and have been gradually migrating into more of an audio director position. Maybe now I’ll finally have the energy to work on my Neo-80s-Gospel-Rock-Opera!

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Want to own all the primal-pounding beats found in Wardrum and jam out anytime you desire? Purchase the Wardrum Soundtrack on Steam, or get the Rhythm Master edition of Wardrum, where you get the game and the Soundtrack in one bundle!

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