Looking for Music (December 2025)

There was a post in the Noise Jam Discord, calling for a composer to create music for a spy thriller-themed entry for the Ryona Yuri Jam. I hadn’t planned on making anything for that jam, as I wasn’t too keen on the premise of girls physically hurting each other. (I had also just finished working on “Everyday Sororicide” for the Yuri Game Jam, and struggled with keeping up a sustainable balance between university, housework, and my day job.) But, I was also interested in writing more music, and a spy thriller sounded pretty interesting.

I PM’d Joyce, and sent her some of my previous work on “Zwei Club Matte bitte” and “Loner Dog.” I think I was pretty defensive – as I often resort to when faced with a new situation and my PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) kicking in. I just wish it wasn’t so hard to drop this defensive behavior … Anyway, we agreed on collaborating.

Bond-esque spy music was something I’d never written before. I received some formal education in jazz theory and a dabbled a bit in arrangement theory. But, that was more than a decade ago. I knew that it would be difficult. Writing band music is one thing, but big band music is something else entirely.

Joyce had a lot of examples and musical references prepared. This was helpful in one way, but also challenging due to PDA. I’m not that great at writing music in the style of another artists. I kinda need to find my own angle and sound to feel comfortable.

That’s not to say that I reinvent the wheel every time I compose. I just want it to feel comfortable to me. Which means, I have a preference for certain sounds and harmonies, and dislike others. It’s a bit stupid, but basically I want the music to feel like it’s my own. (I do something similar with fonts. There is a limited amount of form principles, but I like to try my own hand at it.)

[Editor’s note: Joyce here. For anyone curious, I whipped up a big YouTube playlist of most of the stuff that was, in some form or another, kicking around during production of the game. A glance at this probably gives a pretty decent idea what style/feel Henni was working towards. Anyway, back to Henni :) ]

Sound Check (December–January 2025)

The “don’t prepare assets before the jam” rule was daunting to me. I have a limited amount of time to compose during the week. So, not starting early meant less time over all. Prototyping was allowed, so I wanted to develop a general sound in the time before the jam. I played with the idea to have some harsh sounding club-y bass synths. I think that idea came from one of Joyce’s examples, that reminded me of “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.” Yoko Kanno’s music for that series has always been associated with Russia in my head.

I had a few tries, but wasn’t able to match Kanno’s sound. Which probably was a bit much to expect of myself. She is so good at writing music. Even when she reinterprets other artists’ songs she puts her own twist on it (“Cyberbird,” “Words That We Couldn’t Say,” and the string arrangement in “Call Me, Call Me” are a few such examples. God, “Call Me, Call Me” is such an emotional song to me.)

I think the concept of the GitS:SAC soundtrack was to contrast synthetic instruments (synths and drum machines) with acoustic ones. Which I adore as a concept for a series that dabbles with the idea of machines developing a consciousness – a ghost – of their own. But all of that is besides the point. Codename: Typhoon was set to be a retro future spy game.

The whole tangent with Kanno’s music reminded me of another band that I really liked: The Thrill. I’ve been in love with their two soundtracks for Blue Submarine no. 6 for the better part of a decade (rn I can only find songs from the first OST. They are worth a search, but also somewhat difficult to find). The Thrill is a funk rock big band, and they have this noir style sound that can goes from foreboding to driving. I felt it would fit very well with the spy music established by the Bond movies (that plus A Minor Major 7th).

The problem was, I would need a horn section VST (Virtual Studio Technology). Finding one would decide if I could opt for that sound or not. Luckily I found a free library that covered horns and percussions. I was very happy with the sounds and expressions the library offered and made a few test compositions – which I disliked, because I felt they were to happy for the occasion. But, that concluded my research phase. I didn’t find the exact sound I wanted for the game, but I felt I had all the ingredients to find it as soon as the jam would start.

Jamming (January–February 2026)

The jam started, and so did the final weeks of university with a larger project that I needed to finish by the beginning of February. Why did I decide against my better judgment to sign up for this? I guess … because I enjoy writing music. The whole jam meant juggling responsibilities. And I’m afraid I often decided against other responsibilities in favor of Codename: Typhoon (and taking up even more responsibility, like helping with designing and implementing the UI, as well as committing to the absolutely insane notion I should design a custom font for the game).

When the jam started, I still had no idea what the music for the game would sound like. I made another attempt to write some kind of title music, but I wasn’t feeling it. Ophelia turned in a rough draft within the first week, but it would take a long time before the rest of the game would gain shape. This was the complete opposite to my own workflow. I often start with visuals, then add music, and then struggle to finish the writing.

Joyce prepared detailed descriptions of scenes she wanted music for. She opted for about 4–5 songs. One for the history recap, one for the general ambience, and one for each ending. I felt that one song, that would repeat for over 20 mins would become annoying pretty fast. But, I had also told her I could probably only manage to write 4 songs over the duration of the jam. So I was in a pickle there. And, I decided against a healthy schedule – again – and opted to write 2–3 general ambience songs.

God, imagine how this would go if I would actually do this as a job. I would probably undersell my work constantly. I hope I get better at estimating my time and sticking with it. Exploiting yourself because you love something is still exploitation …

When my attempts at the main theme continued to falter, I switched to working on the general BGM. I think ambient and moody songs are far easier to write for me. And I actually managed to write something that I felt pretty fitting. The first song I completed for Codename: Typhoon was “Dark & Cold.” It set the mood for all other songs that followed.

My main instrument is electric guitar. I know the layout of a keyboard, and how to play 2-5-1 progressions on keys, but that is the extent of my keyboard skills. Still, I opted to write most of the songs on keys. I only recorded the midi, so I was able to fix my terrible keyboard timing and faulty notes in post. It’s still faster and more intuitive than writing with the piano roll. I think by the end, some of the key sections actually sounded somewhat decent ^^

I wanted to have a little bit of escalation in the moods, so I based the second ambience piece on the first one. The leading sound of the first song was the bass line of the Rhodes. So I tried to iterate on that bass line by changed the tempo and added more rhythm to the floaty progression. There is a tiny homage to one of the bass lines of the Bond themes. I think it was from “Goldeneye,” but I might be misremembering it >.<

I spoke to another composer about my composition process during that time, and applied what I learned from them to that song. After I had the bass part written, I added percussions, horns and some strings from the LABs library. In order to avoid too much repetition, I added a more quiet part in between, that was basically still the same harmony and rhythm but with less instruments playing and a tiny bit of guitar melody. Finally!! Some guitar recording. It was starting to feel weird to have so little guitar in those songs. I like that the finished soundtrack is less guitar focused, but still feels like “me” during the sparse moments were I included guitars.

Joyce entertained the idea of narrating the history section, and recorded it. In the first iteration of this section, Joyce imagined the narrator as an ignorant American patriot. It was dramatic and funny. I tried some ideas with her narration in the background. And that was when I finally found the theme for the history section – which is kind of the main theme. I had so much fun hacking these wurlitzer chops into the keyboard.

Harmonically, I switched back and forth between A minor and A major. It brought a nice urgency that didn’t feel neither too happy nor too sad. By that time, I had found a voice that sounded good for the sax and trumpet sections. From there it was only a question of spacing them out rhythmically to create a funky back and forth. My personal delights in the “Billygoat Memorandum” are the pitch harmonic at the beginning of the quiet guitar section, as well as the change of rhythm of the sax section during the last repeats.

With that out of the way, I finally needed to face the three endings. But, before that I added the main menu music, which is a slower version of the “Billygoat Memorandum” without the rhythmic chops. Tangents as far as the eye can reach … Anyway, the patriot ending – aptly named “FREEDOM!!!” is based on the last part of the main theme. Joyce wanted it to feel energetic with maybe a hint of irony as how pathetic Angelica was to be framed in that moment. I’m not sure it achieved the ironic part, but it fits so well with the running and in-over-her-head Angelica.

For the OTRR ending, Joyce mentioned the alarms going off as the bomb explodes in Moscow. I had the idea to use these Inception-style horns as a simulacrum of the alarm. I also managed to create a synth that sounded so broken and had almost a Geiger counter sound to it. The horns have a very biting and dissonant voice. I thought it was such a cool song by itself.

When I finally played the scene with that music, I felt so uncomfortable and disgusted. It was a very unique experience to me. Like I said, during writing it felt like such a cool song. It still delivered that feeling in that scene. But, like … maybe like Elon Musk cutting down a table with a golden chainsaw to stoner rock. It has some air of coolness to it, but it is also disgusting because of what is happening. He might have felt cool in that moment. But what he did was a scary visualization of the many people he was going to fire and the destruction of important civil structures.

Angelica casually bringing such destruction made me so afraid, because there are people out there with wealth and power that regard people as little more than ants. Really frightening and disgusting, especially if they celebrate their destructive power. The broken synth sounds to me like what I imagine the bird-like avatar of Angelica’s powers sounds like. Really unsettling ending for me. Still love that song ^^

I’m not sure if I wrote the Cynic ending before “No End Credits,” but let’s assume so ^^ Joyce described the song for that ending as sombre because of Angelica realising how much pain she caused over the years. I don’t think that song took that much time to write. I like it a lot though and loved it in the game scene. It felt appropriate for the moment, and it helped me reconcile Angelica. I just wish these roots were real and we could make powerful people feel compassion for the ones that are at their mercy.

”No End Credits” is a reprise of the second ambience (“It’s not some cheap fk’n spy novel”). It has a spaghetti western sound – which is more accurately surf rock, that is also the stylistic root for the Bond-esque guitar sounds – and coincidentally builds up to the various “showdowns” of sorts that are in the game. I wasn’t planning for that, exactly, because I only knew about the story in broad strokes. But, I’m pretty happy with the effect it has ingame.

Mic Test (February 2026)

The first iteration of the history scene was far from what Ophelia had intended. She was imagining a more serious and neutral retelling. I kinda wanted to have a go as well. I kinda like the voice I acquired through voice training (for the most part).

My first attempt was fun to listen to, and trying a news anchor style voice was a nice premise. Little did I know, my sub-par mic setup would prove to be such a nuisance. Keeping a consistent audio level while holding the microphone in hand, on top of speaking for 10 minutes in a consistent voice, was quite difficult. Ophelia’s prose in that section is far from the way I normally speak, and there were several passages that I struggled with pronouncing. I was afraid my German accent would be overly perceptible in the “th-”sounds, but I think it came out okay.

Cleaning up audio that is messy to begin with is such a pain. I was never good with mixing voices, but in some regard I felt I made it worse >.< It is louder and freer of background noise – true. But, especially in my takes I think I introduced some noise that bothers me. I also took 3 export rounds before I created export regions that would allow me to export all 38 lines in one go. Voice clean-up is tedious. That much I can say.

Green Room (Conclusion)

It was actually a lot of fun to write music for this game. The sections that needed music were well prepared by Joyce, and I love how my songs work in tandem with the writing, visuals, and sound effects. It was a lot of work to balance my real life obligations and my responsibilities for the game. I still feel I managed to take time off, while handing in everything on time and without last day night shifts. We had a few group voice calls that were a lot of fun, and inspired me for several aspects of the music. I think the ending songs should be a bit longer before they repeat, because they play for quite sometime. And since they are very attention-grabbing, I felt very conscious about each repeat. That is probably a me-problem as the composer, but I still plan to make longer versions for the first major update.

I feel very proud and honored to be part of such a talented team. And I feel like I unlocked some new musical abilities that I didn’t have access to before.

If you liked the music, I would be very glad if you checked out the OST on bandcamp.