ALL MUSIC IS SOUND, THEREFORE ALL SOUND IS MUSIC

One aspect of Tethered which really helps pull you in to the world is the audio. From the outset, we wanted Tethered to have a rich, evocative and beautiful soundtrack that used lots of interesting and unusual instrumentation. We also wanted the music to be seamlessly woven together with the game’s sound design. Done properly, this marriage between music and sound would create an audio experience that was both powerfully emotive and informative for the player at the same time. To pull this off, we turned to Kenny Young, a veteran of creative sound design and an inspirational music talent. We've known Kenny for many years, admiring his amazing work on games like LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway, and from the first discussions we had with him, we knew that our precious little game would be in very capable and caring hands.

Here’s what Kenny had to say about the soundtrack:

“Working on Tethered was a brilliant opportunity, in large part because Alan McDermott isn’t just any old creative director, he’s also a very experienced audio director, sound designer and composer in his own right, and his passion and respect for audio extends to everyone else on the team at Secret Sorcery. That’s exceptionally unusual and, ultimately, it’s why the audio experience in Tethered isn’t just the icing on the cake it’s actually central to the whole experience and assists you in playing the game.”

“So, not only do we have a chilled ambient score which helps keep you zen and focussed, we also came up with a way of using musical sound effects to communicate key events to the player and did a whole bunch of crazy work to ensure that those musical sounds track the underlying chords and timing in the music. It’s really cool! But it’s not just a gimmick, it’s one of the primary methods of communicating what’s going on, and it helps you locate events in the environment, two things which are really important in a VR strategy game!”

Kenny nails it when he talks about a “chilled ambient score”– he has created an amazing soundtrack based around the core of a string quartet backed up by warm analogue synths, some orchestral elements, and a whole host of solo instrumentation, including fiddle, cello, concertina, psaltery, clarinet, gourde banjo and nyckelharpa! It really stands up on its own outside of the game as a listening experience, which is why we’ve decided to release it too – you can buy the soundtrack via the PlayStation webstore or through your PS4 on PSN.

For more insight in to the audio experience Tethered, check out this video in which Kenny goes into a lot of detail about his amazing work on the project.