Creating the Pixelhaze theme - Kieran Williams Sound Design

With the Pixelhaze training content near completion, there was one thing missing… Music! Enlisting the help of the talented Kieran Williams, we gave him the project of creating the Pixelhaze theme! Music which will be used throughout our training content. This is how he did it:

When I was given the brief for this soundtrack, I wanted to highlight a few key elements. Energy, Retro Nostalgia & Playfulness. Using these three themes to compliment the colourful pixel art style of the tutorial series.

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The Brief

Having worked with Kenneth on many of his past design work and animations, I already had a mindset for producing this kind of music. As this was going to be for an educational series, I wanted the theme to be playful and have a lot of energy, so I took inspiration from 8 bit retro video games to mimic their vibe and overall feel. 

The DAW (digital audio workstation) that I used was Logic Pro X. My weapon of choice for the last 6 years! I find it very versatile as it has so much functionality for a wide range of work. Below is a screenshot of my session. 

Behind the scenes - The Pixelhaze theme

Building the music

I started with a repeating chord progression which runs through the whole track, using a major key and a bright synth to keep mirroring the key themes. For percussion I stepped away from traditional drum sounds and used samples of objects in the real world to keep it interesting. For instance, in place of a snare I used a bin lid closing and I used a ticking clock as an underlying rhythm.

You will also notice the sound of a ratchet in the mix. Again, this isn’t part of the main structure but more of a creative touch! With all of the percussion, I added different delay effects to create interesting patterns and bring the track alive. For the bass-line I used a soft synth patch with a side-chain to create an organic breathing effect and added a lead synth on top for a little melody. This was to make the theme memorable and catchy. I kept my sound pallet very simple over all to not over complicate the track. With this sitting at a low volume alongside a voice over this worked a treat! 

Kieran Williams Sound Design Studio

Behind the Musician

Over the last few years while studying, I have built up and collected a wide range of studio gear which I use to my advantage. I am still adding to it bits at a time, but I have a comfortable setup now which allows creative freedom and great productivity. Having been an avid musician since my childhood years I have picked up a lot of instruments and techniques which now aid me in music production and sound design. After going through secondary school being in bands and performing live, I realised that I needed to be able to record the music I was writing. I studied a diploma in music technology and that is when I found my real passion for sound design and music production. I learnt everything from using the different software, Programming synthesizers, sound for moving Image and much more. 

Since then, I have furthered my education in this area and graduated with BSc (Hons) in Sound Engineering. This allowed me to focus on my recording and mixing techniques a key element of music production and sound design. I also had lectures on audio electronics and became enamoured with the subject. This has fed my hobby of building a modular synthesizer from scratch. It’s still a work in progress but I definitely plan on using this as a tool in my future production and projects.

During university I made great connections with people in other creative industries, giving me lots of projects to work on. So far, I have written music and sound design short films, animations / infographics and video games.   

 If you are interested in professional music or have any questions about sound design please drop message me at kieranw.sound.design@gmail.com

Website coming soon!