The Church of St. Catherine is one part of my Honors Thesis project. Working collaboratively with Nicholas Green, a series of 3 unique game environments were created as a tool for both of us to refine our own workflows and a collaborative one. For this project, I was responsible for all of the music and sound design, while Nick was responsible for the physical assets. For the entire project, we had a year. This specific scene was about 3 months of work.
The initial concept for this scene went between a haunted theatre or cathedral for the first couple of weeks, with Nick and I ending up choosing the cathedral after looking at our references and having more ideas for the cathedral. After speaking with some professors and reaching out to a former professor at Fitchburg State University, I was able to have the piece I wrote be played by a professional organist and record it for use in this project.
Once the cathedral was decided on, I knew that the piece had to be for an organ. Working in Sibelius, I came up with a few melody drafts that my thesis advisor critiqued. Once we were both happy with that I sent it out to the organist to look at before the recording session, and he had some notes about the piece for ease of playability, so I added those in as well.
The piece was designed to start out as a hymn, warping and twisting into a discordant and twisted version of itself by the end where it would loop. There was no one hymn that I used as reference, instead using memories of going to church for 17 years growing up to see what fit.
For the recording set up, there were technical issues with getting the original audio interface to work with my computer, but I was able to get a Rode caster Pro to record on, with 4 condenser microphones, 2 of which were in a stereo pair mount. The set up for the recording was as straightforward to me, with 1 microphone as close to the organ as possible, the stereo pair in the middle of the congregation, and the last as far back as possible. I also had access to an ambisonics recorder, which I placed on a bench against the back wall of the space to gather as much room tone as possible.
The piece was designed to start out as a hymn, warping and twisting into a discordant and twisted version of itself by the end where it would loop. There was no one hymn that I used as reference, instead using memories of going to church for 17 years growing up to see what fit.
For the recording set up, there were technical issues with getting the original audio interface to work with my computer, but I was able to get a Rode caster Pro to record on, with 4 condenser microphones, 2 of which were in a stereo pair mount. The set up for the recording was as straightforward to me, with 1 microphone as close to the organ as possible, the stereo pair in the middle of the congregation, and the last as far back as possible. I also had access to an ambisonics recorder, which I placed on a bench against the back wall of the space to gather as much room tone as possible.