The Gruff Grizzly 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 2 and a half months of work. 

This scene was the first we worked on, with the initial idea of a traditional fantasy tavern, pulling inspiration from titles such as Skyrim, World of Warcraft, and Dragon Age. For music, the idea was to have a small ensemble of traveling bards play, with a only a handful of instruments. I composed 3 different pieces for this portion of the project. 

When I was initially concepting these pieces, I wanted the instrumentation to be something that made sense but was also understandable. All three pieces use folk instruments from around the world, a hammered dulcimer, sitar, and autoharp. To add some bass, additional tracks were added where the sitar and autoharp were pitched down an octave. These three instruments give a different timbre than a lot of music I hear in this genre, mainly due to the lack of a flute or lighter woodwind instrument. I did this as a challenge to myself, because my comfort area is writing for wind instruments.