Making the music for The Sims 4 was such a fun and interesting process for me and the rest of the audio team at The Sims Studio. Using pictures, concept art and animations to get colors, rhythms and a sense of the new world, we wrote music to inspire creativity and make playing with life even more fun in The Sims 4.Read on to get more details about what you’ll be hearing while you play the new game; we think you’ll love it!
WHAT’S NEW
One of the best things about working on music for a game like The Sims is that each time we make a new game, we get to completely reinvent ourselves as artists. All the music in The Sims 4 is completely new, original and focused on our players. We write music to make players feel good and be inspired to be their most creative selves.
SCORING CREATIVITY
With the completely rebuilt systems of Create A Sim and Build Mode, we expect our fans to spend a lot of time creating beautiful Sims and homes. We wanted to make sure there was plenty of music to entertain our fans. There is more variety than ever in both modes, bringing you into the game in a deeper fashion. Every track of Create A Sim and Build Mode has eight levels of intensity. As your attention changes from less detailed to more detailed (or the other way around) with your creations, the music changes dynamically with you.
For instance, in Create A Sim, the closer you get to the face, the simpler the arrangement of the music becomes. When you are in the most detailed mode, perhaps hyper focused on one cheek, eye or ear, you will only hear a string trio or solo piano. If you zoom out to look at an entire outfit, you’ll hear the full orchestral arrangement. The new creative tools are very intuitive, focus-oriented and the music is designed to reflect that experience, and inspire you!
MUSIC TO PLAY WITH LIFE
Live Mode also features a bunch of new music. Haven’t you always loved those pivotal moments in in Live Mode when music suddenly comes in and adds to the drama of gameplay? You’ll love it even more in The Sims 4, because the emotion-focused gameplay doubles the amount of “emotion” music. Many fun, fresh animations are scored with music to intensify the emotional depth. You’ll find yourself in a variety of peculiar situations accompanied by musical sound bites that make moments that much better! You can be sure that in every Sim’s life, he or she will encounter music in a different way.
Even the stereo features a brand new set list written especially for The Sims 4. We have included five different musical stations including pop, electronica, blues and of course, romance. Whether you prefer to woo your Sim love interest with Latin rhythms or Southern soul, you’ll be sure to find something to fit the mood. And here is a fun fact for you: as the romance music was being created for The Sims 4, we surveyed the entire development team to see what kind of music they consider to be “romantic.”
MAESTRO
We’re also excited and honored to tell you a bit about the man who helped us create the awesome score for The Sims 4. If you’ve seen movies like Stardust, Layer Cake, Young Victoria, Johnny English Reborn and Austenland, then you’re familiar with English composer Ilan Eshkeri’s eclectic body of work. One of Ilan’s favorite parts of composing is working with other people and he had a great time working on The Sims 4 musical score with longtime EA audio engineer Robi Kauker who has been working on Maxis games since 1997. In fact Ilan shared a little information about Robi that he might prefer we kept under wraps, “Robi is a very talented musician, even though he doesn't like to admit it! So it was really fun and easy to develop specific musical ideas with him. I still haven't managed to get him to play on one of the pieces of music but I'm not giving up yet,” Eshkeri said. He also let us know that a number of musicians that worked on the score like Emmy the Great, Tim Wheeler and Andy Burrows are huge Simmers just like us!!
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOADABLE TRACK
As a special treat to our fans, we have mixed an exclusive track for our fans to enjoy before the game releases in September. This track, which is an exclusive mix of our Build Mode theme, will be available for you to download for free tomorrow on The Sims 4 Soundcloud page.
We can’t wait to share all of the music with you when the game releases on September 2!