Sound Breakdown Paradise Halloween Special #1: Clock Tower [SNES]

Playstation himself, Ken Kutaragi), the DSP, and provided the sound chip at the core of the S-SMP, the Sony SCP700, which makes the SNES one of the first home consoles to use a sound chip which finds it’s basis in Sample Synthesis. What this means is that unlike sound chips such as the YM2612 the Mega Drive/Genesis used, which uses Additive Synthesis (which creates sounds and tibre by melding sine and saw waves together), the SCP700‘s waveforms are actually downsampled instruments. This is why there are so few SNES games that have similar sounds, outside of sequential games or games with the same composer; while there certainly where limitations- you still only had a few audio channels to work with- the kind of sound you wanted to achieve was hampered only by a composer or sound programmer's skill and imagination (or lack thereof), the samples would sound largely like the instruments they were trying to emulate, and to top it off, many composers and sound programers discovered a trick where they could swap out sample banks on the fly during songs, an exploit which circumvented the 64KB limit of the chip and lead to some of the most memorable and technically impressive soundtracks in video gaming up to that point. And, just like any software or hardware, the longer it’s in play and the more time developers spend with it, the more it’s potential is fully realised. And as Clock Tower was a reasonably late release for the console, it goes without saying that the sample quality is absolutely stunning, and I’d argue it has one of the best chipsets on the entire system- right up there with those from Earthbound and Kirby 3 (also late releases for the console).Even beyond the quality of the sound, the score itself is possibly one of the most interesting ones on the entire console, for a couple of reasons; first, the game is largely played in silence, without any background music at all, and many parts of the game don't have any ambient sound effects beyond the footfalls of our timid heroine. Second, it relies very heavily on a leitmotif that is repeat frequently throughout many of the songs, and consists mainly of little music stings or very short loops. In many ways, it’s comparable to a movie score, which is fitting as the game is deliberately setting itself up with an atmosphere comparable to late 70s, early 80s horror films. There is a lot of emphesis on synthesizer sounds- especially deep, meaty bass synth- and it compliments the bleak feel of the game perfectly; the score is cold, unfeeling, unfriendly, and very good at making you feel truely alone and entirely at the mercy of the twisted Barrows clan. The track Dark Premonition, a very short sting that punctuates the brief text splurge at the begining of the prologue, introduces us to the aformentioned leitmotif- very much the games “theme”, and effectively Clock Tower’s answer to Freddy Kruger’s iconic (and ironic) nursary rhyme in the Nightmare On Elm Street series or the infamous breathy sounds that punctuate Jason’s preasence in the Friday The 13th films.; the track I’m Looking For Mary consists solely of this little melody, played on a very high octave and with a sample that I’m guessing was supposed to be some sort of chime sound, to compliment the setting. I really like this little melody, short and sweet though it is, because it lies perfectly on the threshold between cheesy horror shlock and genuinely unsettling, but without feeling jarring or leaning too far in either direction; in the same vein is the short jingle Dead End, which punctuates a couple of the death scenes and additional scares, and will be no doubt be very familiar to anyone with even a passing familiarity with horror as a genre. Some of the other loops that rely on the leitmotif include Satanic Place Of Worship, which mixes it with the synthesized string ambience of Religious Library, and Cradle Under The Star, which blends it with a high octave synthesizer arpeggio, and on it’s third and fourth loops, punctuates it with some additional chimes. These little loops and jingles are only heard at a few select points and are very basic, but they always set the mood really nicely when they do turn up.

The song Karosene, which plays during one of the most surreal parts of the game, makes use of the leitmotif in two very interesting ways- the song makes use of no less then three different deep synth bass lines, one which starts out as a very basic four-beat rhythm with an additional accent at the end of each eighth bar, but shifts into a more complex rhythm when the surrounding (and very unnatural sounding) choir chords and the second bassline shift up an octave alongside a faster rhythm; and the other, introduced after the first eight bars, is a bassline rendition of the leitmotif. At around the halfway point, the other elements melt away, and the song returns to just the leitmotif played entirely solo on chimes, to quite chilling effect. Karosene is probably one of my favourite tracks in the game, perfectly capturing a strong sense of finality (even though there's still a little bit of game left after the area it plays in), without feeling the need to go overboard with the theatrics and keeping things relatively simple whilst still delivering an impact. And finally, there’s the end credits song, The Nightmare Is Finally Over..., which drops the electronic elements for its first half- a largely straight, solemn orchestral piece built around the leitmotif (borrowing the aditional chimes from The Cradle Under The Stars), adding in another unnatural sounding choir, and some beautiful but none the less unsettling string melodies that on their second sequence is joined by a theramin playing the same melody, before it drops out, bringing in the tense percussion and one of the strange electronic sounds from the games most remebered track (more on that in a moment), reintroducing the choir and the more complex bass rhythm and bass rendition of the leitmotif, backed by string scales that are stacked by a synth arpeggio, before finally the track ends on a downward pitch shifting bass note, a brief bit of the chime rendition of the leitmotif that gradually slows, and one final, deep, menacing string chord. In many ways, the ending credits song is Clock Tower’s answer to the chilling theme from the Halloween films; the expansion of a simple leitmotif into a full theme song for the game itself. It's very different in tone from the ending themes to Splatterhouse and Sweet Home, both of which were very sad and solemn tunes; The Nightmare Is Finally Over has more of a dramatic and tense edge, one that leaves a lasting sense of menace in you even if you got one of the better endings. It's pretty much how I imagine the "?" that always blinks into existence at the end of a "THE END..." credit after a few seconds would sound.

Don’t Cry, Jennifer is almost certainly the song fans of the series remember most fondly; hardly surprising, given it’s the theme that plays when the Scissorman is giving chase. There’s a reason I saved this song for last; while it does make use of the Clock Tower leitmotif, the song isn’t built around it in the same way the other songs are, and it’s inclusion in the song is as an addition, rather then a springboard for the rest of the composition; acknowleging the redundancy of the following statement, this song is very much the Scissorman’s theme, not a theme for the game at l