Devlog: how we build quiet
Our audio lead on negative space, the two-second rule, and why almost every soundtrack we write gets cut in half before it ships.
The first pass of every DuboTee soundtrack is too full. It always is. The temptation, when you have written something you like, is to let it play — and the effect is that the player stops listening to the world and starts listening to you.
So we have a rule: after any deliberate moment of music, at least two seconds of nothing but the environment. It sounds arbitrary. In practice it is the single edit that has done the most for how our games feel.
What is left after the cut is not less music. It is music you notice.