Thanks to both of you for making me smarter.

Excellent points. Thanks Rob!

Having played and been inspired by games like Limbo and Inside, i’ve personally and deliberately tried to get things more “minimal” in my designs (whether that is music or sound). However, as you say, it is not a case of this approach or style fitting every project, or even every moment in every project. Instead i’ve found it better to pursue minimalist moments that have meaning, and work/transition towards and away from them.

In order to really achieve a typical quieter minimalist moment, i’ve found (in my projects at any rate) you also need extremely maximalist moments, where sound is deliberately over the top and ‘too complex’ to comprehend – this is in order to make the point hit home harder when the minimalism takes hold. In this way you can create a kind of internal logic / narrative momentum for the minimalist part to really work.

In the end, context – what comes before and what comes next – is essential to being able to craft any ‘moment’ – but when working on that moment, whether it is intense and busy, or soft and quiet, I believe you can have a minimalist, or maximalist, approach that is extremely effective – as you say, often starting fresh and trying the opposite approach leads to an ‘aha’ moment that informs you how it can best work. It also helps a lot to think about not whether it is minimalism or maximalism as an aesthetic, but as the character point of view.

The important thing is to ‘make the most important thing, the most important thing’ and carry that through both the design, implementation and mix.

R