Google Doodle Mixes
Listen to the amazing music from those little pieces of art!
Summary
Google Doodle Mixes is a two part project that is made up of music mixes centered around the soundtracks of two Google Doodles which are Jerry Lawson’s 82nd Birthday and Pétanque. The premise of the project was to make the soundtracks of these two doodles discoverable and easy to listen to. While some Google Doodles in recent years have had their soundtracks published by their composers on outlets such as SoundCloud and YouTube, Google themselves do not publish music albums of their doodles on most occasions (if any at all). Unfortunately, this can make discovering the soundtracks of these interactive pieces of art quite difficult if not outright impossible. Through hours of recording, capturing, and extracting assets, I was able to put together album experiences for both doodles that were previously unavailable in any capacity. All of the components of this project can be viewed through the Google Doodle Mixes YouTube Playlist where Arcmaevotix is home to the original versions and Nehrpsyznet is home to the remade versions.
Process
The idea for creating music mixes involving music from Google Doodle Mixes arose sometime after I had gained a fanatical interest in Google Doodles with the 2016 Doodle Fruit Games. While I had always found the concept of Google Doodles interesting back in the day with creations such as the Pac-Man doodle or the Underwater Search page, nothing was as exciting to me as the Doodle Fruit Games. And one of the best aspects about it was its soundtrack. As the years went by, the soundtracks of Google Doodles became more prominent and some very nice melodies came out of them. When Jerry Lawson’s 82nd Birthday doodle hit with its diverse soundtrack of compositions and styles, I knew it was a soundtrack that more people needed to hear and be able to find. That is when I started painstakingly capturing and extracting assets from the game to develop a listening experience for those who wanted to hear the music of the game without having to open up the Google Doodle itself all of the time. After I had captured the music and cleaned up the recordings, I also created some remixed compositions. When the Jerry Lawson music mix finished production, I immediately followed the same process with the Pétanque Google Doodle which has much of the same visual language as the 2016 Doodle Fruit Games. Other Google Doodles such as the Doodle Champion Island Games were skipped over since the composers of those projects have made the soundtracks of those doodles available for listening.
Reflection
Google Doodle Mixes was an exercise in being resourceful and digging under the hood to acquire assets with no guidance. Ripping sprite sheets, capturing audio of different sections, and re-assembling animations was incredibly challenging but incredibly insightful. It also allowed me to have more fun with the Google Doodles since I was able to use the doodles themselves in some cases to stage scenery or create custom backgrounds. Being able to use several parts of my skillset to offer other individuals like myself with a listening experience that otherwise wouldn’t exist has been rewarding and reminds me of all of the pieces of media that I have been introduced to thanks to the unofficial efforts of passionate individuals who wanted to see something happen.