Duh, duh, duh. Duh, duh, de-duh. Duh, duh, duh. Duh, duh. That’s how the riff to Deep Purple’s tune about a fire burning down a Swiss casino goes. As with any riff, it’s just a sequence of inputs you make on your instrument of choice. Usually, this would be a guitar. I’ve been trying to use the cat piano and singing gnome of jobbing composer sim Offbeat, which is out in early access today, July 22nd. Sadly, I don’t think I’ve cracked it, but I have been having plenty of fun making funky jingles and wedding tunes.

In truth, I think that if I’d started ofs with something simpler and more piano-specific once Offbeat gave me the opportunity to hold freeform jam sessions during the time I’ve spent messing around in it prior to its early access arrival, I’d have had more success. I could probably have gotten to grips with something like Mary Had A Little Lamb or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with a bit of time and effort. Instead, having breezed through a number of tutorial compositions a variety of customers commissioned via the phone on the game’s desk, I was desperate to try and channel my inner Ritchie Blackmore.

Well, actually that’s a lie. I first tried to play the riff from Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, mainly inspired by this video of Wallace and Gromit performing it in modded Guitar Hero. Cue some frantic googling about keys, BPM numbers, and notes. It soon became apparent that one was beyond my abilities. So, I tried arranging Smoke on the Water in the game’s sequencer, tuning the cat-shaped piano I’d hooked into it to sound like an organ, because that seemed a suitably Deep Purple-ish instrument. I didn’t bother trying to make Offbeat’s singing gnome imitate Ian Gillan’s vocals or its cymbal-clashing monkey provide the same percussion as Ian Paice. Those would come later, if I could get a hang of the basic riff. I tried inputting the note sequence google and various YouTube tutorials told me. It sounded like something, but not clearly like Smoke on the Water. I tried adding chords to fill out the sound. That didn’t really help.

I’m not sure if it not being played on a guitar is all that stopped my ears from going ‘Oh aye, that’s the one’. Odds are very strong I’d just mucked it up in some way. Just because I haven’t yet mastered playing real songs in Offbeat doesn’t mean you, reader, won’t be able to do just that, provided you know your Es from your A minors.

Regardless, I can confirm that just following the instructions and orders to compose the ditties requested by the litany of phoning customers is a nice way to plink away an afternoon. Usually, whether you’re designing a fanfare for a corporate presentation or a song to play as the bride walks down the aisle at a spooky spirit wedding, you get enough leeway to get creative, while incorporating a few non-negotiable building blocks along the way. Sometimes the client wants things to build to a crescendo, or a section of frantic monkey cymbal tapping to encourage an audience to clap. Or maybe they just want a bit of cat piano that sounds like purring lobbed in at some point before the end.

No doubt the number of instruments on offer, while limited to a small band for now, will grow as Offbeat moves through early access, offering even more options when splicing together tunes. For now, I can certainly recommend you check it out on Steam, when a demo’s lived for a little while.