What does a person hear when they pick up a broken seashell from the shore?
Some will see a fragment tossed up by a wave. Some — a beautiful memory of the ocean. But the composer Petri Alanko heard in it the sound of a musical world that did not yet exist.
He ran the fragile shell across the coastal stones, recorded its rustle — and in time this barely noticeable voice became one of the main sound layers of the composition Tabula Rasa for the new game CONTROL Resonant.
Thus the ocean entered the music not through the roar of the surf, but through the touch of matter against matter.
A world that begins with sound
CONTROL Resonant was released on 24 September 2026. The music for it was written by the Finnish composer Petri Alanko — the author of soundtracks for the games Control, Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2.
In a published 28 September interview with MusicRadar, he said that the first musical sketches for the new project appeared back at the beginning of 2023 year. The work continued almost throughout the entire creation of the game: the composer gathered sounds, recorded instruments, explored timbres, and gradually created his own acoustic matter for this ever-changing world.
For Alanko, a soundtrack is not musical background accompanying a finished story. Sound becomes part of the space, the behaviour of the characters, and the very logic of reality.
First he peers into the image, the movement, and the emotional state of the character. And already at that moment he begins to hear sensations, harmonies, melodies, and textures capable of making an invisible experience almost physical.
The ocean hidden inside a single note
The most astonishing discovery awaited the composer not in the studio.
While resting in Mexico, Alanko noticed a broken seashell among the stones. He happened to have a portable Zoom H4n recorder with him. The composer began running the crumbling shell across the coastal stones, recording the dry, rough sound of their contact.
Chance onlookers probably saw only a man engaged in a rather strange business. But he was already hearing material for future music in that noise.
Later the recording was loaded into the Omnisphere synthesiser and transformed using granular synthesis. This method divides sound into the tiniest fragments — sonic "grains" — and assembles a new, extended texture from them.
The shell stopped sounding like a shell. But it did not disappear.
Its physical nature was preserved within the music in altered form: fragility became atmosphere, friction became movement, and the brief coastal noise unfolded into the space of the composition Tabula Rasa.
This is not an imitation of the ocean. It is the material trace of the ocean itself, translated into another language.
Musical instruments that no one called instruments
The shell was not the only unusual source of sound.
A significant part of the soundtrack's percussion parts was born from plastic containers with a volume of 30 to 120 litres. Alanko struck them not with drumsticks but with lengths of flexible silicone tubing. The resulting hits resembled massive taiko drums, yet retained their own uneven, living texture.
Old four-track tape recorders came into play, cassettes found in the garage, vintage speakers, a Rhodes electric piano, and recordings left over from previous projects.
The composer deliberately restored roughness to the sound. Where digital processing could have produced a flawlessly clean result, he sought out the crack, the breath, the distortion — that which allowed the music to remain tangible.
Anything to which attention was directed became an instrument.
When Fibonacci appears in the rhythm
For one of the combat scenes, Alanko built a rhythmic structure on the Fibonacci sequence:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…
In it, each successive number arises from the sum of the two preceding ones. This mathematical pattern is encountered in descriptions of a multitude of natural forms and processes — from the arrangement of leaves and seeds to patterns of growth.
However, the composer did not try to turn the formula into a beautiful symbol. He needed to make the mathematical rhythm move, to sustain tension while remaining physically perceptible. For the recording he used objects from his own kitchen, turning familiar utensils into percussion instruments.
Thus in a single sound scene a natural pattern, domestic matter, human movement and digital processing came together.
The formula became rhythm.
Rhythm — action.
And action — part of a new world.
From a simple tone to a living being
Musical transformation also accompanies the inner journey of the game's protagonist — Dylan Faden.
At the beginning of the story he seems to be learning anew how to be human. That is why the sounds associated with him are initially built predominantly on sine waves — one of the simplest forms of sound vibration.
As the hero finds himself, the music too becomes more complex. Additional frequencies, shades and textures appear in it. The sonic fabric grows together with the character.
This is a particularly precise artistic device: the hero's development is not merely shown and described — it can be heard.
Each new facet of the personality receives its own overtone.
Music as the art of hearing possibility
The story of this seashell changes the habitual view of creativity.
We often think that music begins inside the composer and is then embodied in the external world. But sometimes the opposite happens: the world is already sounding, and the person becomes the space in which that sound is continued.
The stone did not know that it would become part of a soundtrack. The seashell did not strive to turn into a synthesizer layer. The plastic container was not created as a drum.
But within each form there already existed its own density, surface, resistance and voice. The composer did not put sound into matter — he discovered one of the possibilities that had always resided in it.
Creation here becomes not a production out of emptiness, but an encounter.
Attention meets matter.
Matter answers with vibration.
Technology reveals hidden shades.
And the human being joins what has been heard into a new form.
When sound returns to the body
Music completes its path not in a speaker and not in headphones.
It enters the listener's body: it changes the breathing, gathers attention, causes goosebumps and movement. That which began with the touch of a seashell against a stone can, years later, become the movement of a person on another shore.
The ocean leaves sound in the seashell. The composer hears its possibility.
Music reveals it. The body answers with dance.
And the wave returns to the ocean no longer the same as it began. It has passed through matter, attention, technology and human experience — and has become a new act of Creation.
Perhaps music is born not when a person makes the world sound, but when he becomes attentive enough to hear: the world is already singing — and invites us to continue its song.
