@joao-marcello First off, thanks for the comment!
> The music give the Asian climate that your game intended to convey, but I missed some more elements from that culture to be perfect.
The reason behind this is actually not quite straightforward, so here's some background info.
One of our main sources of inspiration was Bhutan (which is why our NPC is a takin, for instance), because it's one of the few ecologically sustainable countries in the world and at the same time also one of the happiest, so it synergises really well with the solarpunk setting that we want to aim for when we create the game that this game jam is based on, someday.
So naturally before I began working on the soundtrack, I researched Bhutanese music. I'll summarise what I found.
There's several different genres, some are more traditional (most notably zhungdra and boedra), but there's also pop genres (of which rigsar is by far the most popular). Folk music, especially zhungdra, contains mostly vocal elements which are also quite elaborate, so it was more than unlikely that I would do them justice within the time frame of the game jam considering I had never done or even heard Bhutanese music before. The vocal of rigsar, on the other hand, is less elaborate and strict (which is one of the reasons why it's so popular: it's easier to sing), so its melodies were more suitable for the scope of this jam.
I also researched the musical instruments that are usually used in Bhutanese music. The most important ones are the chiwang (a type of fiddle), the dramyin (a type of lute) and the lingm (a type of flute). Rigsar often uses a few other instruments, e.g. the yangchen (a type of dulcimer). One thing that I noticed early on was that folk music often didn't use any drum elements (in which case the dramyin is used to give the rhythm). The music that did was usually the religious kind, but that usually didn't have many melodic elements, which wouldn't have fit this game. Interestingly, rigsar often uses synth drums it seems (see [this track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymBiWeDLtmw) for example).
One other thing I noticed rather quickly is that they use a pentatonic scale, but it actually took quite a while until I found out which one it was because there's very little information on it online... (It's CDFGA or CDEGA - I used the former rearranged to DFGAC.)
There was still one major problem, though: Bhutanese music is actually rather slow (except some of the rhythmic religious music, but like I said, that one lacked melodic elements). And while I personally really enjoy and prefer slow tracks, I didn't feel like they fit the atmosphere and narrative of this game.
So in the end, to get a feeling similar to that of Bhutanese music, I used the same pentatonic scale and similar instruments, but at a higher BPM (I opted for 170 BPM, which is a lot, but since traditional music is around 85 BPM, it felt kind of similar to me). I chose Jhator (sky burial), which is also practiced in Bhutan, as the topic of the track because it fit both the narrative as well as the BPM really well. Now, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I don't have Bhutanese instruments just lying around in my apartment, and I won't spend money just to buy digital versions just for this game jam. So I used the instruments that I already had that sounded somewhat similar to a fiddle, lute etc., but of course they won't be spot-on. To compensate, I tried to simulate the vocal embellishments of rigsar in the melody of the fiddle. That's why the fiddle's melody now has all these little wobbles. I'll admit, though, that it probably would've sounded more authentic had I just also included flutes. I originally planned on doing that, but because the deadline was drawing near and there was still programming to do, I had to scrap them, unfortunately.
So in the end, it's a mix of me not having access to traditional Bhutanese instruments nor the experience necessary to emulate it well, and certain adjustments that were simply necessary to make the music fit with the rest of the game.