Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Cool, I'm learning things. :) What's a "pad"?

A pad is basically an intrument or synth tone that is held for a long period of time and generally has a slow attack (takes a little while to reach max volume). An ensemble of violins playing a chord, for instance, could be considered a pad. Most of the time, though, when people say pads they refer to synthesized pads; usually, sweeping, electronic sounds used for harmony.

I could post an example, but I'm not at home.

Music in games works much in the same way as music in films. It exists to provide atmosphere, or to move along the action/story, or even to evoke emotion in the player. If you look at examples from past games (probably the best method to see how music works in games) you will notice that these three reasons for game music are actually quite obvious.

Early games such as Pac-Man and Tetris, for example, have simple background music. Its purpose is to set a pacing or rhythm that the player can feel. It could also be said that the music sets an atmosphere to the same effect as muzak played over the sound system in shopping malls. When things in Tetris get out of hand, the music speeds up, and this evokes a sense of urgency in the player. This is quite the accomplishment for what tiny electronic sounds existed almost 20 years ago.

Looking at Super Mario Bros., the variety of music increased. The main theme, the one everyone knows and associates with SMB, could be said to exist for a number of reasons. For one, it also moves the action along using a consistent pacing, much like in Tetris. It also has a catchy tune in a major key, and thus brings about the whole idea of thematic usage of music in games. Different stages had different themes associated with them, and they contrasted in order to have greater effect on the player. The “underground” theme, for example, is different from the usual pacing of the main theme in order to give it a darker and almost ominous atmosphere, not to mention the use of a minor key instead of a major one. The underwater theme contrasts the other two themes by being in 6/8, and at the end of each stage you could always expect a rousing fanfare to assure your victory on completing the level. Much can be said about game music in the early Nintendo days, but to put things in perspective it is interesting to note that all this use of contrasting themes, evoking emotion, and atmospheric use are all devices that have been used for hundreds of years, including film scores.

Moving along the timeline, as game chips became more advanced, so did the music. Early RPGs such as the SNES Final Fantasy games, for example, demanded much more cinematic features all around such as prolonged storylines, character development, sequences in which events advance the plot, and a musical score to back all this up. The music in these games exists for the same purposes as it did in Tetris or Super Mario Bros., not to mention film scores. The more games become like films, the more their scores will become like film scores, or even opera. The idea is that different themes can be used to represent situations or characters in order to move along the story.

I look at a lot of games today on the subject of warfare and notice they all have scores similar to the films the games wish to emulate. Many MMORPGs, on the other hand, contain scores that mainly serve to be atmospheric since the fact they’re online makes it difficult to have many cinematic characteristics. However, both genres will still use urgent music to evoke feelings of urgency in the player in the exact same way the music in Tetris was sped up when the blocks were piling up. The process in the creation of the game’s musical score isn’t that much different either. The director will hire the best composer for the job, and direct him towards a final goal in which the music will enhance the gaming experience. But as composers we don’t need to be babysat. A good composer should know how to create certain atmospheres, emotions, themes, etc. These are some of the things that music exists for at all.

It is also important to note that considering the various genres of games and their target demographics, the game’s developers often choose the most obvious flavors of music, and perhaps rightly so. I don’t want to go into any specifics since there are always exceptions, but as an example I have always noticed sports games often use rock music. I think the reason for this is because it is familiar to the majority of players, and serves a purpose similar to that of muzak. Some movies only use songs in their soundtracks, and in the context of the film and the majority of its audience, it’s probably for the best.

Anyway, that’s my perspective on the world of game music, or at least the jist of it. If anyone disagrees with something, or thinks I left something important out, or needs clarification on something, please let me know. I’m more just making observations than writing a “how-to” guide on game composing.

Fantastic thread S&S, I've only been able to skim it, but it's full of great info. I'll probably come back and post my own two cents later when I have a chance to read in detail.

In the mean time - *stickified*

I suppose that in writing for situations, the composer draws on cultural traditions. Considering the example of the brass piece mentioned earlier in context of soldiers, this may work because we can associate trumpets and other horns with military music or medieval courts, and so affairs of state like war.

If you had a game taking place in another country, the composer might try to mimic the music of that country. For space games, one could argue that high technology could be emphasized by heavy use of synthesizers, although the movie 2001 is an exception. For car games, why not pick music like what you could hear on a radio in your car?

Yeah, for games with stories, it seems that composers can generally signify on the traditions developed in the movie industry.

My jazz arranging professor summed it up when talking about how to find inspiration for writing new pieces: steal (from other songs).

Other aspects of music, well:

digital effects? As was already said, use reverb and delay to simulate the physical space in which you want the music performed. Use chorus sparingly to thicken a sound. Use flange just to signify on a particular guitar sound or if you happen to want your music to sound like it's getting washed down a drain. Same goes for distortion. But all can be used experimentally.

pan and mixing? Put the lead parts in the center of the stereo field and the accompaniment in the flanks. You can get by with keeping the mix constant for the whole length of a song. You just have to ask yourself the question, for each of the parts how audible do I want them to be? Make sure that your volume levels do not sum to greater than the maximum; the mixing board is not the place to create the distortion effect.

sound encodings? With OggVorbis and MP3, the size of audio streams is manageable so that there is less reason for anyone to "program" the structure of a song with C code or whatever for the purpose of saving space. 32Khz 128 Kbit/s per second stream is probably the best that a video game needs with these encodings. What does that mean, well, basically the sound files are compressed for storage, and the stream rate (112kbit/s) controls how compressed they are, and the frequency response (32Khz) also plays a factor in compression. Lower the frequency and the stream rate and you get more compression, but then your music suffers in fidelity and can start to sound like an AM radio instead of a CD. The reason that you want compression, is that helps to save precious RAM that is an important consideration for game programming.

Proably you can find on the net by doing a search a few bits of code and libraries that let you play OggVorbis and MP3 or even WAV files from your own programs. It isn't a big programming challenge anymore.

Music theory? I guess the best reason for studying theory is that it makes music easier for you to understand and as a composer, easier to identify the elements that you hear in music so that you can work them into your own music.

So where to start in theory? Let's talk about time. A good musician knows exactly when to push a key, beat a drum, or otherwise make a noise and when not to do it. This sense of timing comes from dividing a song into units of time, called measures, and then further dividing the measures into beats. One of the first things that a composer tells a musician about his song is how many beats there are per measure, in the form of what is called a time signature. The time signature helps the musician to keep in his mind how he should be counting the time as it passes. The rate of time passing for a song is called tempo, and it is given in beats per minute.

That's all I have time for right now...

I am currently writing an article inspired by this thread entitled: Theory of Orchestration and Melodic Counterpoint as a Thematic Device in Video Game and Film Composition. I intend to have it done in a few days and I will submit it to the review board for GameDev.net.

I know there are already a lot of articles on music in the archive, but I think this deals with a very different aspect of composition that is often left unattended by newcomers.

The article will discuss the use of specific instruments as emotional motivators and also the use of melodic counterpoint as a similar device. I hope that it is useful to at least one or two people.

That will be up soon, until then... yay for composers!

32khz / 128 kbps? Way too low. 44.1khz sampling rate and 160kbps at a minimum, unless you're using VBR. I'm not an audiophile, and I can easily tell when the encoding goes below that.

Quote: Original post by JWollin
I am currently writing an article inspired by this thread entitled: Theory of Orchestration and Melodic Counterpoint as a Thematic Device in Video Game and Film Composition.

How's the article going? :) I'm glad you're doing this, as I don't seem to be getting to the part of the design proces where I will want to talk about music very quickly in my developer journal. Looks like I'll be doing story andthe game design document for at least the next 4 entries. But don't worry, I'll definitelystill need the posts in this thread and your article when I do get to music. :)