Creative Techniques In Video Game Music

Hey everybody,

Its been a while since I posted here, but I wanted to bring this up. I am now a member of the IA-SIG (Interactive Audio Special Interest Group) and we are starting a new educational initiative to help composers, audio implementors, and game developers use music more creatively in games. We are gathering information and ideas about how games effectively and creatively use audio, as well as how the could. Below is a short excerpt from our current list of techniques. We are asking anybody who is interested in furthering innovation in game audio to submit your own ideas on how games can and do use audio in an innovative or creative way. What you submit can be anything that you have heard used in a game, or it can be your own original idea. When submitting something you have heard in a game, read in a book or blog post, please provide the name of the source as well as the link if possible. To submit an idea, either reply to this post or email me at composer@brennananderson.com.

Here are some examples of the types of things we are looking for:

- Player’s Choice Method I: Say the player enters a battle or a puzzle, and there are several ways to complete it. Lets take the battle for example. Naturally there are different strategies. Just to name a few, there are brute force, magics, and items. When writing the music for the battle scene, designate a few instruments, or even an entire section to each. Write the theme for all of them, as if all of them were going to be used. But, bounce them out into separate tracks. Lets suppose we have heavy brass themes for brute force attacks, strings for magic attacks, and woodwinds for item usage. At the beginning of a battle, there will be an invisible counter set to 0 for each of these methods of attack. The theme that starts out will be somewhat basic (percussive tracks mostly with some melody from any section.) Once a method is used, the counter goes up for that method. Those counters will incrementally increase the volume of their respective tracks. Now the players will get a different musical experience based on their preference of strategies. Depending on the player, the music could be the same every time, or it could be completely different every time. The developer could even choose certain enemies to only be able to be defeated by using a certain strategy, so that you hear certain music with that enemy.

- The Conductor: Some games have timed sequences. It could be possible to write a backing track of music in a certain tempo to match the game’s timing. Then whenever the player performs certain actions, have different melodic or percussive instruments play.

- Tommy Tallarico’s Horsemen: This one came from Tallarico himself! Say you have a battle with 100 men on horses, and all the dev. needs is some really intense and epic music. That’s great! Knock em’ on their feet! Make them feel like they are being punched in the throat. That makes sense if you’re battling 100 horsemen, right! Absolutely! That wasn’t a trick question. But, does that make sense if you are battling 50? Maybe. At least in real life it would, because 50 men on horses trying to kill you would still be terrifying. But this is a game. That is half the number of baddies in the same battle. Why keep the music the same. Perhaps you could incrementally change the mood of the song to match how many people are trying to kill you at once. But, shouldn’t the intensity of the battle still stay the same no matter how many enemies there are? That’s certainly a possibility. Just because the music changes, doesn’t mean the intensity has to go down. You can make a track just as intense, but in different ways if you orchestrate it differently. But then again, it might also be a good idea though to lower the intensity the fewer enemies there are. Change the instrumentation, and/or how many instruments or sections play. It is completely up to you and the game dev. This method also works great for puzzles. Have a thick and heavily orchestrated theme at the beginning of a puzzle. Then, as you get nearer completion, it drops certain instruments and gets less complex.

Thanks,

Brennan Anderson