SFX484 now available direct from The Game Composer
The Game Composer’s sound effects collection SFX484 is now available direct from The Game Composer! The contract with its former distributor is now over so that means I can offer it directly to game developers and audio professionals on my own site.
To celebrate, I’m dropping the price of this 484 sound collection from the usual $49.95 to $34.95. I don’t know how long this will last, but probably not for more than about a month. Anyway, please check out the collection and consider buying it if you need a good all-around sound effects collection to get a jump start on the audio for your next game. Find out lots more info and hear demos here.
Stop the technological madness!
A few weeks ago we went to the opening night of Tron:Legacy at the local theater. The movie was on the low side of average for me, even being a modest fan of the original. I won’t get into the soundtrack for now… apart from saying, oh boy, another minor scale melody! (this time for a pivotal dogfight scene) But I digress. The movie got me thinking that I don’t really care very much about 3D. It was the third or fourth film we’ve seen in 3D and once again I was left disappointed by this highly touted technology. It is a neat technology… for about the first four minutes of a movie. But then the novelty wears off and I couldn’t care less about it.
I’m only growing concerned about 3D now because every TV maker seems to be trying their hardest to make consumers buy their latest TV’s to get this ‘amazing’ new feature. But I don’t want to watch 3D movies. I don’t even care if video games are in 3D. I don’t want to wear glasses… over my glasses. Or have to sit in a special place to get the full effect. It’s not worth it. It’s just a short-lasting gimmick.
You know what technology I am excited about? Holograms! Once we are projecting our entertainment on our coffee tables or somewhere else in our living rooms… and better than that Princess Leia R2D2 crap, then I’ll upgrade! What we need to be focusing on right now is… content!
I’m looking at you, too, audio. But I already addressed that in my Surround Sound post from awhile ago. Tron just got me thinking about that again and solidifying my resolve against sacrificing quality content for keeping-up-with-the-Joneses novelty.
And that ends my first post of 2011. After only posting twice in 2010, I hope I can beat that in 2011. Halfway there already.
Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box Postnatal
(note: This is a transcript of an episode of a podcast I was invited to take part in. The hosts were eager to talk to me about the music in the newly released game Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box and I feel honored to have been invited to appear on their show. The hosts will be familiar to anyone: Frankenstein’s monster, Bigfoot, and an alien. Their podcast is called “Frankenstein, Bigfoot, and an Alien Discuss Game Music and Ice Cream”. Look for it on iTunes. My segment appears about halfway through last week’s episode… )
Alien
Frankenstein
probably Bigfoot
ALIEN: Welcome back, humans. One of your kind is now with us. Behold Matt Sayre!
MATT: Thank you, Alien. I’m happy to be here.
BIGFOOT: (English accent) Welcome, Mr. Sayre.
FRANKENSTEIN: Urrrgh!!
MATT: Hi, Bigfoot and Frankenstein’s monster.
BIGFOOT: Oh, go ahead and call him “Frankenstein”. He’s grown accustomed to that particular appellation.
MATT: Great. I will, thanks.
FRANKENSTEIN: Gyee.
ALIEN: Begin this interrogation by giving us the history of your project and the human faction that has created it.
MATT: Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box is a new hidden object puzzle adventure game based on the paranormal romance novel Tiger Eye by Marjorie M. Liu. The game basically covers the first half of the book. You play as Dela Reese, a young woman traveling in China. She finds a mysterious riddle box and once she opens it she discovers an ancient warrior, Hari, who has been trapped within for centuries. He is cursed to serve as a slave to whomever possesses the box. You try to rid him of the curse and deal with the Magi, the antagonist who is responsible for the curse and who wants his riddle box back.
Our team, PassionFruit Games, was formed specifically to make this game and, we hope, all its sequels. Tiger Eye is the first in the Dirk & Steele (the psychic detective group Dela belongs to) series of books and it’s an exciting series, perfect for video games. The members of PassionFruit Games previously worked at Her Interactive (I did contract work for them, the rest were full-time), where they worked on the Nancy Drew Dossier series. Unfortunately, the Dossier series did not pan out (even though Resorting to Danger won Yahoo’s 2009 Hidden Object Game of the Year award) so the team was laid off. The day after being laid off, however, we were already planning this new venture. And last month we shipped TE: CotRB!
FRANKENSTEIN: Ahh… funn, ME play!
MATT: Oh good, glad you liked the game, Frankenstein! So far the reviews have been very positive and we’re very proud of the work we’ve done.
BIGFOOT: I was surprised to learn that you did over 70 minutes of music for the game. Dear chap, that’s a great deal of music for a casual game!
MATT: Yes, I decided early on that since this game and company are our own “babies” (even the author, Marjorie, is a founding member of PassionFruit and wrote the game’s script) that I would go way above the typical amount of music found in a casual game. For the two Nancy Drew Dossier games, for example, I only did around 13 minutes of music for each. In total there are, as you say, over 70 minutes of music and over 200 sound effects. I also contributed to the voice casting and edited the hundreds of voice files for the game (I also got to perform the very last line of the game… three whopping words which are not “I love you”, by the way). It was all a labor of love (pun intended) as I wanted the game to really shine in every aspect… couldn’t let audio be a weak link!
And, as an aside, I must mention that the soundtrack is available on the PassionFruit website as part of a package with the game or alone. It will also be available on iTunes, Amazon, and all the other major online digital music stores soon.
ALIEN: Capitalism will be the downfall of your species. That will make conquering your planet a straightforward undertaking. The time approaches!
MATT: Ok.
BIGFOOT: Come now, Alien. Let’s leave those matters for another time. Getting back to topic, one of the things that stood out to me was the length of the menu tune. Over 7 minutes! Dear fellow, that’s a real shocker!
MATT: The menu tune was the first piece I composed for the game. I wanted it to be the basis from which the rest of the music was derived. And it does contain the three main musical themes for the game: the Riddle Box theme, Hari and Dela’s love theme, and the Magi’s villain theme. Here are the three themes:
FIG. 1 – Riddle Box theme
FIG. 2 – Love theme
FIG. 3 – Villain theme
Most of the pieces in the soundtrack contain an aspect of one or more of these themes. Sometimes the relations are explicit. Sometimes they are more hidden. But it’s important for a game soundtrack to have enough coherence to form a pleasing whole.
ALIEN: Yes. My people have analyzed the Tiger Eye soundtrack. And we constructed a visual representation of the overall structure of your soundtrack. Behold!
FIG. 4 – Visual representation of Tiger Eye’s soundtrack overall structure
MATT: Hey, that’s Stonehenge!
ALIEN: Correct. That is its human-given name.
MATT: That was constructed thousands of years ago!
ALIEN: Yes.
(long pause)
BIGFOOT: Yes… indeed… our extraterrestrial friends do work in marvelously mysterious ways. Moving forward… does that formation of stones look like it represents the musical relationships accurately?
MATT: Yeah, it’s very accurate. Looks like the solid lines represent more obvious connections while the dotted lines represent more hidden connections, such as melodic inversions or fragments of theme. You can really see how most pieces link back to one or more of the three center melodies. Also, you can see how not all of the pieces are connected to another one. While I love coherence in my soundtracks, I find that not every piece needs to be connected to every other one. Most of them use similar instrumentation or a similar “feel” though so nothing really comes out of left field.
FRANKENSTEIN: Gahhh!
MATT: Yes, left field.
BIGFOOT: Sorry, one of his legs comes from a baseball player. He’s sensitive about baseball.
MATT: Gotcha. Anyway, maybe it would be helpful to talk about some of the specific pieces in the soundtrack? I’d love to give a little extra information about some of my favorites or the ones I find most interesting…
ALIEN: Proceed!
MATT: Ok, A) Main Theme … I’ve talked about how it contains the three main melodic ideas for the game. What’s interesting though is that as a 7+ minute piece only played during the main menu , I sort of consider this as an “Easter Egg”. How many people will actually sit and listen to the entire thing? That would probably only happen by mistake, if the player happens to answer the phone or otherwise be interrupted before they click “Play”. Players who have not yet bought the game and are only playing the one-hour demo will especially be disposed to getting into the game as quickly as possible. That’s the idea behind casual games anyway, right? To get in and get out whenever you want, as quickly as you want. But anyone who does hear the entire thing will be presented with a trip through the characters and emotion of the game, further helping to give the game an identity.
B) Find the Riddle Box
FIG. 5 – Find the Riddle Box snippet
This piece was created after a couple rounds of beta testing where the feedback indicated that players would probably like a more upbeat tune early in the game. I was probably about half done with the soundtrack and agreed that the music could be a little more upbeat. Going in to the project, I was envisioning lots of lush and beautiful pieces that would help relax and inspire the player. So I was thinking tempos would generally be slower and activity lower. But this is a game and the player does need a little kick in the pants every so often to propel them to the next scene and keep them playing. Also, music is all about contrasts and having a combination of quick, fun and slower, lush pieces just gives every piece more significance. I was very glad the beta testers were there to remind me of something so important.
ALIEN: This is why we breed Rigelian Flugmarfs after feeding them Goom treats. Makes the entire process less stressful for all involved. You will continue!
MATT: Yeah. Flugmarfs. Anyway, going on… C) Neuron Connection
FIG. 6 – Neuron Connection snippet
Talk about a contrast… this piece is the biggest departure of all. I wanted this to sound like it was recorded in the player’s head, sort of muffled and mysteriously active. The neuron minigame takes place essentially in Dela’s brain so I wanted this piece to feel very “inner” and contemplative. It’s a thinking game, after all. I think the piece also really helps to grab the player’s attention if it’s been drifting at all.
FRANKENSTEIN: Brain loud. SHHHHH….. Quiet! (throws his laptop across the room)
MATT: Sorry, Frankenstein. You probably shouldn’t play that so loud.
ALIEN: Final warning, Frankenstein. Cease all throwing. (shoots beam from his pinky finger towards the laptop, which starts floating and moving towards Frankenstein, repairing itself along the way)
BIGFOOT: I never fail to be amazed by those beams. Sorry, please do continue.
MATT: D) Bonus
FIG. 7 – Bonus snippet
This music is for the bonus level, a simple matching game which can grant the player extra “Psi Points”, or hints basically. It’s another departure piece, more exciting and fun than most of the others. I wanted to include it here to show how it hides one of the main themes, the love theme, within its melody using a common compositional tool, inversion. The contour of the melody is basically inverted, going up instead of down and down instead of up (at least for the first couple of measures, then the melody goes in its own direction). You can see it here:
FIG. 8 – Bonus – love theme inversion
E) Together We Rest
FIG. 9 – Together We Rest snippet
This piece actually introduces an entirely new melody. I didn’t want to use too much of the love theme early in the game so I created a new melody more about their growing friendship. It also is one of the more Chinese sounding pieces in the game, with the melody being introduced by the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument.
BIGFOOT: I do love the erhu. It reminds me of an instrument my mother played when I was but a wee foot. (takes pipe out of his bag and begins loading tobacco in it) If only I could play it, but I’m afraid my siblings took all the musical talent in this family! (lights a match and starts to light his pipe)
FRANKENSTEIN: FIIIRRRE!!! Burn Frankenstein… NOOO!!! (jumps up, knocking over his chair, pushes Bigfoot over and runs out of the room, screaming – more crashes and screams coming from the next room)
BIGFOOT: (picking himself up) I should have known that would happen. Lost in my own memories, once again. Don’t worry about old Frankenstein. He’ll soon forget why he’s afraid.
MATT: Poor guy. I guess I’ll just keep going. Ok, F) In the Restaurant
FIG. 10 – In the Restaurant snippet
Now this piece is the most Chinese sounding one in the soundtrack. It’s a new melody once again and uses many Western instruments but features the erhu and a Chinese flute. I wanted to include it here because it is a fun and catchy melody and completely transformed the scene once it was implemented. It really brought the player into an authentic restaurant in China. Next up is G) Games at the Dirt Market
FIG. 11 - Games at the Dirt Market snippet
This scene is all about helping kids find their lost toys and playing games with them so it had to have a very playful feel. It transforms the Riddle Box theme into a 3/4 time signature and turns it into a bouncy, joyful melody. It’s easily one of my favorites from the soundtrack and shows how malleable, while still recognizable, any melody can be. And finally, H) A New Disguise
FIG. 12 – A New Disguise snippet
This piece is unique because it is the only one, besides the Main Theme, to go through all three melodic themes. The Riddle Box and love themes are not as explicitly stated as the villain theme, however, as this scene is one of the more tense ones, seeing Dela and Hari needing to escape the scene of a crime. A lot of stuff came to a head right before this scene, so it made sense for the music to come together as well. The love theme actually blends right into the Riddle Box theme at one point, as you can hear in the snippet in FIG 12.
FRANKENSTEIN: (walking back in, quietly humming and holding a flower) Prettyyy… many parts… (hands flower to Matt)
MATT: Thank you, Frankenstein.
ALIEN: Frankenstein is constructed of many different parts as well. An inefficient and dangerous way to create life. Will you humans never learn?
BIGFOOT: Haha… so true, Alien. But this piece does seem to affect him more than any of the others. (Frankenstein smiles then closes his eyes then quickly falls asleep)
MATT: Glad it has soothed him. Anyway, those were some of the pieces I thought were worth pointing out.
BIGFOOT: I am glad you shared your insights to these pieces, sir. Now, I have heard about one of your theories concerning game composition and modularity. Something about seeds? Do share.
MATT: Yeah, this is just a way of looking at composition that one of my teachers and I developed in grad school. Since game music doesn’t always come when expected, it’s useful to look at game music as modular and try to structure it in a way that makes sense no matter what order you hear it in. So instead of plodding along, melody after melody for instance, you sometimes just allude to a melody or other musical idea with a short snippet of it, even if only for a few notes. If this snippet comes early in the gameplay, it becomes a “seed” and grows into something full later on when the player encounters it in its full form. This is a very satisfying experience, whether or not the player realizes why. If that snippet comes later in the gameplay, after the player has already heard the full theme, the snippet is then an “echo”. That is also a satisfying musical event. It’s important to season the music throughout the soundtrack with these seeds and echoes.
TE: CotRB was more of a linear gaming experience, however, so modularity wasn’t that important when constructing the soundtrack. I could control when the seeds and echoes appear. One important seed comes in the very first cutscene, when a flute briefly appears in a dream and plays the first part of the Riddle Box theme. As I’ve already mentioned, that theme continues to grow throughout the game. Then, a very effective echo comes in the very last cutscene, as the protagonists go forward towards their next adventure in a cliffhanger ending, the melody comes back as an ominous echo.
ALIEN: We have seeded many planets with our kind. Yours is next!
MATT: Yeah, you keep saying stuff like that, but…
ALIEN: Quiet! You will be our laborers. And we like your doughnuts. We will need many more doughnut fabrication centers.
MATT: That might not be so bad.
FRANKENSTEIN: (waking up) Doughnuuuuts….
BIGFOOT: Oh dear, Frankenstein’s waking up. That means our hour, regrettably, is almost up! Before we go, could you talk a little bit about the cutscenes and scoring music for them?
MATT: There were a ton of cutscenes in TE: CotRB, something like 25 of them. And I was responsible for all the audio in them. I must say doing the cutscene music was in many ways easier than doing the gameplay music. Being tied to specific visuals takes some of the pressure off. You know exactly what’s going on while your music is playing, unlike during gameplay when it’s much more abstract. Also, the cutscenes have a great deal of dialog so the music is always secondary to that.
There is a great deal of pressure providing the audio, however, as the audio is always last in the cutscene assembly line. I had to wait for the cutscenes to be time locked before I could really sit down and start writing the music and adding the voice and sound effects. This meant that I had to be on top of my game to really crank out the audio tracks. I was actually still working on them the weekend before launch. If I’m late, the game’s late. Yikes. I ended up doing 3 cutscenes a day on some days. But that’s just the way it is. It’s pretty exciting and always extremely rewarding to see how it works in game.
ALIEN: Our time expires! Now give us a summary.
MATT: Ok, sure!
What went right:
1) No time limit for the soundtrack. Oh so nice to be free of the 1-minute loop beast. Ended up with 70+ minutes. And being part of the team from the start meant I didn’t have to rush to finish that much music.
2) Communication with the team. Both the art director and producer have musical experience and were very helpful in communicating what they needed for a scene or cutscene. Any change requests were very effectively communicated.
3) The material (the story). Marjorie’s book is a paranormal romance novel. I normally wouldn’t read such a thing but when I did I discovered an entertaining story full of suspense and emotion. The story isn’t all sappy lovey mush (if at all), but it is rather a captivating read with a variety of emotions that lent itself very well to an array of musical moods.
4) Team’s drive to succeed. PassionFruit Games was born out of harsh times. The entire group had been laid off in the middle of an economic disaster and decided to tighten their belts and make their own game. Our fate was in our own hands. Nobody wanted to be the weak link so there was a dedication to making the best game possible to try and bring this new romance reader market to games. It wasn’t easy, but our survival depended on making a great game so the drive was generally unquestionable. In only 7 months, we made something we could be proud of.
What went wrong:
1) Time crunch at end. As mentioned, this was stressful but fairly unavoidable with our aggressive schedule. Simply the nature of doing audio for games as well.
2) Not enough Chinese flavor. Since this half of the novel takes place exclusively in China, it would have been nice to have at least a couple other heavily Chinese influenced pieces in the soundtrack. I think there is enough as is, but it would have been fun to do a little more.
3) Wasted tracks. A couple of pieces I composed had to be cut out of the game. Due to beta/focus testing, we decided to alter some of the gameplay and remove a cutscene. This ended up definitely making a better game, but it was sad to see that music go to waste. At least now the soundtrack had a couple of “bonus” pieces, so it’s not all bad.
4) Budget. As a start-up, the necessities funded by loving family, we didn’t have a lot of extra money to use for some of the things we’d like, like a few more live instrumentalists or equipment upgrades. I should mention here that live musicians are very important, especially evident in the Main Theme where the flute and alto flute were played by amazing Seattle musician Dane Andersen.
BIGFOOT: Thank you very much for sharing your time with us. Good luck to you and PassionFruit. I’ve played through the game and had a wonderful time.
FRANKENSTEIN: Bye bye!
ALIEN: You have represented your planet well. You will be spared in the coming invasion.
MATT: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show!
FRANKENSTEIN: Bye bye!
ALIEN: Now leave us. On next week’s podcast, we will discuss the recent rise in chocolate chip mint quality and what it means for French vanilla. Good night.
FRANKENSTEIN: Bye bye!
(Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box is available, with the soundtrack, at PassionFruit Games or on Big Fish Games. )
(You can reach Matt Sayre at matt@thegamecomposer.com )
(Frankenstein’s monster, Bigfoot, and the alien are probably not real. Nor is their podcast.)
Program Notes
Video game music is a slave to the video game. Film music is a slave to the film. Maybe that’s why when I sit in a concert hall, I’m extra touchy about the music I’m about to listen to being a slave to anything. Sometimes I feel like I’m being actively encouraged not to let the music just speak to me but rather to let the music be a slave to the composer’s intentions or to some musicologist’s interpretations or who knows what else. What’s the first thing that happens after you enter a concert hall, even before you find your seat? There they are, the legions of nice people handing out the program notes.
And then you have them in your hand, waiting for the concert to begin. It’s natural to just sit there and read through them. It’s interesting to read about the history of the pieces and the lives of the composers. But those program notes are going to direct you to listen to the piece in a certain way. Once an idea about a piece gets in your head, it’s difficult to get rid of that idea. The program notes instantly hamper your ability to find meaning of the piece yourself. Our brains try to find meaning and structure in everything. Music is a great art form because it is so nebulous and open to wildly varying interpretation… as long as the listener is not swayed by already established notions as to what the music means.
Of course, some music is written with a program in mind. Pictures at an Exhibition is an example of that. But Mussorgsky’s work is a masterpiece because the program (the paintings) are not necessary to enjoying the piece and finding meaning with it yourself. A work that relies too heavily on a program is probably not going to stand the test of time. A great deal of modern music sadly falls into that category. The problem is that many of these modern pieces (20th century and beyond) is that they were constructed not with their sound as their primary guide, but rather some new theory of structure or some formula. The sound is merely tangential. My question is, why don’t these composers just write a book about their theories instead? Then we don’t have to sit through them in a concert hall.
A funny aside, I remember once sitting in class in grad school and listening to a visiting composer’s piece of music. The piece was a mess. Absolutely terrible. Before we opened up discussion on the piece, the composer wanted to “explain” where the piece came from and proceeded to tell us a truly horrific episode from their past and how the music is about that. At that point, all honest discussion of the music itself came to a screeching halt… well, before it could even start. If we said anything negative about the piece, we feared being insensitive at best. So there’s an example of a piece of music completely reliant on its program.
Anyway, I’m hoping as a video game composer that my game music can also stand apart from its program (the game). Granted, that’s not going to happen a lot, especially with a piece that’s a minute long and is supposed to loop forever. But that’s my dream. It’s very rare for any game or film music to be able to stand alone. Only a couple come to mind right now, namely the games Grim Fandango and Outcast and the movie Weekend at Bernie’s 2.
But back to the concert hall. To fix this reliance on the Cliffs Notes that are program notes, I humbly request every concert venue in the world to please pass out your program notes after the concert. Then we can see how well our own formulated opinions match up with the established opinions. We may find we don’t care half as much when we bring our own meaning to the conversation. As Garth Marenghi (sarcastically) put it when describing why he writes long explanations about his own paintings, “There’s nothing worse than a work of art that leaves you asking questions.”
Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box
Today, PassionFruit Games announced the project they’ve been working on for the past couple of months. And by “they” I mean “we” as I am a member of the new company along with my wife and the rest of the team that did such good work on the Nancy Drew Dossier games.
…quick digression before moving on… I should mention that Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting to Danger took home Yahoo Games’ 2009 Hidden Object Game of the Year award and was nominated for their overall Casual Game of the Year, losing out to a little game called Plants vs. Zombies. So that’s a nice little feather under our cap and we feel very good about our new project… which I’m getting back to now…
Today we announced that we have the extremely good fortune of being able to adapt Marjorie M. Liu’s book Tiger Eye to video game form. More specifically, it will be a hidden object casual game with plenty of other puzzles to take you from exciting location to exciting location. The book is in the “paranormal romance” genre, and there are almost no other games of this genre in the US today. We are excited to bring the game to romance readers and casual game players alike.
So what’s this got to do with my GAME MUSIC blog? Well, I am positively giddy about working on this game. All shackles have been removed and I have free reign to make a soundtrack worthy of Marjorie’s story. All told, the game will have between 50 and 60 minutes of music. Every cut scene requiring music will have its own unique music, as will each hidden object scene. The puzzle games will also have their own music. Bye bye, minute loops! I am genuinely excited that this game will be able to avoid the aural repetition so prevalent in even the best of today’s casual games. The size of Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box’s soundtrack would consume too much budget for most casual game companies, but this being our own company, we can do what we want! The main menu music alone is over 7 minutes long. Many casual games are lucky to have 7 minutes of music in the entire game.
The game’s entire soundtrack will be available to buy as a bundle with the game in April when it is released. And if you preorder the game now you can get the 7-minute “Tiger Eye Suite” instantly, a good sneak peek at what the rest of the soundtrack will sound like. Here are two short samples:
Riddle Box theme:
Love theme:
The 7-minute main menu suite takes us through three musical themes. The first is the “riddle box” itself and serves as the overall theme of the game. The player will hear it in many incarnations as they play through the game. The second is the love theme between the two main characters, Dela and Hari. The third musical theme is based on the Magi… a very very bad guy indeed. The suite wraps up with the riddle box theme again presented in a much more positive setting (minor to major of course).
The flute is played by an excellent local professional musician, Dane Andersen. His playing instantly added so much life to the music and is once again proof that you should bring in live players as often as time and budget will allow.
I should also add that over the past week I’ve been editing (and finally finished yesterday) the game’s voice files. Voice actors really help bring the characters to life, and having voice is probably even more important in a romance game. Marjorie was integral in the selection of the voice actors so hopefully we’re getting something very near to what she intended her characters to sound and behave like.
I will keep you posted as we continue working on this game. This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as we have our dream team together and a dream license to work on. Maybe I don’t have absolute free reign, as the music of course needs to complement the game, but it is coming together already as something very special. You can expect a full post-natal on this once it’s been released.
A visit from the Muse.
There I was, sitting at the piano. I was embarking on a new piece of music for a new game. This piece was to be the main theme of the game. The pressure was on. This is always the most critical part of doing a game soundtrack: the beginning. Everything springs from what I do here.
I had come up with three or four different ideas. They were all good and I enjoyed developing and playing them, but none of them really fit the game. Do I try and work one of these ideas into something that fits better? It just wasn’t happening. I was going to have to start on a new idea. After playing the piano for another five minutes or so, I briefly paused and sat back.
Right then, during the new silence, a melody entered my head. It came from out of nowhere. And it was a good melody… and perfect for the game. I started playing it on the piano and developing it. This was it! And it seriously just entered my brain from who knows where.
I think, as my wife pointed out later, this is the type of phenomenon that gave birth to that mythical idea of the Muse. The artist is just a mouthpiece for whatever the Muse wants to bestow upon humanity. Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But I can certainly see how such a concept could arise. Seriously, the melody came out of left field. I had been playing something completely different and this melody just sprang into my head. It was… freaky.
I’m aware that sometimes I’m feeling more “inspired” than other times when I’m writing music. But seldom does something just present itself this way to me. I like it. I hope I can get to know my Muse a little better. Anyone else out there experience a visit from the Muse?
And about the game: this is a game that I’m not quite free to discuss yet but the soundtrack will be over 50 minutes and will be available to buy along with the game. The main theme is a 7+ minute suite and (I’m very happy to say) I think it’s the best work I’ve done yet in game music. Haha… take that, 1- minute main menu music loops! You’ll hear a lot more about it later as the marketing machine revs up.
Composing vs. Laying Down Tracks
My first composition professor in college asked one day what I wanted to compose next. I mentioned some pieces I’d be interested in writing, including a big blues piece with horn section and maybe some strings. I was listening to a lot of BB King and other blues artists at the time and wanted to create something big, not just guitar, bass and drums. My professor said I should do that, but as a side project on my own time since that really just involves “laying down tracks.” I didn’t know quite what to make of that comment, as composition can take many forms. I decided to just let the comment simmer in my mind awhile and figure out its deeper meaning as I continued on my path towards compositional Enlightenment (which I have yet to reach).
Now I’ve come to understand several things about this “laying down tracks” comment. This gets to the heart of what it means to compose. Composition, as I now define it, is the process of working various sounds together in a meaningful construction of varying complexity. Technically, laying down tracks is composition. But it puts greater limits on the complexity aspect of the music. While doing a new track, you are at the mercy of the track that came before it. You can go back later and change any track you want of course, but this soon becomes a practice simply of trial and error.
That’s not to say it’s not fun. It can be. And great pieces of music can result from the process. But it’s like building a house one wall at a time with no architectural house plan. You will build something, but opportunities to make something really interesting will more likely than not be lost. To take full advantage of the sounds available to you, it’s important to start with an overall vision and work in the details. Your sounds will all fit together just like you want and this will give your music a depth that will be appreciated by the listener, either consciously or subconsciously. But it will be appreciated. And you will also enjoy the side benefit of more often avoiding the plague that is writer’s block.
What does this mean for game music? It means getting a copy of Garageband or Acid or some other looping software and using it to create pieces will result in only the shallowest, most cliched type of music. This should not be good enough for today’s games with their ever-increasing production values. Of course, game soundtracks do not need to have the complexity of Schoenberg or Bach but they do need to have their own spark. That spark is often only created when the piece is first lighted in your mind.
This big switch: Finale to Sibelius
The last time I upgraded my music notation/transcription software was when I bought Finale 2000 back in… 2000. It served me well, but in the course of going through the latest mega music store catalog I saw the list of stuff in the latest Sibelius version (6). And there it was: Rewire support.
Sweet!
Sibelius seems to have all the same sort of stuff Finale has. It doesn’t have music scanning software built in, but I don’t really need that. Other extraneous stuff that Finale has I won’t miss either, like the Garritan instruments. Sibelius seems to have improved some basic notation things as well, like its “magnetic” item placement. But what’s really sold me is the Rewire support.
No more will I have to go from program to program just to hear stuff through Nuendo. This is going to make my work flow easier and quicker. Why Finale hasn’t yet put Rewire into their program I’ll never know. It’s such a basic item and I’m sure tons of music professionals would appreciate that.
I’ve heard for years that Sibelius is the program the pros use. Finale worked fine for me for 16 years, but I’m looking forward to seeing what all the fuss is about. Anything that might save my time is going to get my attention.
All that said, my copy of Sibelius 6 came in the mail today and I’ll let you know how it goes…
Thou Shalt Not put making money over the game experience. (#9)
…put making money over the game experience.
Yes, I’m talking to you, Grand Theft Auto IV on the 360 and PS3. For some reason, Rockstar decided not to give us the custom MP3 music station that we’ve grown accustomed to in every previous game… you remember, the station that played the MP3′s you had ripped onto your machine. Part of the fun of the game was driving around causing mayhem to the sound of your favorite music. I loved jacking cars and usually getting one of their radio stations, but every once in a while I’d get a car playing some of my favorite tunes. That helped make me feel a little more involved in the city I was in.
Well, that’s gone now. Why? I suspect it has everything to do with them trying to get you to buy the music that’s playing on their radio stations. That’s easier than ever now, too. When you hear a song that you like (and, honestly, you’re bound to find a few with over 200 songs in GTA4) you can text a number using your in-game cell and then get information about that song and purchase it through Amazon MP3 through the Rockstar social network (sounds like an easy process?).
I also assume Rockstar would rather not have excluded the custom MP3 station, as it is present in the PC version, but the (mustache-twirling) record labels put pressure on them to force at least the console players to listen only to their music. Maybe they’re counting on the Stockholm syndrome to sell their music, where captive listeners will grow to love their music through sheer force of repetition.
Anyway, one source of joy from GTA is gone for now, all because someone thought they could make a few extra dollars. I keep hearing rumors that the custom MP3 station will be added in an update, but nothing has materialized yet. One final thought: this wouldn’t be such an issue if the MP3 station hadn’t already been in every previous GTA game and in this game’s PC version. That they actually removed this little in-game treat is just disappointing.
The Game Composer’s Blog, one year and counting…
They said it couldn’t be done. They said it was a fool’s dream. But on June 18, The Game Composer’s Blog turned one year old. And they were all proven wrong. “They” are, of course, the voices inside my head that encouraged me to play more Grand Theft Auto rather than sit down and write an occasional blog. But I silenced them. Usually.
Some interesting facts:
Most searched-for terms to get to my blog:
- game composer, game composers, games composer – Makes sense.
- 22.1 surround sound, 22.1 surround, 22.1 sound – Really? The post where I talk about 22.1 surround sound was meant as a joke, but apparently there are loads of people out there who want to be surrounded by an obscene amount of speakers. Well, more power to them.
- guitar hero (and many variations thereof) – Popular, fun game. Not too surprising.
- Peggle (victory) music – Seems that lots of people were turned on to Beethoven thanks to Peggle. This is a good thing, even though I am not in favor of how they used the Ode to Joy in the game.
- Seinfeld theme (piano) – I am not a fan of Seinfeld’s theme song and talk about that in an early post, but there are a lot of people out there who are just dying to play it on piano or get it on their iPods. Odd…
- composer games – Different than the other combinations of these words. I think people are clamoring for a game that enables the player to be a composer. Sounds cool to me. Hope somebody makes one.
- GTA 4 – I do love its soundtrack and it was a Soundtrack of the Month awhile ago.
- Wii music (and many variations) – Please, stay away from this game… unless you are 4 years old, then only play if Animal Crossing is not available to you.
And what have been the most popular posts?
- Winter Wonderland – Harry Connick, Jr. sheet music – Maybe I should give up this game composing nonsense and just be a music transcriber. It is a great piece, though. Interesting fact: the sheet music was free but I asked for a donation. Ratio of downloads to donations so far? 100 to 1. Maybe the donation model isn’t so great…
- The minute loop and the Shepard tone. – I compare the minute loop to the Shepard tone. I think it works…
- 22.1 Surround Sound. Whoo! – Really, I don’t think you need 22.1 surround (or surround at all).
- That darn Seinfeld theme. – Dweep bop bee doop boop bop, doo bop…
- How to break into the game industry as a composer. – Glad I could help some of you out there with this one. Be sure and check out Part 2 which I posted last week.
Total number of posts over the year: 75, or about one every 4.9 days. I’m going to try to increase that total over the next year. Thanks to everyone who has commented or emailed regarding various posts. Glad to know I’m not just talking to myself and I’m enjoying having this outlet.
And on we go to year two…
About This Blog
This blog is dedicated to topics concerning the creation of music and sound for games. It will deal with issues that come up in the day to day work of The Game Composer as well as thoughts on the industry as a whole. I hope it will be useful for developers and other game audio professionals. Feel free to contact me: thegamecomposer@gmail.com
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