The Game Composer’s Blog

Thou Shalt Not waste your time. (#8)

waste your time.

Time is a precious commodity when it comes to the music you create for your game, especially your downloadable games. It’s not uncommon for your title track to be one minute long and the in-game tracks could be even shorter. So it baffles my mind when I hear a composer waste what little time he or she has.

What does it mean to waste time? Basically, repeating things. Unfortunately, many composers still think dance music is appropriate for game music. Dance music repeats. A lot. They can spend 8 bars right at the beginning of a piece just doing the one-measure drum rhythm over and over. Then the next 8 bars adds the one-measure bass line. Then the next 8, keyboards, then voice…

Well, we don’t have time like that to waste in games. Repetition is inevitable. Every minute, your entire piece will repeat so don’t make the mistake of repeating music within your piece. We need a quick intro that leads right into the meat of your piece: the memorable and catchy theme. Then, maybe a B section that leads into a key change or another new idea.

Let’s look at it structurally. The most common musical structures can be boiled down to ABA and AB. Both of these work for your musical loops, but with ABA make sure the second A section is short or in a different key or has some other discerning feature and then has a transition back to the beginning. When you guide your piece to new territory through the entire piece, you create the illusion of a longer piece. Going the dance music route, the player will get tired of your piece much earlier because your piece actually seems shorter than one minute.

As the bad guy in Star Trek: Generations said, “Time is the fire in which we burn.” Make your fire a little more bearable by keeping things moving along in your piece.

November 24, 2008 Posted by thegamecomposer | Thou Shalt Not | game music, loops, time | 2 Comments