The Game Composer’s Blog

Game music, a matter of life and death.

Music libraries for games?

A recent “sponsored feature” on Gamasutra focused on a new online music and sound library for games. An online sound effect library seems like a good thing. I’ve used a couple of those myself for personal projects where I didn’t want to spend the time making my own sounds. But a music library? No, this is not wise for games.

Music libraries certainly have their place. If you need something for a short corporate or personal video, something for your customers to listen to while on hold, or something for various other background type uses you can go grab something that you like and plug it into your project.

But a game is a different beast. How could you possibly hope to capture the character and essence of your unique game with a piece of music created only to fill some abstract “mood”? You built your game from the ground up with a certain style in mind. You hired artists to singlemindedly follow that style. Then you’re going to ruin all that stylistic cohesion by plugging in a random piece of music? Nahhh, you’ve got to bite the bullet and bring an honest-to goodness composer on board to complete your style. Sonically and visually, you’ve got to keep it all going in the same direction.

So the overall visual and audio coherence of your game is crucial. But coherence among all the pieces of music is also just as important. Grabbing random pieces of music to plug into different levels just creates a mismatched mess of an audio experience. Like I said in my GravRally post-mortem post from last month, using different pieces of music from a library within one game is like having anime, line-drawings, and Cubism as your art styles from level to level. Yes, that could be the point of your game but it most likely is not.

You can of course have different styles of music within your game. But wouldn’t it be nice to have bits of melody wander from piece to piece? Players may recognize that orchestral violin solo melody as it is being played by the muted trumpet later on in the jazz combo level. Or they might not but, ahh, they will feel the game pull together into a tight, cohesive, and satisfying experience!

You’re not going to get that from a music library. You will only get disjointed pieces that only tangentially resemble the style of your game and have little to no chance of resembling the other library pieces you cobble together. This isn’t just coming from me as a composer, but as a fan of games. I have not seen one game successfully use music from a music library.

And anyway, wouldn’t it suck to hear your game’s theme tune used in some online ad for Viagra?

July 16, 2008 Posted by | Developer Music Tips | , | Leave a Comment

How to talk to composers.

This post is dedicated to the many fine game developers out there who may not be sure whether or not they’ve been communicating “correctly” with composers in order to achieve the best soundtrack possible. It was inspired somewhat by my own dealings in the industry (which have almost all been great) and also inspired by watching our dog and cat try to figure out each other’s weird forms of communication. Cats are not receptive to play bows.

If the sum total of your musical experience are those miserable 3 months of piano lessons your parents forced you to take when you were 7 years old, you may be hesitant to talk to a composer about the soundtrack of your game. You may have a good idea about what you want, but you could be unsure about discussing music with someone who makes their living doing music. You’re sure to look like a fool talking with someone who possesses so much more musical knowledge than you, right?

Well, here’s a little secret about most composers. They BS like crazy. You see, there are no absolutes in music. Music can’t say “tree” or “scarf” or “flaming tarantula”. It’s an incredibly abstract art. It’s a great way to communicate feelings or moods but a horrible way to communicate information. So when someone claims to know exactly what a composer is saying with a text-less piece of music, you can be sure they are practicing the timeless art of BS. Sure, it’s fun to talk about music and attribute all sorts of deeply meaningful high-falutin’ concepts to it, but in the end all the discussion can not possibly mean squat. The only thing that means squat is what the music says to an individual.

Now with that mind, you should feel easier talking to a composer about your soundtrack. Takes the pressure off knowing that there is in fact no right and wrong in music, eh? Tell them what feeling you want the music to evoke. Tell them how fast or slow you’d like it. Describe anything you feel will help bring the musical vision in your head into light. Talking to the composer is important, but there’s another thing you should do to really help communicate your needs for the soundtrack:

Show the composer pieces of music that you think are appropriate for the game, or pieces that at least have some aspect that you would like to hear in your game. Don’t worry about plagiarism. Any composer worth his or her salt will give you something fresh and new that uses the aspects you like from the other pieces, but in no way steals those specific aspects. Browse Amazon and send links to their demos. Upload an MP3 of a piece that you think captures your needs. Pictures are worth 1000 words. Music is the same way.

Let me go back a second to clarify my “there is no right and wrong in music” statement from above. That statement only applies to the overall conceptual ideas contained in the music. One person’s reminiscent feeling may be another’s foreboding feeling. Neither is right, neither is wrong. However, when discussing music theory and using musical terminology, there is indeed a right and wrong. You can’t say something is in a major key when it is in a minor key, for instance. And that bring me to my next point:

A little musical knowledge can be dangerous. If you tell the composer you want the tempo to be “andante” but you actually want “presto”, you may be sabotaging the soundtrack from the beginning. You would never tell a visual artist that you want an “azul” color when what you actually want is brown, right? If you’re not sure about your musical terminology, just use plain old simple English. We understand that just as well, if not better than, the silly (mostly Italian) words we’ve come up with to describe the various parts of music making.

And finally, part of talking to anyone is listening to them as well. Do go into the soundtrack discussion with an open mind. Composers have made it their life’s work to create and listen to soundtracks. We may have an idea or two that is worth considering. Before giving them your ideas about the soundtrack, give them all the information you can about the game (art, story, maybe a prototype) and ask them to come up with their own vision for the game. We enjoy that sort of thing. And we may come at the soundtrack from a different angle than you do, which you may actually find very appealing.

Or not. Keep in mind, the composer is there to make the soundtrack you want. It’s got to be true to the overall vision for the game. If they come up with something wonderful, by all means use it. But you, having lived with the game for far longer than they have, should be quite secure letting them know what you want. Don’t worry about being looked down upon. If that happens, you can be sure that composer is probably very insecure and they’re artificially inflating their security by belittling you. Music isn’t about security. The good ones know that and are happy to take each game’s unique musical journey with you.

July 7, 2008 Posted by | Developer Music Tips | , , | Leave a Comment

Blind auditions, a good tool.

(no, not that kind)

Hey developers, want to make sure you’re getting the best composer available? Sure, make sure their resume is in order and they have good references. But let’s face it, unfortunately our industry is infested with unqualified composers who got their careers through certain degrees of nepotism.

Here’s one way to weed out the unqualified: the blind audition.

Orchestras do it all the time. You don’t go in with preconceived notions about the music which affect your listening. It’s all about the music. The composer who has the best music wins the demo reel contest and you can go from there.

Somebody in your company needs to be the point of contact for the composers. Have the composers send all their music to this person, have them strip any identifying information, and then have them send it to the decision makers. After all the votes are in, reveal who had the best music.

For best results, give each composer some money (for their time and talent, really $1000 spent here will pay off later when you realize how you could have wasted much more on a subpar composer) to write 30 seconds of music with a good amount of description for what you want. Make the music relevant to your current game so the music from the winning composer isn’t wasted. Perhaps make it a cut scene that they must write music for. You will see how well each composer follows direction and how they do under pressure. For the sake of landing a contract, I guarantee they will do their best.

If you don’t have money to spare, just have your contact person take 2 or 3 similar pieces from each demo reel and prepare them for you.

It’s all about the music. Well, and they have to work well with other people and have excellent communication skills. But at least with the blind audition, you know your top choice will have the mad compositional skillz to help take your game to the next level.

June 24, 2008 Posted by | Developer Music Tips | , , | Leave a Comment

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