On Friday night, I taught a two hour workshop on game music. Yeah I do this every week - but THIS week it was to game developers! And, instead of the usual "this is what music does" it was "and this is how you do it".
Maize will be:
-taking you through sound and audio in games. What role does it play? What does it add to gameplay? -giving you some quick hints for gamejam suitable audio implementation. Dynamic soundtrack, go! - and music making. Okay, so you know how to put it in game, but how to make? What is make sound does? There a heaps of tools that tonedeaf devs have used in the past, to make kickass soundtracks. Let me teach you out of any further income for myself as a composer. |
We start off by talking about the role of music in games
- setting
- mood
- narrative
- notification
Then we talk implementation. What triggers changes in music? What ARE these changes? How can we use loops and layers and stings and sound effects all effectively to make an interesting, dynamic soundtrack that might actually add to gameplay in a meaningful way?
And lastly, we make music. There's lots of great apps and games to make music with, even if you never learnt an instrument. Below I've listed a few! They are all either free, mostly free, or around $10. But most importantly, they are simple to use and allow you to make something satisfying quickly.
Figure is VERY popular. Ian Maclarty used it to make the score for his game, BosonX!
Figure is made by Propellerhead, who make the DAW Reason. This is cool, because while you can simply save mp3 files from the Figure App, you can also open the files in Reason in fully separated tracks, for more advanced composition. Reason starts at around $70 for the "essential" version, and goes up to around $600 for all the features. Figure is available for ios and windows.
Figure is made by Propellerhead, who make the DAW Reason. This is cool, because while you can simply save mp3 files from the Figure App, you can also open the files in Reason in fully separated tracks, for more advanced composition. Reason starts at around $70 for the "essential" version, and goes up to around $600 for all the features. Figure is available for ios and windows.
Bosca Ceoil is by game developer, Terry Cavanagh. It's a great stripped down simple to use tool. Having chord templates, and easily mix and matchable cells. It's real easy to export layer by layer as you go, to then implement dynamically in your game. It's available for Mac, Windows plus browser based at http://boscaceoil.net/
Hydrogen Drum is free and OPEN SOURCE! If pitch or harmony scared you off, just playing with a drum kit can still give you a great soundtrack. Just split your pattern in to a few instruments, and export them separately, so that you can add them or crossfade to change game intensity.
Soundation. It's basically Garageband, but online. There's heaps of loops, and a fair few instruments to play with. This is cool for making some placement music. Sometimes as a dev, solutions like this can be a good way to communicate to a composer the sort of thing you want THEM to make.. but better.
The other VERY cool thing about Soundation, is that it can be used as a collaborative tool on Google Hangouts. YUP.
The other VERY cool thing about Soundation, is that it can be used as a collaborative tool on Google Hangouts. YUP.
Maybe you want a more GAMIFIED experience,woaowifaofjasoidjaoisa.
Sentris is made by Samantha Kalman. A fun tool, that helps to convey the structure of music from both a composition and performance sense. You have to get good at the game to get very interesting results, but definitely worth a shot! It's up on Steam.
Sentris is made by Samantha Kalman. A fun tool, that helps to convey the structure of music from both a composition and performance sense. You have to get good at the game to get very interesting results, but definitely worth a shot! It's up on Steam.