Starting a track without a play button: COMPOSING DURING EARLY GAME DEV

"The conception of a song is always of interest to me. I often have a listen to some of my finished pieces and think back to what started the whole mess. In an environment where you are just playing and recording that which is within you, the answer is simple. There's no strategy. It's just inspiration. You are writing what you feel and what you hear in your head. In a production environment where you design music and sounds that are NEEDED for certain situations, however, inspiration takes on a whole new light :) This is of particular interest in how to write game music. To make things even more fun, you may find that you need to be composing for a video game that is wrapped in a white cloth and just being carried in by the stork! This latter situation is one that I find myself in very often these days producing sound, audio, and fx / effects for our games because our company is so young and our games are brand-spanking new. So where do you find your musical muse in a time like this? There's no hard and fast rule I use for this situation, but there are a few things to do that help.

Whenever you're producing music for a game, there are always other aspects of art that go along with that game. The one that comes to most artists' minds is the graphics and characters, but remember that at the beginning stages of a game these will most likely be very limited. Even so, there are plenty of other inspirational aspects to a game that will get your music going.

One of the ones that I turn to most is gameplay. Even when the characters and/or environments have not been drawn, often times the objectives and actual in game play are being developed and discussed. What I do is imagine a gamer sitting in front of the screen and performing the tasks and objectives. Then I try and draw on what emotions they might be feeling during each particular task and let that inspire the emotional quality of the music. If it's an intense, palm-sweating scene, then I draw on the faster rhythms and more intese beats. If it's a long dramatic sequence, then calmer, soaring electronic styles are more suited. What's cool about this particular technique, is that often times redbeard_prime will reciprocate the situation in that the music that I come up with inspires his art, graphics, and game development ideas. Yin and Yang, baby. Yin and Yang.

While it's nice to use aspects of the game to feed off of, sometimes it's best to turn inwards. This is actually the key element in starting a song for me, and when I get deep I get into the sounds. The sounds that are on screen make the characters you see funny or phat, honorable or devilish. They will be the cue for the gamer as to what is going to happen next or what they need to prepare for. In game music, the sounds are everything.

To use this technique, get into the mindset of your game or your characters. Even if you just know their name and maybe an objective or two, it doesn't matter. At the beginning of game development you have a unique opportunity to guide the conception of the game with the sounds that you produce. Now, if a sound comes to you, get your favorite synth up and running and program that little gem. If nothing comes to you, don't get discouraged! This is where sound banks come in handy! Get your favorite synth and start flipping through the sound banks. One fun thing that I've done is starting in categories that may not be 'logical' (i.e. logical at the time!) for the game your writing for. Hit a few notes while your clicking through unitl you come to the sound. You know the one I'm talkin'bout! It's the one that you go, 'That's it!' Believe me, your artist will thank you when he melds his visual tapestry to your sound. This is exactly what I did to come up with the music for Hampton's Very Bad Day. I clicked through some keyboard/harpsicord/clav banks on my XP-30 and BAM! Hyper Clav city. The rest is history.

So whether you're beginning a project or stuck in a rut, getting back to these basics of game elements and sounds of sounds should help ya break the fever and get that track a rollin'."

e-effect
01-24-08