Brand your game with music

[Music] [Music] welcome welcome to my speech anybody was networking yesterday had some extra networking liquor I did anyway today I'm gonna talk about a brand your game with music and it's great to have such a great speech before me and so I'm a founder of origins and I've worked since 2003 professionally from music and audio design but nowadays I do mostly music and produce songs so there are some highlights of my career most of you

might know some games from there like Angry Birds and the newest ones are next messina and metaphor I just crunched them like before this summer metaphor sorry next motion I still I think the best reviewed Finnish game ever made and I think it's like the second best ps4 game made this year it has Metacritic 88 it's this arcade game I really should recommend you to check that out soundtrack is from Spotify even matter for Lisa stones it sounds like it sounds Paula PHY good stuff synth wave and of course people know me from trying series it's really close to my heart the series overall and I really like to know do different kind of generous like there's different kind of music in these games from very classic to Angry Birds and I think Angry Birds is a its own genre anyway so I'm sure

from the last lecture there should be like some great points while music is so important but it's great greatest emotional support for the game of course and it creates the connection for the player not only during the gameplay but after the game like you probably remember a lot of games from your youth when you played the game and now you probably go to see the music concerts to listen to favorite songs from your youth like Final Fantasy series and my favorites are two Recon series Chris who's back very nice and one guy that really inspired me was like Mark Morgan did followed original Fallout series that actually inspired me also to do sound design but it it kind of the music is so important for the game it's hard to say and it's also like

if you think about Angry Birds like they used it everywhere they used use the main theme even in the day no no your logo TD DT so and we made when probably made lots of different versions from the same song and I have had the same approach with many other games like let's say mobile guess you have seasons like Christmas version Hollywood Halloween version and stuff like that and if you have a memorable main theme and you can reuse it then it's easier to adapt the music to different general so it's also like a side project probably the best example now for me is next Messina the soundtrack is streamed on Spotify over 150,000 times and we're soon releasing an okay I'm not spoiling it yet but music video and meaning is

coming up so we're really aiming up to ante with the soundtrack and it has lots of bonus music I remember like four tracks that are not in the game and it's fanservice basically so let's go with the actual lecture so design process this is the most important part of any any creative design with the music and starting early pretty obvious of course and with mobile games are usually come in when concept do you have an alpha you have their characters you have the world design they are basically done and usually usually mood and genre's defined already but with console games next much in a matter for bit we're both like I started designing stuff like two years before the game was finished but this is also one of the things that many game

companies and teams do not do greatly and they they are not aware and they don't know the mood of the game and that makes my work super hard so the close the example for me is alienation great game and create Metacritic but I I had so much struggling to create the music for for the game so the game didn't have like this awesome story or awesome dialogue it was really no generic a bit burger so it kind of didn't inspire me at all but then I decided to might I check out the games background story like what what kind of the world it is and basically the idea that the world is destroyed by the aliens that these are the last survivors so it kind of had this dramatic tone that I just started

working a bit of Hollywood stuff like oblivion and 83 kind of feeling so then I did that and it went worked out well but it was really close call because it was starting at the end of the project and the team wanted a different stuff then I imagined anyway but great stuff is that you should really make a reference list and Spotify is super great for that and of course like if you're doing this mod kind of game you should collect TV series movies YouTube stuff that defines the moments like the highlight moments of your game what you're aiming for is going to be dark great own happy tone you know it's super important for me to understand the what what the developers are trying to do so the reference this is super important

of course budget usually the boss this is so great like you heard from the last lecture and it's true unfortunately but it's getting better and appreciation of creating great music for games it's just growing growing growing and lots of Hollywood's composers are interested and also doing gay music not right now but I still would hope for myself dream project for me would be I would compost music adaptation you know arranger for Orchestra and I would have like orchestra with full game that would be so nice usually a to be a stable at least main theme and stuff like that can usually be done with Orchestra so and when I usually learn about this I create the first demo usually I start with the main theme because that kind of is the

highlight point and it's usually under titles but flat games are actually did maintain last because with next Massena it was like trying to create the student wave sound tracked like like modern cool stuff and I really needed to create the sound first like all the sounds that are used and created for the game I actually spent three months designing the eighties soon quite sounds so I just didn't have the inspiration to do the main theme actually the main theme and hopefully it happened to present to you some that was the last music piece I wrote and it was like two days before the gold built so pretty happy about that and of course when you have done the first version and you try to lock it down of course they can be changed as during the game development process that

you have to change certain tone maybe publisher says that this is they make a new one but usually it's about the overall game game experience so functionality is also really important for me to hear in the first time so is it like background music what kind of Easter you know dynamic music involved and stuff like that is it like background music or what and of course K parallel dynamics it it basically means that I need to create music to the temple the game is built on so I need to know the gameplay I need to play the game it's all about the tempo and dynamics that how it works I know of course how much music is needed this is self-explanatory but sometimes you don't have budget so in mobile games sometimes it's like create this awesome main theme and the in-game music is much more like

ambient music and stuff like that but it usually works great an implementation and processes this usually means like PC console games like is it is the music implemented through vice or a smart and stuff like that and who's doing the implementation how it's done do we have like like new program called alias which is like interactive music creation tool it's I haven't used it yet but I I've seen the demos from it and seeing the lectures it it I think that might be the next big thing that comes with the done interactive music and let's give well of course you need to think bigger like okay you need music for the game yay but how about thinking months more much more higher than that should we like

actually create something memorable or you know get the fan seen like doing reddit stuff and you know get the music really out from the game of course like I said bonus material is actually really helpful and you know when I first released like trying soundtracks of course I realized that it would be great to have some bonus material in the soundtrack because I've seen people complaining in the forums that we are already bought the game we should own the soundtrack no it's not okay soundtrack it's like $10 can you afford that no I already bought the game but if the soundtrack has like why don't you accept a bonus mattarah they're like okay let's give money to the composer I mean that's good not not be and of course publish the soundtrack everywhere I still have many games that

are made that sounds work is still not out because some publisher doesn't think it's profitable or cool and you know digital services are create Spotify it's great actually I don't I don't think Spotify is bad for artists but if you have a publisher that takes lot the most money from Spotify of course then you won't get much anything but I would do youtube videos I would publish the music on YouTube myself and on any kind of bigger media because every time I don't do it some other fan does it and he gets like 100 thousands of views so it's a great marketing tool also to say to be able hey if you like to see you to track version here's the details for you to go to the office so it may be by the game maybe by the allottee version and stuff like that

okay live geeks no well good example is like today I'm dressed like this because it's a it's gonna be great music concert today I hope you're coming I've heard that the band so to speak and the arrangement they're really good and of course there's being great arranges like your novel tonight doing stuff there and it's gonna be pretty great wouldn't really recommend you to visit that but you know the score from the game like it's quite actually important I've had like superstars resident stuff in slush 3 years ago but superstars the racers gonna have been played outside Finland also like different orchestras because the notation is there without that you know it's hard to say this unwanted please do it this for free because it you need to do it properly

it's like three thousand five thousand something for you know five minutes of orchestrated music it's not that bad and if you want your if your game has the kind of music that really would fit to Orchestra see you can just start doing orchestration and offer to these kind of events hopefully we'll go through and this is what I like a song with lyrics it's like not well in the movie side my example is Titanic of course and that song really connected to win with many people and there's lots of examples from other movies also that they have this one song that that's custom made the movie and it becomes this pop hit some kind of radio hit and why not in games because games connects you a lot of people and it can

be like credit songs anything but you know if it's possible then and also a music video I will show you a bit let's let's show a bit of my music video from next motion [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] being blown to bits between the sweet [Music]

Bonnie's gone away and it still won't let me save you when yes [Music] shy - the [Music] [Music] [Applause] me [Music]

very nice so we're gonna release that next month with the LP so I think it's a question time any-any what some got some questions if you guys have questions I have the mic all right give me a best shot come on guys I know Finnish people don't ask much questions but you can do it you know Adi you don't do it you can even ask me how many drinks I had last night oh please yeah how many drinks did

you not have last night I can't remember okay that's good anybody a question I could ask ask about there was can you go back in the slides fit was it the second or the third slide yeah okay what is the functionality or design yeah this one what do you mean with the the lock it down thing is it like when you have iterated enough you need to decide that this is the how it's gonna be till the end or what do you mean with that yeah I did actually mean that when you have like it's ready then you become a game concept and of course the game itself the game design needs to be locked down at some point of course there might be some you know variations to it but you know the bigger feeling bigger mood design it's great to lock it lock it down for for the game it's much

easier to compose the music of that and you talked about starting designing the music two years before you said matter for metaphor next motion yeah yeah yeah so at which process do you like start already making some kind of samples or is it more about creating documents or something like this how is the process in for actually for alienation we did did this reference material video stuff that i compost music track for so it that it had this it was this internal team kind of mood video with with actual music from the game so it really helped a team to realize the mood of the game even though we had like pictures in the video and you know not not so much like moving stuff there but now it was overly like good experience to feel about like so do

you like focus on making one track that fits the mood or do you start making several or ordi when you start going for the final a tweet points do you already have like several several tracks that you start tweaking towards the final product or do you go wrong with just something well it depends on the game process itself usually in the beginning of the project we do like one song and well maybe a couple of couple feelings to it like this demo video but after that I don't usually touch the game a while because the game needs to be done a bit so before the game is even in the format it that you can play it I it's not that easy to create the music because I still don't know the gameplay and speed of the game at mode stuff like that but still the mock-up we do with the music really helps the team and me myself to create soundtrack when it's time [Music]

okay one more and then we move up yeah thanks for the presentation um how do you feel doing a new kind of a genre you haven't done before like musically is there something new to consider when starting a new project I actually love when I've presented the project that and generally that I haven't done before because it's a challenge and I actually love challenges and for next next Martina I actually listened even though I know sin way I actually listen soon play music for at least three months like only basically so um I know my sin wave right now it would be great to do some new music yeah I listen a lot of Generation reference music and the chamber music and the kind of songs that really could fit to the project so I I learned by listening basically thank you very much okay

[Applause] [Music] [Music]