Creating the Musical Identity and Style of Your Game

[Music] so um I've done amazing projects I'm grateful for these jobs on which I composed lots of mobile games my latest job was this music for an exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center and I also have worked as an arranger and Orchestrator for some amazing projects which I loved and I'm very grateful so just a couple of brief reviews mostly for developers developers know that music provides the emotional depth of the gaming experience but the score of your game is also a powerful branding device for your game it defines the genre aesthetics the world characters factions the story time and location what's most powerful to me is how music makes us remember the entire gameplay experience remember for

a moment the iconic scene from Mario or Tetris or Halo as soon as I mentioned these titles do you guys have like an instant picture memory picture of the music - these games for instance I personally will never forget my experience of playing modern warfare 2 which was really frustrating I kept getting killed on one level and I always associate that gameplay with that drowning D drawing music in D minor that just went on throughout the whole level and that's my physical memory of just that awesome game that kept beating me so for a game composer one of the most important tasks is to create a sonic world that fits the vision and the aesthetics of the game like a glove and to make the game a memorable experience because this is what we remember in today's market there are thousands of games there's an ocean of product and maybe the hope the goal of this talk is to actually make the developers aware of the fact that you could use the score is a powerful branding device of your game

a very specific score very unique score that has a very specific sound and fits your game perfectly and sounds like nothing else or some somewhat like something else but is very unique and ultimately the most important thing is that good music will always elevate the production and artistic value of your game so with this top which is kind of very practical I hope to give you practical tips on the collaboration between developers and composers or developers and the audio team and and how to find the style that the voice of your of your score so when you're already when the developer is ready to Commission a composer to write music regardless of how big or small that score is going to be come to us with a very clear vision of your game because composers will always try to support to the best of their ability the vision of that game I'll talk to us about the aesthetics for instance I'm a very visual person I respond really well to environment art character art costumes weaponry just all

the visual components that make up the game I mean I'm kind of a okay game player I do play a lot of games but the aesthetics of your visual aesthetics are going to really inspire me now we also discuss in these collaborative conversations that happen first something I call tone lineage I could describe it like how is your game going to be similar in tone and I'm talking about overall tone this is the overall Gestalt of your game how is your game similar to in tone two games that preceded it and and then we talk about how is your game going to fit in that lineage of tradition and innovation these are two very powerful concepts for me I love and adore the tradition I've studied the tradition so basically there's this whole spectrum of spectrum between very traditional very conventional games and also very innovative fresh completely unique games that sort of hit you and come at you from left-field and of course the whole entire spectrum in my own composing I've

composed a lot of traditional music and I also have tried to push myself and be innovative on some projects so these are all questions that we discuss in these opening conceptual conversations which I live in a door it's my favorite part of the collaborative process these opening lunches or Skype conversations when we talk about ideas and ideas flow back and forth between the creatives between the developers and their composing teamwork um one of the most important goals that I set upon myself when I collaborate with anybody game maker film maker is to understand as much as I can about your tastes musical tastes we talked about your favorite soundtracks from similar games so your favorite soundtracks from your childhood because all of us are so much driven and defined by our tastes our taste in music our taste in art our taste in games in cinema and it is a collaborative composer one of my biggest tasks is to learn as much as I can about

your vision your ideas and your taste and I just by asking questions now tell me what you like and I do it with game makers I do it with filmmakers it always helps me to understand what kind of music you're most likely to resonate with and respond really well ultimately our job as composers is to find that signature style signature sound that's going to define your game as a sonic experience and that's going to become that memorable experience so that's again conversations and prototyping and the goal is to have that signature style for your characters and for your game so the kind of questions so basically the process for me always has been from the bigger picture which I called Gestalt kind of coming down and focusing in on more details so so far I talked about the big picture ideas concepts aesthetic style lineage now I'm gonna start getting getting more specific and these are the kind of questions I ask my collaborators so what musical elements

will work for your score and actually I've been very blessed to work with really articulate game developers and sometimes I have to kind of ask more questions to get more information and then the other question which is just as valid is what elements do you not want what elements will not work for your score and we kind of go and make a list so basically last year I worked on this amazing collaborative experience it's a it's a game called mayhem it's okay let me now get this straight it's a mobile synchronous multiplayer like esports shooter it got awarded at South by Southwest I'm proudly wearing the shirt the t-shirt today so it's like I'll show you a couple of visuals I wanted to speak about this game today because it was a beautiful collaboration and the developers were very articulate it was like not these perfect perfect situations of beautiful back-and-forth and collaborative process so just a couple of visuals to kind of give you a sense of the visual aesthetics so it's um they were really

good with their conceptual guidance in their briefs and I called out literally from their brief this is everything is a quote this is what they told me the game is a sci-fi adventure not-too-distant future the costumes and weaponry blend the past in the present and so it's not too advanced not too sci-fi not too far in a distant future this is one of the most amazing metaphors I've ever been given by a collaborator I loved it so much this was in their brief more aliens less Star Wars so for somebody like me who adores science fiction science fiction and really lives and breeds the whole vernacular the whole you know fantasy science fiction horror this quote meant more than like hours and hours and hours of conversation so I would encourage to encourage your collaborators to kind of give you these metaphors because they're powerful tool of collaboration and they really save us a lot of you know prototyping and headache that that was also part of their initial brief so on the visual style is the blend of sci-fi

and contemporary wargame so that this is what they wanted they wanted the music to be exactly that middle ground not too sci-fi which would be too much electronica and sense or not too much action which is like the big because I'm known for doing doing a lot of action games like you know Gears of War or you know big strings and big horn melodies so exactly middle ground and not too sci-fi so um couple more visuals so then we started so after talking about these more specific details and we got even more specific global considerations for the score music is the tertiary audio element the sound effects and the environment ambience is always take precedence because they're part of the auditory experience music is a tertiary audio element so then we start getting even more focused on the style so they wanted a hybrid style which is orcas a little bit of orchestra and electronica they wanted pulsing syntax Church because that's modern scoring they wanted ambient pads to suggest

science-fiction and sprinkle some sound effects here and there to spell out that the game is a science-fiction game so this is all again from the wonderful brief I received from my collaborators so what they did not want and this was again just as useful as anything else is they did not want big soaring melodies especially no brass melodies they did not want busy chord progressions and they did not want from bastok choir because choir is associated with more like epic fantasy and and they did not want that so um I'm gonna go ahead and play you a little bit of the gameplay just for fun and then I'm gonna play the music so you have a chance to see the visual and you have a chance to focus on the music so here's a little bit of gameplay from this shooter

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so for the composers in the audience I also wanted to play just the music alone so you can isolate all the elements you know the groove the pulses the very non melodic material but still kind of you know still orchestral except no soaring melodies so um this is for

[Music] [Music] [Applause]

[Music] okay so um there were a couple campaigns I wrote a couple of battle tracks and then there is the obviously the menu music and this is again from the directions I received from my collaborators much less stressful serious and foreboding subdued not frenetic because the campaigns are very frenetic they did not want massive choirs they did not Thunder that did not want drums and they did not want loud string melodies again I was just so lucky to have this incredibly wonderful guidelines given to me by my collaborators and this is what I did with these guidelines [Music]

[Music]

okay so this was that collaborative experience I wanted to now switch gears and talk about another fantastic collaboration which is my most recent job it's not a game it's my music for a museum exhibition at the Kennedy Space Center I got this job through a game connection and also the composing was 3d movies and also interactive pods so I figured it's interactive and I could present it here so it's called heroes and legends that's named the exhibition at the Kennedy Space Center and it hosts the American astronaut Hall of Fame here's just me standing in front exhibition I wanted to acknowledge one

of my most cherished collaborators an extraordinary person and professional John rod the recording mixing and mastering engineer on this job and all my jobs all my projects John would you please stand up and thank you for a fantastic work and always just making everything sound so awesome so basically I'm gonna play for you on one musical piece which was accompanying a 3d film that tells the story about the Gemini 8 Gemini 8 mission the Gemini 8 mission was in nineteen 1966 and for the first time there was a man the capsule and also an unmanned ship called the Agena that they had to undock and it was really complicated and that's one instance where things went wrong with something in in the capsule there was some mechanical malfunction and the mission had to be aborted so my music was supposed to be on and that's the that's the capsule that's

just the experience you're in the theater you're watching this amazing earth everything is 3d and the capsule just flies right in front of you right above you so um the music for this 3d film was supposed to capture it was modern modern action and supposed to capture first the joy of space because the first thing we see in the 3d movie is what we see from inside the cabin outside and then I had to have action music for the malfunctioning system and then there's this increase level of tension and peril ever-increasing tension and the stakes get higher and higher with each musical structure and I had to build this and keep building and keep building and at the end the mission is aborted so I had to capture the hero who's been defeated so the people's lives are saved which is good they kind of failed the mission but we saved their lives so it's still a success so this is the kind of this is how the conversation went with the clients the first idea that they presented to me

is they said well we really really liked the movie the right stuff it's a film from 1983 have you guys watched the right stuff raise your hands so it's like one of these iconic movies about cosmonauts it's called by bill conti with a very traditional score totally orchestral and beautiful melodic almost like Bach almost like classical music and they did not want choir this was one of their requirements now I talked to myself well that score is awesome but it was composed in 1983 so now how do I sort of turn their idea around and still make them feel as if they're giving me the idea but I kind of put my ideas like in their brain so what I suggest that's a very important skill for composers to have to kind of share ideas and be really open be really respectful but also present ideas and make your collaborators think that they came up with the idea so I said how about we approach this entire score and make it modern and timeless so the timeless component is going to be the classical

music classical big strings and and horn tunes and melodies and classical chord progressions almost like Bach so we have that classical component which is our timeless component but as far as the modern sound is concerned I mean all of us have grown basically listening to these very modern pulsing electronic percussive scores so I felt compelled to have very strong percussion arrangement and since so that's how I combine the traditional melodic themes for the heroes an orchestra with very modern arrangement with busy percussion and cents and it worked beautifully so that was that's how I sort of turned their idea around and added my own input and they totally I mean they just really loved the music they went with the idea so I cannot show you the movie because it's part of this 3d thing so I'll just show you some screenshots from a very early rendering of the movie that I was given it just shows you mostly the inside the astronauts and that's the capsule and the Agena undocking and they spin so um

that's another visual so here I'm going to play the music and there's like seven structures beauty of the space and I'm gonna point as we as the music progresses you'll hear it very clear that's really the music tells the story very clearly so let me now play this music and you can imagine the story that the music tells [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

[Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

okay here's the last image so I wanted to open now for questions I'm eager to answer your questions please be sure to fill out the evaluation forms that's my email it's okay to contact me check me out on Twitter and everything else I welcome your questions now hello pahnke thank you so much that was fantastic I was just curious if you'd be willing to share any techniques that you like to really give that lower and ear candy that is great in your mixes if you have anything that you particularly enjoy because obviously just the orchestral samples probably can't produce that low warmth okay so we recorded breasts and strings live sometimes I use a little

bit more like one more chill or two more chilly and but then the real the real magic is John rod sitting right there he's fantastic he's the one who really shapes that low end because I worked so much in horror and fantasy there is always that music competing with the sound effects and I had to I had so many conversations with people and horror games basically saying that's your biggest goal how to shape how to sculpt to the low end so we still hear the machine guns and they don't sound like popcorn but so that the music really works see because oh we hear sound effects Folley dialogue it all goes into the years so the music has to be very carefully sculpted around the other elements in the audio and me coming from a general background having done a lot of horror films and a lot of my music having been cut and not used I learned the hard way to be incredibly sensitive but talk to John he's gonna give you the magic the actual technicality I just write the music the notes but it starts with you putting in the musical elements do you have any particular nice combination I have ways I have a really

specific way how I voiced the brass I always use octaves two octaves sometimes three octaves I worked for many years for the orchestrator of Bruce of hans zimmer bruce fowler and he taught me how to add one extra lower octave in the tuba so I have a particular how I voiced the brass that's just really had like really punchy and really kind of shows and on my orchestrations for Steve Jablonsky same thing with the strings just really beefed up the low end in octaves but never like in anything less than octave so in the composition in the arrangement that's what I do just kind of beef it up awesome thank you thank you hi so for the developer who may or may not be somewhat musically inclined do you have a sense of that you prefer to have direction from them in non musical terms like timid warm you know sensual or that you would actually to what degree are you open to very specific like I want this to be an oboe thank you this is a perfect awesome question thank you so much the best collaborative process is if the

developers speak with their composers in terms of ideas first talk to us about ideas talked about us about emotions mechanics storytelling tradition innovation the large big concept so that's the one aspect of wonderful collaboration the other collaboration is music just give us like five mp3s and say well I really love this follow you know I like this about this I don't like this about this sort of thing so when we have both the concepts and the music equally represented music in terms of style guide from previous games or movies this is just the best because we know your concepts and your vision but we also know the kind of music that speaks to you and you feel is going to represent your game so if you only talk to us with word in words then words are slippery I mean we could talk about music and I'd say one thing you interpret so there's there could be this misunderstanding but when is the sense of concepts and aesthetics and ideas also reinforced by your favorite music that you feel is gonna fit with the game that company the company that made

mayhem they did give me two mp3s they said this is what we like make it like this but unique for our game so I would say the best collaborative approaches ideas and your favorite music combined together and then the composers they have ways of filtering they have intuition and just skills and experience to filter and also all of us I encourage all composers to just play as many games watch as many movies learn to genre learn music because that kind of becomes part of your intelligence is a composer I just voraciously play games and watch games all the time so that's what we do but I would say concepts and music yes hi I was wondering for the Gemini 8 piece how or do you have a process for going from the the general timeline of the presentation of the the film and the to the specifics of like tempo things like that like does the overall length of the

piece help determine your tempo - you set that independently and Moe typically the structure so the entire 3d movie is with dialogue so all the music was on your dialogue and all three because it's like a documentary essentially except it's really elaborate with special effects which you didn't see here so that's one of my first assignments is very challenging people ask me what's the happiest and most challenging part the happiest part is these conceptual conversations I just spoke about they're the funnest research and concepts is awesome the hardest part is when I open the blank template and the movies there it's lined up and my job is to pace the music you know really structure the music so I always begin globally that's how I work not everybody is like this that's my process I would kind of mark the movie this is remember that chart I had with the energy curve kind of going up so I had to sort of and then and then you have to hit beats in any linear media which cinematics in games are or film scoring or this 3d entertainment

it's linear media so we have to hit moments where the energy changes or the story changes so that's the first thing I do and it's challenging because I haven't said the temples yet and sometimes I have to lock these markers so I'm locked the markers and then I experiment with different tempos until I find the right tempo thank you thank you hi I have a question about discussing budget with developers like you know if you get even just one live musician it can help supplement the sample libraries and also know if you have any tips on how to kind of communicate developers about recording budgets or anything relating to that that's a really good question um in most of my games are I mean this is purely samples but I always make a case if there's like one musician for instance this is just a wild example electric cello that can add so much in texture and and the cello seems to be such a magical instrument for media scoring you it's all conversations it's all trying to

sell the idea that even a small tiny budget by adding one instrument kit adds so much artistic value and it's the conversation that you have to have but I would say try to start small you know you can't really say all you have a small marble game I'm gonna record an orchestra because they didn't need that then they won't be able to afford but basically suggest how about we have one very versatile instrument maybe a wind instrument or a plucked plucked instruments also work really well or maybe electric cello and then work with one musician or maybe work with three musicians or four but this is something you can afford and it's a small part of the budget but adds so much so the whole idea is that you're going to spend a little bit money and get so much more on your return of investment that's how I would approach it that's how I've always approached it for all these years that I worked I still work with a lot of independent games and mobile games and indie films and the pitch is always the same let's just spend a little bit of money and get fantastic live cello player I just did it on my horror film

with a very low budget so the idea is you spend a little bit money to get a huge result thank you any more questions I think we're out of time okay guys I'll be outside if you want to talk to me thanks again so much for coming thank you you