Musings: Connections between collaborative piano and game music

I've been thinking recently about some similarities I see between my main profession as a collaborative pianist and game music.  Just wanted to jot some of them down here to remember.

First, the physicality of it.  Playing the piano is in essence pushing buttons with extreme skill in precise combinations at particular times.  Rough to say it that way, but at some level it's true.  Now, no one would deny there's a certain artistry to it, right?  How is game play any different?  Great players know the combinations of buttons they need to press and the exact moment to press them to get a desired outcome.  When I'm playing, I'm shaping an aural world around myself.  When gamers are playing, they're shaping a virtual world they're connected to through their hands.  To get really great at either task, first of all you need pretty good hand eye coordination, and secondly you get better as you practice for many hours.  So far, that sounds fairly true, though with a bias toward platform or action games.  It's true of RPG types as well, as you have to make decisions based on your abilities, characters, and experience about the best combination of actions to input.  As a pianist, a fingering that may work brilliantly for one person might be one that makes me miss the scale every time.  However, knowing my abilities, and gauging my past experiences allows me to choose the best on for that particular moment.  

Now thinking more about an audio focus, consider my daily life as an accompanist versus game music. Nearly everyone agrees that games are largely visual.  As humans, we simply rely on our eyes for a vast majority of our input.  Music in a game is there, shaping the game, sculpting the gameplay; but it may not have our primary interest, which may be focused more on our controllers or what we're seeing on screen.  For me, that's quite connected with my work at the piano.  When I'm playing with a singer, for instance, most people are focused on what the singer is doing and listening to him/her.  It actually takes a lot of listening skill to direct your attention to the accompaniment and hear that, since the primary melody is usually being sung plus words!  Yet, if the accompaniment is poorly played, the performance, no matter how good the soloist may be, won't seem quite as good.  The same is so true of game music: if the score is second rate, irritating, jarring, or doesn't fit musically with the onscreen moment, the game simply won't seem as good.  It may be hard to put your finger on what it is that's off, but the game music is undoubtedly a big part of the whole.

To emphasize the importance of good collaborative pianists, I like to use a surfer analogy:  If you watch a surfing competition everyone's paying attention to the surfer on the board.  The surfer knows very well if the ocean is good that day for surfing or not, but most people watching aren't thinking about that.  They're thinking about the surfer.  It's true for collaborative pianists too, if the ocean (the accompaniment) isn't good, the surfer isn't going to have as good of a ride as they could.  If it's great, they might be one of the only people who appreciates it, but they'll know it's a good day for surfing.  Isn't this true of game music, though?  Some people might realize it's very good, but for most, they're focused on the gameplay, story, visuals.  I'm sure other people have moments like me where they just stop playing a game to listen to the music.  I've been with people who did that but always simply assumed they were doing it because I was around and am a musician.  Game music is that supportive entity, shaping the moment, deepening the emotion.

One of the ideas that game audio folks like to write about is that while the screen is limited to one (usually forward) viewpoint, the audio can supply you with a full 360 degrees of information.  This is particularly true with games that employ surround sound.  Plenty of games use game music to convey when something offscreen is happening, whether that's a building being completed or a monster sneaking up behind you.  I agree and also want to add this point to the discussion.  Audio is creating physical waves in the air around you, which are bumping into you.  That super low rumble from your subwoofer?  You're feeling that in your body.  The game audio is a huge part of the physical presence in the room with you.

I suppose the reason for this post is that I've been thinking a bit about how I got to the place I did where I'm so interested in examining game audio.  My Gaming Audio History is tracing through the games I played growing up, which I think had a lot of incredible audio.  And I think there is a shared hand-eye coordination between the physicality of playing a video game and playing an instrument.  I don't see these paths as having been separate; I see them as making perfect sense.