Musings: Four thoughts

On this game music project: The best thing about this blog is that I'm engaging with others in conversation about game music.  This project gives me a reason to talk with other great musicians about game music and their experience with it.  Otherwise, we don't necessarily discuss it because gaming isn't always a topic that comes up among friends.  Also, this has really taught me a lot about the gaming industry.  Learning all of these game music facts has reinforced for me similarities in the classical world that I know and see regularly in work-- what's the same and what's different across the field of music: pop music, academia, opera, musical theater, and classical music.  The ideas, topics, issues, etc are many of the same things, but the genre and music involved changes.  Lastly, this project has almost unexpectedly exposed me to a lot of music I didn't know before.  I'm learning about all different kinds of music: popular music, historical musical references, classical music, scientific information about sounds and sound waves, the workings of modern composers, the business of music, the interaction of music with technology and psychology, the interactive abilities of game music.  What an interesting project this is!  I can imagine game music as a way to organize study in a music school that would touch effectively in many marketable, current, relevant areas of music study.  Creating audio for a game is the perfect way to organize students across various disciplines with a common goal.  It's the kind of cross curriculum work everyone wants to create-- well, now's the time to do it!

On my next entry: I thought I'd have finished the Collins early PC history section of Chapter 2 by tonight, but now that I'm in the midst of listening/watching the games, there's more there than I thought.  Music texts should be presented as interactive reading with listening links available at touch.  Good quality audio and performances/recordings, too!  Visual aspects-- especially with game music texts, should be expected as well.  Making these Collins listening link lists is a cool project, reminding me of the best interactions between music, technology, and printed texts.  How often do music students actually listen to the examples listed in a text and get to know them?  Is music, ever more at the touch of our fingers, in danger of becoming merely words on a page?  In the words of Virginia Woolf, "perhaps, melodramatic."

What else I'm up to game audiowise: I've been watching some of the GAT tutorial videos.  Internet out here in the Berkshires is slow and spotty.  Not my favorite situation by any means.  With these videos downloaded, there's always something I can watch, even when the internet is down.  Seeing the way that audio and games are manipulated now is very powerful.  I've got an inherent fear of having to program and understand game mechanics because I only am aware of the early era where integration was very complicated and at the mercy of the programmer.  I'm learning now that middleware and the usability of software are making integrating audio into a game just another step to learn, not a mystic programming activity.  (My mother, who has more programming experience than I would say that programming isn't mystic-- but it seems so to me!)  Watching these tutorial videos is like seeing behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz... it makes me more hungry to explore the GAT program/text and integrate some audio in the fall.  Once I get my new UM computer with a Windows split, I'll be able to check that text out in more detail, although it seems it'll take quite a while to work through.  If I can finish it in a years time I'll be pleased.  My current reading is the new Collins book, which I'm enjoying thoroughly and looking forward to blogging about soon.

Just for fun: For the longest time, I've been wanting to make my cell ring be the Final Fantasy victory track.  I suppose it's an Advent Children nostalgia that was the beginning of it, but I'm finally working tonight on making a ringtone.  I think it's an important thing for me to experience.  Plus, although I hate phone sound effects and I always keep my phone on silent, the one exception is when Vince is out of town-- like now-- and then I keep it on in case he calls.  It's the perfect reminder for me to change the ring up to be more special, since it's generally him calling!  I think I'm going with the FF 6 victory.  I think out of the different end game sounds, it's the best for a ring tone.  I also like the original, 3, 4, and 9, but 9 ends too softly, 1 doesn't have enough variety, and 4 is too repetitive for me.  I want the looping section to sound more lively since it's the extension of the ring.  6 also has the opera scene.  Give them all a listen.  It's a repurposing, yes, but what game audio do you think would make the best ringtone?

Musings: Music Making in Video Games: Musicians in Video Games (Mainly Edward, FF4)

I just started reading Karen Collins new book today, Playing with Sound, which seems so interesting and right in line with many of the topics I was thinking about in my last Musing about listening to game audio. How cool!  I can tell it's going to be hard to put down despite my busy week.

And that, somehow, got me thinking back to the Music Making in Video Games series on the blog, which I haven't updated in a long time.  I'll definitely update it a few times this week. One of the most interesting playable game characters to me is the musician. Combining this idea a bit with My Gaming Audio History and the opening pages of Collins new book got me thinking about playing games as a musician.  While Manic Mansion probably had the first musician characters I could play as (and did play as) with Razor and Syd-- who, like me, had blond hair, I played FF 4 much more and always thought about Edward as the first game musician I identified with.

I disliked Edward strongly, and probably still do to some degree. Firstly, as a playable character.  His fighting is weak, as is his defense-- leaving him hiding or dead after he's been struck even once, and in the SNES version, his singing ability is severely neutered. Secondly I disliked him, as an emotional character.  He's wimpy in his decision making, wanting to stay and cry with Anna after her death contrasting with Tellah's strong desire for revenge.  I was never impressed with the Dark Elf harp scene as Edward drags himself from bed to play his harp to save the day.  Even the game description listed him as "of frail constitution."  Frankly, he was not an easy character for me to grapple with as I was playing this game around the same time I was really becoming aware of my own same sex attraction and growing up in a very conservative rural NC environment. Edward embodied a weak, unmasculine (effeminate?) energy.  Part of my rejection of him was certainly a mirror of my dislike and fear of similar traits in myself. Was this what it meant to be a musician?

Here's the initial Edward playing scene for SNES:

And here's the DS dark elf battle:

Beyond Manic Mansion and Final Fantasy 4, later I would loves Celes' opera scene in FF6.  In Final Fantasy 7, I played the pianos in Tifa's room and the Shinra Mansion for WAY too long.  Making up my own melody for the Scarecrow song in Zelda 64 almost transformed Link into a musician, though I often opted for the ultilitarian all right button tune so as not to get confused about which melody I'd settled on for it!  In The Sims, I always made my character a gay musician, practicing the piano for hours. Eternal Sonata is absolutely insane for me right now!  I'll keep thinking more about this, and I'm sure there are examples I've forgotten right now, and even more I don't know of, but game character as musician is a cool connection I've always enjoyed in my gaming experience.

Surveying Literature: Sound in Video Games (Eric Pidkameny)

I found a copy of Eric Pidkameny's essay, Sound in Video Games, in a larger collection of essays, The Video Game Explosion, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf.  I also know Pidkameny has an earlier essay that's available online, Levels of Sound, and months ago when I found it, I made a note to finish reading it.  That article is a little bit longer, while Sound in Video Games is a short, largely a historic article that briefly charts the aural and technological progress of game sound, and then turns to the idea of Adaptive Audio and synergy between game music and other fields.  This is an excellent, concise game audio history that whets the appetite for more information in a variety of game audio areas.  A great place to start if you're wanting to learn more.

I'm not able to find much information about Eric Pidkameny online.  If he has a website or a bio somewhere online, I'd like to know the link.  One of the cool things about this project is not just that I'm learning more about the audio in games I've played and where scholarship is with game audio, but I'm also learning about who is interested in this kind of study.  It's really becoming cool to connect virtually with these like minds!  I've got a meeting next week to discuss some grants possible from UM that I could win to travel and investigate game music at some conferences.  So hopefully some of these virtual connections I'm making will soon turn into vis-a-vis ones!

As a fan of Final Fantasy games, I was really struck that he takes time to mention the music in Final Fantasy 3 (I would say FF 6) as one of the most important games in terms of game music.  He writes: "In FF3 (6), each hero and villain in the game had his or her own musical leitmotif, which played whenever that character became the focus of the story.  The musical accompaniment was a form of wordless narration, giving insight to the game's characters and events in a way that text alone could not."

There wasn't so much here that was entirely new to me in terms of thought, although I did spend a little bit of time investigating some of the games that are mentioned whose audio I hadn't heard before.  Therefore, in a similar thread with my list of the games Karen Collins mentions in Game Sound, here are the games that Eric lists in this article, in the order he lists them:

Games:

PONG -- first audio
Space Invaders -- first continuous music
Pac-Man -- musical interludes/cutscenes
Berzerk -- dialogue
Sinistar -- dialogue
Dragon's Lair -- digital audio
Super Mario Bros -- new era of game sound
Star Wars: X-Wing -- adaptive audio
Ocarina of Time -- adaptive audio, also highlighting Koji Kondo
Metroid -- these three are some of Nintendo's most popular franchises
Dr. Mario -- also highlighting Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka in these three
Earthbound -- these three are some of Nintendo's most popular franchises
Final Fantasy 3 (6) -- use of leitmotifs, Uematsu is one of the first internationally famous sound designers
Dance Dance Revolution -- music and rhythm based dancing as a part of gameplay
The Sims 2 -- user designated soundtracks blur the distinction of what is game audio
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas -- user designated soundtracks blur the distinction of what is game audio
Defender -- these two serve as bookends to understand the progression of audio
Chrono Trigger -- these two serve as bookends to understand the progression of audio
Half-Life 2 -- almost all the soundtrack is diegetic music
Halo 2 -- video game music's first move onto the Billboard 200 chart

Music Making in Video Games: Final Fantasy 6: opera scene

Today, in the hallway, I mentioned to a friend that I was wanting to create and teach a video game music course. He asked immediately if I knew Final Fantasy 6, the opera scene. Of course, how could a video game music nerd not know quite possibly the most famous game music scene of all time!?  The first time I played this part of the game, I was so excited that I didn't take time to study the score and didn't know the correct words for Celes or the staging.  The production ground to a halt and I had to do the whole scene again!  How was I supposed to know?  It's not like I'm working with opera singers for a living or anything...  Good thing my partner's the opera singer and not me.

Incredible scene.