I'm just getting back to my hotel from the first day at GameSoundCon. Great day! Totally lifted my spirits from the fact that my flight in yesterday was delayed, the hotel oversold, and I was moved into a craphole where I feel like the sheets are going to give me Ebola. As I walked into GameSoundCon this morning, George Sanger was lugging his suitcase up the steps in front of me and we started chatting. When I got to the registration table, Alexander Brandon was passing out the registration information for the N-Z folks, which of course included me! These are two great composers whose music I admire and whose books I love and have written about (George and Alex). A great start to the day to help wash away the rough arrival yesterday.
After a mass meeting, I spent the morning in FMOD sessions with Stephan Schutze. I felt a bit awkward initially when Stephan asked everyone how they identified as a sound designer or as a composer. Then he asked who didn't raise a hand-- just me-- and I said I identified as a teacher of game music. He went on a bit of a tirade about how there were a lot of "Bobs" who were teaching game audio and had no business or knowledge to be doing so and it was fraud. Then quickly followed this with the caveat that he was glad I was seeking out the training that many didn't know they needed or care to get. After that bump and a technical problem with the projector, the sessions progressed quickly as he showed many of the features of FMOD. While the class wasn't the sort of FMOD 101 I was hoping for, it was interesting to watch what was possible in the software. One of the main points he stressed was that folks used to linear media need to get out of the mindset of "get your sounds in ProTools, mix them, and export them off to the game." Instead, technology today allows for the game engine to mix the sound interactively in the game. Principles I understand already from readings, but cool to see how he applied them with the software.
After lunch at a gastro-pub, I headed to Alexander Brandon's session discussing his work on the Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity. Most cool about this session was hearing how he worked in Unity 4 on this game and used various techniques and softwares to conquer audio problems. Alex seemed to be a fan of Wwise, which was not used in these games, but he is hoping to use in future games. He also discussed the differences in updates to Unity 5 that are improvements to how the audio works. While I haven't used Unity much at all except for exploring just a bit of Steve Horowitz' book, it was cool to see that the interface wasn't so much different from the Unreal demos I've seen in The Game Audio Tutorial. At the end of this session, I was sitting close enough to Winifred Phillips to get her to autograph my copy of her superb book, which I've been reading on this trip.
I was planning to head back to the FMOD session for some talk about generative audio, but instead I headed down to chat with some of the sponsors. There were numerous tables set up by different groups and products: IAsig, Wwise, RealSpace VR Audio, and ProSoundEffects. I'm planning to join IAsig next year as this year is my year of GANG. Wwise and ProSoundEffects are both things that I think could enhance my teaching at UM, so I chatted with them about possibilities for students and educational packages. The hardest of these for me to describe is RealSpace VR audio. They had headphones where the audio changed in relation to the placement of a second device around you, changing the mixing as you were stationary in the headphones and the device was moved around you. Next, they had me put on enormous goggles and a second set of headphones that looked into a beautiful 3D environment and it was possible to move through the environment by looking at various objects in it and hear the sound change in relation to your position in the virtual environment. I'd never seen or heard anything like that. Definitely something to keep an eye on in the future!
Marty O'Donnell gave the keynote address. I forget that he wrote that memorable Flintstone Kids jingle from my childhood. Never knew it was his daughter who sang the final "and growing!" I never played Halo, but of course know the music anyway. I played a bit of Riven, but was way more into Myst-- didn't realize he got into the later sequels in this series. Anyway, fascinating to hear about his journey and some of his advice. I may use some of his points and examples in my own teaching. His three main points were: 1-practice, 2-take risks, and 3-have friends. Good advice in any field, certainly any musical one! The end of the talk was a bit of a downer as he talked about abuse in the game audio field and how to protect yourself and your creations. Again, good advice, but too bad that folks get burned enough to make that a front and center issue in the field.
All in all, a wonderful, tiring, busy day. Looking forward to tomorrow with some Wwise training and audio roundtables.
Showing posts with label iasig. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iasig. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Playing Games: Music in Red Dead Redemption.
The soundtrack is more of an environmental ambience-- wildlife/nature sounds, gunshots, speech, with perhaps an instrument or two making a punctuation or a short melody, rather than fully composed tracks.
In an earlier post, I quoted James Gunn as saying that the music in the game is actual Spaghetti Western tracks. I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I definitely don't think he means it literally. There are some newly composed songs by popular artists, but the main musical experience is one of short ambient sound stems, all composed in the same key and pulse, that weave together based on the action you experience onscreen. In other words, if you're just riding around looking at the scenery, you've probably got mostly ambient sound happening, if you pass someone in trouble, the music might start up as you slow your horse to help, and if you get into an all out gunfight, the music really gets going.
Some of my favorite in-game moments are those where you meet someone out in the wilderness who's playing the harmonica, or you enter a saloon and hear the piano. The game designers were even so clever to have the audio follow the angle of the camera very precisely-- in other words, as you approach the saloon, you don't hear the piano as much because the camera is behind Marston as he's approaching, yet as you leave the saloon, the camera is still from the vantage point of being closer to the saloon and at the same point where you don't hear anything as you're approaching the saloon, you do hear it as you leave. It's as if you carry the audio experience of where you've just been with you. In other words, the spacial positioning of the audio is very cleverly crafted.
This format leads to an incredibly interactive audio that immersed me in the game. At home, I've got a surround sound stereo system, so the audio literally helped me as I could hear which direction I needed to turn to find the person shooting, person talking, bird squawking, etc. Only a few times in the game did the audio not match up with my playing experience. For instance, when I was trying to figure out how to tame horses with Jack and I fell off for about fifteen minutes his snippets of dialogue got extremely repetitive and irritating-- granted, I was sucking at this part of the game and taking way longer than the designers expected, but perhaps a non-repeat function would help at a certain point. Also, a trained RPG player, I almost always checked the bodies of victims as I fought my way across the land somewhere-- and sometimes the music was very intense while I was just running around picking up money and ammo. Thus, it became very noticeable to me because it was a totally different character from what I was doing since all the bandits around me were dead and I was looting up before going on to the next objective checkpoint. I have to say one of the biggest disappointments for me about the audio was how rarely-- if ever?-- it underscored the set video sequences from the main story line; these are almost entirely void of music, using only spoken audio.
Overall, though, this has to be one of the absolute best audio experiences I've had in a modern game. Completely different from what I was expecting as well. The audio tracks that are stand alone performances of songs with words really stand out when they appear and are incredible. The ambient nature sounds reminded me of my childhood in rural North Carolina. The interactive quality of the audio almost never pulled me out of the moment of the game, in fact it immersed me more deeply and helped me with locating objectives in the game. What higher praise could a game soundtrack have?
Interestingly, this is one of the first games I've played whose audio I can definitely say one cannot experience merely by listening. As much as it's possible with some other games, and particularly earlier games, to watch gameplay videos and have a pretty good understanding of the audio, this game audio experience is so different based on your particular playing session that one really must experience it as a player to fully appreciate it.
Here are some of the best web resources I've found about the audio of Red Dead Redemption:
The soundtrack, available via iTunes, is put together based on the motives of the game audio to give a feel of the ambient nature of the sound, but it's a completely different experience from playing the game. The soundtrack can also be heard on YouTube.
Straight from the Rockstar Games Red Dead Redemption site, this has links to samples of the audio, behind the scenes creation videos, and plenty of information about how the audio and soundtrack were created. Incredible. Every game should have such an awesome audio tool!
How can you better learn about game audio than via the composer's mouths? Gamasutra has a fantastic interview with Bill Elm and Woody Jackson as they discuss the score, composing, developing the music, working with other musicians, and the influence Morricone had on the score.
Here's an incredible article from gamermelodico that details some of the best features of the game music and audio. I never thought about the audio experience of the Dead Eye feature, but Kirk Hamilton details it as well as the authenticity, space/positioning, and ambient score superbly in this article.
Keith Stuart's article from the UK's Guardian details plenty of audio information about the soundtrack from the game and its construction.
Here's another blog I'm just encountering, gamertheories.wordpress.com. For something a bit more heady, this article discusses the use of non-diegetic songs in Red Dead Redemption and Far Cry 3. Not quite as much of a focus on the game music, but an interesting consideration from the player's perspective.
I also perused this article from a blog I need to check out more, creaedigitalmusic.com. This refers to the game soundtrack as an "interactive collage" and puts the soundtrack in broader scope of being in the "post sampling age." Not quite sure what that means, but I'm hoping it'll make more sense as I keep exploring this genre.
Finally, for more of a focus on the audio design than the music-- also an incredible part of Red Dead Redemption, check out this interview with audio director Jeffrey Whitcher.
For more, you can always check out the Game Audio Relevance iasig site.
In an earlier post, I quoted James Gunn as saying that the music in the game is actual Spaghetti Western tracks. I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I definitely don't think he means it literally. There are some newly composed songs by popular artists, but the main musical experience is one of short ambient sound stems, all composed in the same key and pulse, that weave together based on the action you experience onscreen. In other words, if you're just riding around looking at the scenery, you've probably got mostly ambient sound happening, if you pass someone in trouble, the music might start up as you slow your horse to help, and if you get into an all out gunfight, the music really gets going.
Some of my favorite in-game moments are those where you meet someone out in the wilderness who's playing the harmonica, or you enter a saloon and hear the piano. The game designers were even so clever to have the audio follow the angle of the camera very precisely-- in other words, as you approach the saloon, you don't hear the piano as much because the camera is behind Marston as he's approaching, yet as you leave the saloon, the camera is still from the vantage point of being closer to the saloon and at the same point where you don't hear anything as you're approaching the saloon, you do hear it as you leave. It's as if you carry the audio experience of where you've just been with you. In other words, the spacial positioning of the audio is very cleverly crafted.
This format leads to an incredibly interactive audio that immersed me in the game. At home, I've got a surround sound stereo system, so the audio literally helped me as I could hear which direction I needed to turn to find the person shooting, person talking, bird squawking, etc. Only a few times in the game did the audio not match up with my playing experience. For instance, when I was trying to figure out how to tame horses with Jack and I fell off for about fifteen minutes his snippets of dialogue got extremely repetitive and irritating-- granted, I was sucking at this part of the game and taking way longer than the designers expected, but perhaps a non-repeat function would help at a certain point. Also, a trained RPG player, I almost always checked the bodies of victims as I fought my way across the land somewhere-- and sometimes the music was very intense while I was just running around picking up money and ammo. Thus, it became very noticeable to me because it was a totally different character from what I was doing since all the bandits around me were dead and I was looting up before going on to the next objective checkpoint. I have to say one of the biggest disappointments for me about the audio was how rarely-- if ever?-- it underscored the set video sequences from the main story line; these are almost entirely void of music, using only spoken audio.
Overall, though, this has to be one of the absolute best audio experiences I've had in a modern game. Completely different from what I was expecting as well. The audio tracks that are stand alone performances of songs with words really stand out when they appear and are incredible. The ambient nature sounds reminded me of my childhood in rural North Carolina. The interactive quality of the audio almost never pulled me out of the moment of the game, in fact it immersed me more deeply and helped me with locating objectives in the game. What higher praise could a game soundtrack have?
Interestingly, this is one of the first games I've played whose audio I can definitely say one cannot experience merely by listening. As much as it's possible with some other games, and particularly earlier games, to watch gameplay videos and have a pretty good understanding of the audio, this game audio experience is so different based on your particular playing session that one really must experience it as a player to fully appreciate it.
Here are some of the best web resources I've found about the audio of Red Dead Redemption:
The soundtrack, available via iTunes, is put together based on the motives of the game audio to give a feel of the ambient nature of the sound, but it's a completely different experience from playing the game. The soundtrack can also be heard on YouTube.
Straight from the Rockstar Games Red Dead Redemption site, this has links to samples of the audio, behind the scenes creation videos, and plenty of information about how the audio and soundtrack were created. Incredible. Every game should have such an awesome audio tool!
How can you better learn about game audio than via the composer's mouths? Gamasutra has a fantastic interview with Bill Elm and Woody Jackson as they discuss the score, composing, developing the music, working with other musicians, and the influence Morricone had on the score.
Here's an incredible article from gamermelodico that details some of the best features of the game music and audio. I never thought about the audio experience of the Dead Eye feature, but Kirk Hamilton details it as well as the authenticity, space/positioning, and ambient score superbly in this article.
Keith Stuart's article from the UK's Guardian details plenty of audio information about the soundtrack from the game and its construction.
Here's another blog I'm just encountering, gamertheories.wordpress.com. For something a bit more heady, this article discusses the use of non-diegetic songs in Red Dead Redemption and Far Cry 3. Not quite as much of a focus on the game music, but an interesting consideration from the player's perspective.
I also perused this article from a blog I need to check out more, creaedigitalmusic.com. This refers to the game soundtrack as an "interactive collage" and puts the soundtrack in broader scope of being in the "post sampling age." Not quite sure what that means, but I'm hoping it'll make more sense as I keep exploring this genre.
Finally, for more of a focus on the audio design than the music-- also an incredible part of Red Dead Redemption, check out this interview with audio director Jeffrey Whitcher.
For more, you can always check out the Game Audio Relevance iasig site.
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