CauseSomeTreble

Dissecting the Use of Music in Video Games and Learning from Video Game Composers

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Way back in my first ever post, I said that I wanted to use this blog as a place to gain some feedback on how to improve as a video game composer. As such, it only makes sense for me to post some of my own music! This currently untitled song is meant to be a boss theme for a fight with a militaristic, yet bombastic pirate captain-esque boss for a currently very early in production video game I'm working on with my roommate. I've tried my best to implement some of the lessons I've already gone over in this blog, such as creating compelling leitmotifs and following, and occasionally subverting, the circle of fifths, but I admit it isn't exactly perfect. Its instrument mixing and its slight repetitiveness make it a bit rough around the edges and I intend to improve those aspects but I'd like to know if any of you have other recommendations for how I can improve! Please let me know your thoughts!

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The Circle of Fifths

While not necessarily related to video game music specifically, because I want this blog to help those who want to become video game composers, I felt it only made sense that I should cover some music creating tips unrelated to video games. One of the most helpful for me personally has been the Circle of Fifths.

Essentially, the inner ring represents various minor keys whereas the outer ring can either represent the corresponding major keys or simply the individual notes labeled. Two keys that are directly next to one another along one of the rings are referred to as ‘neighbors,’ arranged in a position such that neighbors consistently work well with one another. For example, C Major and F Major sound well together but F Major and E Major have a bit more dissonance to them, hence why they are on almost opposite ends of the circle. Major keys also tend to work well with the minor keys placed directly beneath them and the neighbors of said minor keys. For instance, D Major works well with E Minor, B Minor, and F Sharp Minor.

I highly recommend this video from Mike George if you want to know more about the intricacies of the circle of fifths, as he goes into far more detail than I did here.

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AI LLM Experiment

I recently decided I wanted to test out what a LLM (Large Language Model) truly knows about video game music. With it being such a creative field, I figured it would have some problems interpreting some of its own information. The AI I chose for this little experiment, Google Gemini, was shown to be able to recognize various popular video game composers; such as "Kojo Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, Yoko Shimomura, Jeremy Soule," as well as more niche composers like "Toby Fox, Lena Raine, Christopher Larkin," etc. Where Gemini struggles, however, is with some of these composers' works. When asking about composer collaborations, the AI stated that "Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo once co-composed" but never clarified what game that would have been for and no such game truly exists to my knowledge.

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Writing Interactive Music for Video Game: A Composer's Guide Review

Relatively recently, I came into possession of the guidebook pictured above: “Writing Interactive Music for Video Games: A Composer’s Guide,” written by a Mr. Michael Sweet. As someone so interested in video game music composition that I felt the desire to write an entire Tumblr blog on the topic, I’m sure you can tell that this guidebook sounded right up my alley. As such, I would like to use today’s post to do something a little different and analyze this guidebook, going over its major advantages and disadvantages as it pertains to teaching video game music and whether I would recommend it to anyone interested who, like me, wants to pursue video game music and learns from guidebooks like this one.

First and foremost, as I already explained, the author of this guidebook is Michael Sweet. Upon some admittedly somewhat simplistic searching, I found that he is a very accomplished video game composer known for working with Cartoon Network, Sesame Workshop and many more on various award winning games. He’s even known for creating the sound effect that plays alongside the Xbox 360 logo. This information, which Michael Sweet himself also comments on at various points within the guidebook, cements his credibility as a composer.

What I would consider one of this guidebook’s best elements is simply the sheer variety of subtopics that are discussed. With the knowledge of this being a book meant to aid future video game composers, one would expect its contents to be very focused on exclusively composition; Digital Audio Workstations, general music theory, connections between various game tones and various styles of music, etc. This guidebook, however, dives into many other adjacent topics one wouldn’t expect to be covered, from the history of video game music over the past 40 years, to aleatoric performance techniques, to even contract negotiations.

One seemingly minor but, in my opinion, very effective method that Michael Sweet implements in this guidebook is the usage of already existing video game music to emphasize his various points. This not only acts as a very effective way to establish rapport that helps to keep the reader engaged, as many other guidebooks I have found of similar quality feel somewhat more difficult to sit through, but it also gives the audience the opportunity to listen to the various pieces for themselves and understand how each one acts as an example of the point being made. 

Finally, I would like to complement this guidebook’s general structure. Admittedly, it isn’t particularly different from a traditional textbook at first glance but aside from the video game music examples I brought up earlier, Michael Sweet also uses very casual language that makes the book seem less stagnant and monotonous than a traditional textbook. Michael Sweet also utilizes diagrams of measures of music, audio files, etc, uses “notes” to fill the reader in on information that might be hard to organically fit into a lesson, uses “tips” to advise the reader further on specific methods related to digital music workstations, and even has a handful of “composer perspectives" written by other composers in the field talking about their work.

So, to summarize, I enjoyed this guidebook and found it to be a very fascinating read. Michael Sweet was very informative on the topic, he covered a very large range of different topics helpful for any up and coming composer, and he implemented a style of organization within the guidebook that remained cohesive while not becoming difficult to read over an extended period of time. If you want to enter the world of video game music composition, I could not recommend a better place for you to get started on your journey.

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Official Legend of Zelda Vinyl Records

Somewhat recently, Nintendo revealed that they are going to be releasing the “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” soundtrack on vinyl. While not necessarily too related to video game music as a whole, it is still nice to see these pieces become far more accessible and produced across different forms of media. Seeing Nintendo of all companies decide to do something like this is surprising given their protectiveness over their intellectual properties. Admittedly, this would not be the first time that Nintendo has tried releasing their music in physical mediums, as they have released some music on CDs in the United States in the past, but this is their first attempt at globally distributing their music in this way. If this partnership they’ve made with Laced Records in order to produce these vinyls goes well, perhaps Nintendo's large library of music from the past forty years will become a lot more accessible to the general public in the near future.

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The Importance of Music in Rhythm Games

Despite how often video game music is used purely to enhance an already existing game, there are still many instances where the music within a video game takes on even more responsibility by being an essential element to the gameplay itself. One of the most common ways that this situation manifests is via rhythm games.

While the rhythm game genre may be quite vast, most titles tend to follow the format of the genre’s most popular title: Dance Dance Revolution. Essentially four arrows pointing in the cardinal directions float toward an arrow bar at the top or bottom of the screen. When aligned, the player must step on the respective arrow on a dance pad provided for them. The movement of these arrows syncs with the beat of the music playing in each level, incentivizing the player to stay on beat.

This format makes the composition of the music very important, as making the song too fast, too complex, or too muddled can leave the player unable to stay focused and make for an unfavorable gaming experience. One of the most common ways of mitigating this issue is by adding what is known as a staccato note to each beat that features an arrow. When a note is staccato, it means that the note is very sharp and abrupt, meaning that it leaves little enough of an impact to not be distracting but enough to give the music a bit of a punch to it. These staccato notes most often take the form of either orchestral hits, which are short samples or orchestral instruments, or a drum staccato meant to blend in more with the natural percussion. A great example of the latter comes in the form of “Let Them Move” from Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix. Each arrow note in the song is accented by a snare drum meant to keep the player on beat. This can also be proven as an intentional composition decision because a similar situation occurs in the 3rdMix version of this song, where despite having a more clicky approach to its staccato, it still utilizes the same trick to make sure the player is simultaneously engaged and on rhythm. 

While I cannot say I have experience with Dance Dance Revolution specifically, due to it being a hard game to track down and play at a public place, I do have experience in another rhythm game, Beat Saber, that pulls a similar trick. Beat Saber is a virtual reality rhythm game where you use two light swords to slice blocks hurdling toward you to the tempo of the song playing. While some songs in that game do pull that same staccato trick, most songs rely on the sound design instead, as every note that’s sliced plays a sound effect that, as I can attest, aids in keeping the player on beat. Though what I have also noticed is that relying on the sound design like this creates a sort of bell curve for the efficiency of this method based on the chosen difficulty. Too few or too many notes to hit either limit the indications too drastically or cause them to lose all of their meaning respectively. This means that the method is most effective when there is an appropriate balance of notes and rests; i.e., when it is at the top of that imaginary bell curve.

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Laura Shigihara

For today’s post, I wanted to spotlight who I consider to be a fairly overlooked composer, one whose work is considered arguably more well known than they are. That composer is none other than Laura Shigihara. 

Laura Shigihara is a Japanese American composer, video game developer, and songwriter, most commonly known for being the lead composer to the original Plants Vs. Zombies game from 2009 but also having her hand in a variety of other games, from Deltarune to World of Warcraft to Super Meat Boy. 

As someone who has been a fan of Laura Shigihara’s work for a very long time, I find it unfortunate that her name is not as well known as many other indie video game composers. If you have not heard of Laura Shigihara, then I highly recommend that you listen to her work. You can check out her YouTube channel here or listen to this playlist of some of her work here! There's also some information documented about her on the Plants vs. Zombies wiki that you can find here!

[musiceffectslife]

Why music?

image by omar sahal, "orchestra vibrations"

The topic of this blog is going to be about how different genres of music affect a person's personality/ mood. Each blog will be about a different genre like classical, rock, pop, medal, folk, country, etc. And how each one can change someone's personality.  I will be talking about music from the late 1800s to 2025 (present).

According to the Oxford English dictionary,  music genre means "the art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds to produce beauty of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, expressive content to form a particular style or category with style or purpose." When  artists make many different categories, it's labeled as a different genre of music which leads to thousands of different kinds.  Which affects the brain in many different ways.  Referring to an article by R W  Wilkins  published in the national library of medicine he states “Listening to music affects an intricate set of complex processing systems in the brain, such as systems associated with sensory-motor processing as well as functional elements implicated in memory, cognition and emotion or mood fluctuation." This shows how music affects the brain, but also how music affects the body too with chills. I know  personally  from  listening to a lot of music or when I'm performing at concerts my body gets  chills from hearing a song I like.  From an article by  Rich  Allen  talks about how the nervous system is affected by the brain and when someone hears a song that shows strong emotion to them, the brain activates the nervous system

From personally experiencing this reaction I am curious to see how other people are affect by music Now since there over a thousand different genres were not going to get to all, but I am going to talk about the most common that people hear in their everyday lives Whether it be through social media, the radio, speakers in a restaurant, or there Spotify playlist.  This topic is important to me because music is a part of my everyday life and the same as other people. And some days music can change my mood if I'm having a bad day into a good one.  I want people to see how music can affect them in the same way it affects me or maybe in a different way! 

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Wanted to give some attention to this blog by musiceffectslife on the way music can affect one's personality. As someone who's also inherently fascinated by this topic, I'm excited to see where their blog goes from here. Go and send them some love!

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Leitmotifs

In my experience, one of the most essential elements to creating a video game soundtrack involves the use of leitmotifs. A leitmotif refers to a part of a song meant to represent a character, location, situation, emotion, etc., essentially a way to inherently tie a song to the game it comes from and, by extension, connect the music to the player’s experience with the game. 

This is why just mentioning Mario in the context of music has probably caused that classic “ba-dap! bap! bi-da bap! ba!” from the Ground Theme of the original Mario Bros. to start playing in your head. Or, for my Sega fans out there, mentioning Sonic probably starts up the Green Hill Zone music. It doesn’t even need to be part of what many would consider a song to  be considered a leitmotif. Mentioning “Zelda,” for example, might cause some fans of the games to simply think of their favorite song from the series but most people are probably just going to hear that iconic four note sequence that plays from picking up an item.

Those examples, however, are of leitmotifs being used to give an identity to the games they come from as a whole. What can really make a video game soundtrack shine is when individual characters are given their own leitmotifs that can be referenced multiple times. The more interconnected a soundtrack is through its leitmotifs, the more satisfying hearing them be reused can be, so long as they're used with purpose. One of my personal favorite examples of this comes in the form of the soundtracks of Undertale and Deltarune, composed by the games’ creator, Toby Fox. This video by "Eyesayuh" does an excellent job demonstrating how almost every song across both games is connected to at least one other song through its motifs.

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My Overture

Music is an incredible thing. It can soothe you, fill you with adrenaline, or make you feel a nearly infinite number of emotions. In my opinion, the best example of the power of music comes in the form of video game soundtracks. Whether a song is providing ambiance to an intriguing new world to explore or acting as an audible representation of a boss’s unconquerable strength or sheer malice, video game music not only has the benefit of being inherently tied to a specific character, setting, event, or emotion, but also has more inherent weight than most other music, as it has the job of immersing the player into the world of the game. This makes studying this genre of music to be incredibly informative. In fact, according to Joshua Thomas Barbre, studying the use of video game music can help one to “gain insight into the nature of play, the influence of gaming on gender and other kinds of identity and behavior, and on modalities of composition.” 

While I don’t intend to delve into those aspects specifically, I plan to discuss the history of video game music throughout the past few decades, such as how it evolved from simple sound effects into entire compositions, as well as the several important aspects that compose music in general that many great video game composers know how to use to their advantage; leitmotifs, instrument choice, tone, execution, etc. In doing this, I hope to not only provide an interesting history lesson into how video game music as we know it came to be, but also provide lessons others can pull from in how to make their own music, video game related or otherwise. As someone who is currently attempting composing, I also hope to follow those same lessons to simultaneously act as further example of those lessons’ intent and to gain feedback on my music journey. So if you enjoy music and video games as much as I do, come along for the ride as I dive into what makes video game music so interesting!