#Kylydian

[tadeadshihamurder]

i love the use of fragmentation in the botw and totk soundtracks...there were a few instances where i suspected i might hear a familiar theme or motif (e.g. i expected to hear a variation of mipha's theme at mipha court) but when i got there, it wasn't quite right...i would hear a couple of notes but then the music would veer off to leave me wondering if it was a trick of my imagination.......

the most notable example of this has been the temple of time ruins theme in botw (which they didn't bring back in totk for some reason? the one in the great plateau just plays the generic ruin theme u_u), where the composers fragmented and reharmonized it until it became 'almost unrecognizable. they continue this idea in some of the totk tracks where they begin the tune, veer off, restart the tune, then veer off again, oftentimes without even finishing the original motif (e.g. the mipha court theme, the light dragon theme). i've seen people describe these tracks as if someone was desperately trying to remember the tune but couldn't quite get it right, and i just love the idea of using music that way, where the composer becomes a sort of "character" and aspects of the music that aren't traditionally "proper" become a tool in painting the picture that the music wants to describe

further reading: @kylydian made a really nice analysis of the botw soundtrack a few years ago, discussing the composers' use of impressionism and various other forms of modern art music (pdf of key modern art music terms from western michigan university) to convey musical descriptions of the circumstances and it's just. the coolest

#loz #music #citrustalk #there were ppl arguing that the tracks weren't actually references to the others #but i feel like that speaks more to how beautifully and subtly the references are worked in #like they were making me doubt my own senses ??? with music ??? love it

[kylydian]

Breath of the Wild Music Analysis: Folk Music and Kass’s Theme

Breaking into one of the deepest tracks (Characters?) in the game! There’s quite a bit of historical context to unpack here, so let’s get to it.

Track 13: Kass’s Theme

Genre: Folk, Waltz    

Featured Instruments: Accordion

Compositional Techniques: Historical Context

Truthfully, this track isn’t too complicated composition wise, so rather than covering the composition in depth, let’s delve a bit into ethnomusicology and how it’s implemented into Kass’s theme, and by extension the role of Kass himself. The applications are pretty neat and are very easy to gloss over. In identifying exactly what this track does let’s first set a preface, because this is an info rich post.

An accordion being performed is significant, the fact that Kass is a traveling musician is important, and lyrics play a role in understanding how Kass’s music works. All of these actually interact behind the scenes to create something awesome! So, let’s start by briefly talking about the style of music, because that’s what I’ve been doing. Best to knock it out now.

This track is a Viennese Waltz, or for all intents and purposes a waltz. If you’re even somewhat familiar with basic musical forms or dance, you’ll likely know what a waltz is. Waltzes are marked by a 3 beat pattern, often played at a tempo fast enough to make you feel only one beat at a time. The fact that we can trace this form of music historically to Austria’s capital Vienna will play a little bit of a role later on, but just keep that in the back of your mind for now. You’ll likely recollect that you can hear similar sounding accordion music in a lot of other media, and when you do, it’s often to accompany the performer singing. These vocals are generally easy to understand and will either explain part of a story, or describe a scene that’s going on. Vocals and accordion go pretty hand in hand in many types of music. Again, save that for later!

The melody is very memorable, and obviously is associated with Kass, which keeps us in the realm of more traditional Zelda music. But it’s important to realize that the waltz itself isn’t necessarily overly significant in this case. Waltzes exist in all forms of instrumentation. In fact, if you remember, I explained how the music in the large guardian battles is actually a waltz. Because of this, let’s look to how we could actually tie in the accordion to aspects in Breath of the Wild other than the music itself.

Accordion is often associated with a very wide, sweeping genre of music called folk music. Folk music in many ways might be the widest genre of music possible, as it simply refers to “traditional” music in the confines of western music history. By this association, every nationality has traditional folk music. Because of this, folk music can sometimes be associated with “World Music.” This is not an absolute generalization however, as world music definitely does exist outside of the realm of folk. The easiest way to think of traditional folk music, is as a type of music that is usually transmitted orally, across generations, and performed over long periods of time. Naturally because of this, having a good recognizable melody is everything.

However, transmitted orally is one of the most important things to understand in relation to traditional folk music. In general, the idea behind folk music is it’s a music representative of a traditional culture, music of the past if you would. It’s music that had no way to be recorded other than to be passed down with the intention of future generations remembering it. These are often songs associated with religion, custom, holidays or spirituality, but they’re all passed down by the idea of tradition. The interesting thing about where traditional folk music occurs today is in towns or areas that might be…let’s call it “Old fashioned.” Small, isolated villages are prime targets to find traditional folk music. The thing about Breath of the Wild though, is every village is pretty isolated and each one has a very strong visual and cultural representation in someway or another. Without the influence of many outside sources, this would make each village prime material for cultural folk music. And remember, the accordion is our symbol that relates to folk music itself. Which brings us to its performer Kass.

Kass is a Rito and a traveling minstrel, or musician. His purpose in the game is to learn the songs of the various lands in Hyrule, the songs that have been passed down over generations. Believe it or not, this is actually very similar to a profession called ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicologists generally study the traditional music of cultures or people, doing things like residencies, interviews, or recordings of performances. They’re people who are trying to retain a musical past, one that’s often only translated in person. They hold onto the music we don’t know about, so that one day we can hear it too. It’s often a behind the scenes job, and one that can go easily forgotten.

The neat thing is, because Kass travels to different lands, tribes, and locations to learn about their music, documenting them for future generations, he’s a sort of in game ethnomusicologist.

Kass’s songs tell stories, or provide riddles that help you solve puzzles, but the important thing is that they’re direct lore for Breath of the Wild because they contain lyrics, even if they’re only through text. If we think back to when I talked about Nier: Automata, I said lyrics allow us to provide literary meaning to music, something that you’ll often hear in folk music.

In addition to this, Kass plays a ton of music over the course of the game. You can hear a bunch of different versions of both new and familiar Zelda music. Which…since Nintendo says that Breath of the Wild takes place at the “end” of the Zelda timeline (Don’t get me started on this), it’s very evident that the music in question would also have been passed down through the ages similar to folk music. And for the songs that relate to the regions, those would be direct representations of the tribes’ folk music, passed down over time.

Because of the way he presents the music, both past, old and present. You could stretch it and say all of his renditions of music could be considered folk music. So naturally, let’s stretch this to the breaking point.

One of the songs that can be heard is the main Breath of the Wild theme. This is significant in a way, and although it can be chalked up to the fact that “it’s a different arrangement of the main theme end of story,” this places the song in the game’s world itself. You could then infer that the theme of the wild is actually music that has the potential to be passed down in game as well. It has a strong, memorable melody, and has important association for the game. It’s a direct representation of the soundtrack by our traveling Rito musicologist.

Again, more than likely this wasn’t intended, it most likely was simply “Man wouldn’t it be cool to have him play the main theme as well?” That doesn’t make it any less important though. The best ideas to find are the ones that might not be there.

However, something that does hold great significance is the ending to Kass’s storyline. If you complete all of his challenges, you can find him completing his wish in performing in front of his siblings in Rito village. He starts by playing his theme (with a few variations on articulation,) and eventually goes through some changes before he ends up on the familiar main theme for The Legend of Zelda

Historical contexts are important, and despite what Nintendo says about any timeline,  music has always held kind of a historical Easter egg worth of information if you will. And honestly, this is the biggest, brightest egg of them all. We’ve known the main theme for the Legend of Zelda from the very beginning of the series, and it’s made an appearance at some point throughout all of the games. It’s a very important theme, but as you’ll notice it only plays at a few places in the soundtrack. Sometimes for seemingly no reason (Riding the horse,) and others for important locations (Hyrule Castle.)

Throughout our personal histories with the Zelda series, we’ve come to associate this track as one that transcends the games, the timelines etc. We’ve likely made assumptions (even if subconscious) that the theme is present in the world of Hyrule itself, even if it doesn’t always appear that way. But with Kass performing it, you could infer that this is now transmitted music of Hyrule, much like the music of the tribes, legends and history of the now broken Hyrule.    

That’s cool.

This has been an overly long exposition, so let’s get into some quick meat of how we can apply this information to our own work.

Essentially what’s being done with Kass is creating lore through music. The songs Kass performs, whether shrine, divine beast, champion, city or whatever related, in someway or another build lore. If we think about the way the story is structured this makes complete sense. If you like, you can actually skip all of the story other than “The kingdom is broken Link. You must stop Ganon.” Or you can take the time to experience as much about about the world and the story as you choose to. Kass’s music is also a direct reflection of this. His purpose is to transmit the music to those that listen, allowing Link, you the player to learn more about the lore of the world. This is a unique way to not only provide more story, but also music that is relevant to the in-game world. Making the music itself a part of the lore.

So why not find ways to incorporate music into lore in our own projects? Admittedly, this isn’t easy, nor should it always be done. There are many ways that it could distract from player experience depending on the project, but if able to be accomplished it can provide a new way for music to be heard, experienced, and appreciated, even if not explicitly noticed. Breath of the Wild does it through a traveling character that develops overtime, but why not find other ways?

Truthfully, Zelda music has always done very well in incorporating music into lore. Playing music in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask are the two most obvious ones, but you can find instances in Wind Waker, Twlight Princess, and the often forgotten Ballad of the Wind Fish in Link’s Awakening.

In these cases, playable music, music association, and direct story implications are three ways to accomplish this. But honestly the possibilities on how to include music into lore are endless. After all, what is music other than retelling a story?

Let’s break it down.

Summary: Kass’s theme is representative of his character who present a unique take on the idea of traditional folk music in the land of Hyrule. Our clues include his instrument of choice, his status as a traveling musician, and that he collects songs to pass on to future generations. This act of passing on songs is a direct representation of lore, as it interacts with gameplay, and can add key story segments to the overall plot. Kass’s theme itself is reflective musically of traditional folk music.

Takeaways for Developers: Consider possible ways that you can build lore through music. There are many ways to do this, and many ways to do this incorrectly. Think about ways that you could place music inside the game’s world itself, and how the music could be representative of your setting, characters or ideas.

Takeaways for Composers: Using influences of folk music is a powerful way to build lore through music. Find ways that music might be able to be directly representative of a group of people, kingdoms, or countries when applicable. Remember the connotations that are carried with folk music. To effectively translate lore through music, it might be easiest to include lyrics, even if only in text.

I’ll come out and say that this has been one of my favorite tracks to listen, research and write on. To be honest, I could unpack even more here if I really wanted to. But I don’t want to make this more of a novel than it already is. Please feel free to reach out with any questions to my DMs, or at [email protected]. I’d love to chat with you!

I’ll be back soon with the next entry in this series~

#breath of the wild #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Nintendo #Zelda #Link #the legend of zelda #Breath of the Wild Music #Video Game Music #Music #Folk Music #vgm #VGmusic #game music #Video Games #Music Analysis #Kylydian #Indie Dev #Indie Developer #Indie Game #Game Composer #Game Audio #New Music

[kylydian]

Nier Automata: Using Vocals in New and Innovative Ways

If I said that Breath of the Wild was the best OST of 2017, I would say that Nier: Automata’s held the most weight. The concept of weight is something we’re going to be talking a lot about. There’s no other way to describe the music other than depressing, dystopian, and hopeless. If you’ve played the game, you know that these are all themes you encounter on your multiple runthroughs. Strictly composition wise, I think Nier doesn’t break too much new ground. It knows what it wants to do, and it does it well. It does it fucking well. Something can be said for a soundtrack that knows so well what it needs to do and executes that better than it honestly should. Doing something so well that it’s genre defining is definitely a trait that we’re going to talk about in the future, but today’s topic is what makes this soundtrack shine: The human voice.

Instrument choice. When you’re selecting an instrument, how do you go about it? Picking randomly? Off the sound you want? Genre maybe? Most composers would agree that instrument choice is crucial, and it can set the tone for the entire soundtrack if you feature one instrument over others. The voice is the oldest instrument known to humankind, but how often is it featured in video game music? Pretty often! It’s used at climatic moments of the story, for intros, credits, main themes, backing orchestras, music performed by characters…the list goes on and on! But how often do you hear it in an individual soundtrack? Not too often. Voice is a really powerful instrument, and without a doubt is it the instrument that holds the most weight in the context of media, which is why it’s generally saved for special moments.  

How often do you hear voice in Nier: Automata?

Constantly.

Ocarina of Time has the Ocarina. The Elder Scrolls have strings. Cuphead has the big band. Doom 2016 has the Doom Instrument. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire has trumpets (Okay..okay…I’m only partially kidding.)

Nier: Automata has voice. The game has a huge soundtrack, and though much of the music is different, one thing is pretty consistent throughout, voice is the featured instrument.  Instead of being saved for epic or emotional scenes, voice is featured just as much as any string, wind or percussion instrument would be in other games. This is huge. The amount of emotional range delivered by the voice is incredible, and absolutely cannot be understated when talking about this soundtrack.  

If you know the plot of Nier, the use of what is arguably the most expressive instrument compliments the plot perfectly.  It’s used to accentuate instruments, in place of instruments, for percussion, for story, for characters, for literally everything.

Why is voice so effective for Nier though? What does it do differently?

Think about what language the lyrics are usually in. English? Japanese? French? You do hear all of these languages in the soundtrack, but none of the languages are featured too prominently.  Doing some quick research shows that the language is a fictional language made for the universe. In addition, the lyrics were sometimes improvised on the spot at the time of recording.  It’s kind of a mashup of English, Japanese and French, but no words of any of the languages are actually used.

This is vital to begin to understand how vocals were used.

Using a fictional language does a few things for this soundtrack.

·        It allows the tone to be easily molded without worrying about word choice

·        It removes the literary implications of language

·        It removes direct attention from voice

·        It allows the voice to be presented as an instrument

When you add vocals to something, you have lyrics. Unless you’re singing only on vowels, there’s not really a way around that. However, while Nier has lyrics, they aren’t associated with meaning. There is no context, meaning that the singer can transition to vowels when wanted, presenting a very natural vocal sound without having to worry about choice of words.

When you assign words to music, you begin to pull attention to the vocals. And in video game music, while you want music to be noticed and loved, you want it to be in the background. Adding lyrics implies a story of some kind, which adds a focal point for the player. In general, this will distract from the most important element of the game: Gameplay. Making the lyrics unattached to literary meaning will probably get people thinking “What language is this?” But that’s the only focal point they’ll have, and it’ll quickly drop to the back of their mind. This removes any direct attention on the voice. Most importantly, removing the language barrier allows the voice to be presented in an instrumental context.

The voice is an instrument. But while the voice is an instrument, vocal music is not equivalent to instrumental music. I’m not saying that instrumental music is better, just that the mindset behind the two forms is different. This separation has existed all throughout music history and continues to exist today. One of the most important lessons on this I’ve encountered was when I was at a master class with the late band composer, Francis McBeth. He has an extensive library of wind band literature for all grade levels. During a Q&A, someone asked him “How many songs have you written?” And he responded very flatly with “Two.” It’s no surprise that the person asking wasn’t expecting this, so he clarified, “If you mean ‘pieces,’ I’ve written several hundred. A song features voice, a piece is instrumental.”

Now this could be taken as a condescending answer, but it does hold a lot of truth. In writing a song, there are many differences when compared to writing for an instrumental ensemble. You can’t approach it the same way.

Removing the meaning behind lyrics allows this association of vocals to song to be altered and approach a more instrumental format. This is where the soundtrack shines, and this is how the voice in the soundtrack is so haunting and appropriate.  

For the overwhelming majority of the soundtrack, you’re going to find primarily instrumental forms and writing techniques, but the voice is presented as the main melody instrument within this context. This would not be nearly as possible if the lyrics were in a set language, even if it wasn’t our native one. We aren’t used to hearing the voice in a musical context away from the song format, even if it’s in a language we don’t understand. This makes the voice in this case very haunting, because we aren’t familiar with it.

If you think about where “songs” are used in game music, they’re usually used for openings, cinematics, climatic scenes, or credits. They’re used sparingly, and this is because the literary association holds a ton of weight in the context of media. Anime is a great example of this. When an opening theme is presented at the very end in the actual episode, that’s always the most uplifting moment, the most climatic moment, or the fuck yeah moment. This is because you take material that everyone already associates with and present it in a new way. Using song format for climaxes is so effective because it’s different from what we’ve come to expect from the rest of the game and OST, which literally accompanies the definition of climax.

So. How many “songs” are there in Nier: Automata? There’s a few, but in the service of gameplay there’s one:  The Weight of the World. What’s the primary difference about this though? Well, there’s three different versions…

English, Japanese and the fictional language.

Weight of the World is also written differently too, it’s written in a very vocal form, with verses, choruses, bridges and literary meaning. There’s a couple of other songs in the soundtrack too, but they don’t hold the …weight that this song does. Sorry………bad pun.

This cements the fact to me that the voice used for the majority of Nier removes the association with being voice, and instead features voice to be a part of the soundtrack, part of the world, part of the lore.

When it clicked for me how simple everything involving voice in Nier seemed, my mind was absolutely blown. Making a language? Removing meaning? Allowing the voice to function as an instrument?  All so that they can get the exact feeling that they want in a soundtrack?

That is literally the coolest thing.

Another quick note, after researching, I found that sometimes the tracks in the game were rewritten or altered to better fit the vocals.  That’s how important the use of voice as the primary instrument was to this team.

There’s more than just this though. God there’s more.

One track I hear talked about all the time is the one that plays when the robot cult is committing mass suicide.  Before the track starts to play, the cult begins a menacing chant, “Become as gods. Become as gods.” This chant has a very rhythmic quality to it but is somewhat displaced to simulate a crowd chant.  Overtime as you regain control of 2B, instruments begin to enter, and music comes full swing. You begin your escape, but the chanting never stops. It’s quickly melded into the piece of music in the background.  If you listen to the OST, the chanting isn’t part of the track, meaning that it was added in as a rhythmic chant. This is a direct musical reference to what’s happening in the game and the story. And the crazy thing is that spoken language is used for the chant! Granted the robots speak English or Japanese, but finally your focus is drawn to “Become as gods. Become as gods.” However, after enough time the vocals fade to the back of your mind because it’s simply so repetitive. But on they chant. The game will not let you forget what’s happening in the scene. Robots are killing themselves, chanting their belief that if they die, they become gods. The vocal lines, the driving rhythmic strings and percussion, it’s all written to add to the insanity of the chant. This is remembered not only for the content, but the way that music and story are put together. It’s a very surreal and impactful scene, but without the chant of the suiciding robots, the piece used would in no way be so haunting.  

This soundtrack does so much good for video game music. These are pretty advanced techniques and conceptual ideas within music and composition, so how might we be able to apply this to our own writing and games? It’s definitely true that we can do something similar in our own music, we can find nonsense syllables, write music off of them, and present the voice in a similar way. Ideas are stolen all the time. I would be willing to bet that this has been done before multiple times. Nier probably stole the idea from someone else! Even I hope to do something like this someday! But I think the biggest take away from today’s topic is something I’m going to coin as “Impactful choice.”  

Our choices in design, plot, art and music hold weight. If we want to make a statement with our music, we need to make sure that our choices have impact and carry weight. Writing an original language for a game? That’s an impactful choice. Presenting voice in an instrumental context? That’s an impactful choice. Without a question in my mind, voice is the most expressive instrument, but it easily overpowers in the context of video game music. Removing the strength that voice holds through language, and writing tracks so that voice is featured, but not overpowering? That’s an impactful choice.

Every time we write music, we make choices. Finding new ways to present music through our choices that people haven’t heard is how we get music like in Nier: Automata. Understanding instrument choice and how to alter instruments to get the exact sound we want is an important first step. But it doesn’t stop there. See how far you can take an idea. The farther you go, the farther you can take people with you.

Making a choice that can influence the entire project can be daunting, and it can kill the project if the intuition is off. It’s a scary path to take.

But most success stories start with a risk.

Here’s some takeaways:

General

·        Nier: Automata removes implied literacy to help present the voice in an         instrumental format.

·        Story and gameplay can be blended with music to create unique tracks.

·        Songs have words, pieces don’t.

Developers

·        Your game carries weight. Capitalizing on the arts to add more meaningful  weight is essential.

·        Find ways to innovate outside and inside the box.

·        Success comes from risk.

Composers

·        Think about ways to use the expressiveness of the voice as a primary instrument without over powering the game.

·        Write songs for specific reasons in the game, not for the overall soundtrack.

·        When possible, find ways to integrate gameplay into music.

There’s a lot that can be taken away from this soundtrack, and it’s very possible that I’m going to revisit it in the future! The dystopian sound, the robot armies, the faction of androids that don’t know what they’re fighting for anymore. It’s definitely one of my top games from 2017.  

Music adds weight. In games, make it your world’s weight.

#nier automata #Nier #2b #9S #Video Games #Video Game Music #Indie music #music #voice #composer #composition #cinematic music #Yoko taro #Kylydian

[kylydian]

Breath of the Wild Soundtrack Analysis: Day 8

Big stone monster music go!

Track 10: Talus Battle

Genre: A little bit of everything…?

Featured Instruments: Piano, marimba, various sound effects, various percussion

Compositional Techniques: Minimalism, Sound Design

Takeaways at the end today!

Lowkey this is one of my favorite tracks in the game. Many of the techniques used in this track we’ve already talked about in the daytime battle music, so I’ll only be spending a short time with you again today. But there’s something about this track that I just really love: Connecting minor ideas to each other. But music wise? This is definitely one of the most fun tracks on the OST.

This track…much like all of the others in the game is about setting a feel. This track starts off with a few hits of a pickaxe, and it quickly rises up to a climatic point that’s accentuated by a quick choir note. This riser gives us an instant feeling of grandeur, as…well…it’s pretty grand that we’re fighting a huge stone monster (How does it even see!?) Something something a pickaxe references rocks, sound effects being in music. Blahblahblah. There’s a bit more to it this time.

So after this, we get to a small minimalistic section. We get this hard hitting, repeating marimba line. In fact, all of the percussion hits hard in this piece! Brass and percussion blast their way through playing quick lines of melody that accentuate what’s happening around them. It has an overall lumbering feeling. We could talk about how this sound is mimicking the movement of the Talus, but we’ve already talked about mirroring movement already with the guardians. And we’re looking for new connections. Not old ones.

Anyway, after this short section, we get led into a full, exciting, and honestly fun section. It’s like all instruments then join in in a harmony of working together. It’s a really cool sound, and almost reminiscent of a party to me. This lasts for only a few seconds until we get to a section of where different instruments trade sections with each other again.

There’s a lot happening the music, but let’s just go to the overall picture of what we’re going for today.

This track shares a lot in common with the Goron City track. Not necessarily in construction, but in instrumentation. This is intentional. Let’s find out why.

What are some instruments we get in this track? TONS of percussion instruments for one. Marimba, Steel Drums, Bass Drum, Timpani, etc. And then we also get some low brass such as trombones. Strings, and of course, piano. If we listen to the Goron City track, you’ll see that a lot of these instruments are used in that track as well.

The Gorons have always been known as rock eaters, and the Talus…well…is a rock monster. So naturally there’s some stuff thematically in common between the concept of Gorons and the Talus.

Imagine a Goron eating a Talus…..

Finally, you can encounter a different type of Talus around Death Mountain, you can find one that’s completely on fire. Which you could say further associates the boss with the concept of Gorons. There’s even fighting a giant one in lava as part of the Champion’s Ballad quest line.

This little connection is where the instrumentation plays in. We can further accentuate this based directly on the opening. Again, as a reminder, we start with a pickaxe, which has long been associated with working or breaking rock, and at the top of that initial riser, it’s accented by a choir. Singing…in case people have forgotten, has also long been associated with mining work.

…And what’s near Goron City?

A mine.

…What are Gorons doing?

…Mining.

What are you doing to the Talus? Mining the shit out of him. Chipping away at his health like a pickaxe would with rock.

See where I’m going with this? The sound effects from the pickaxe and choir are so minor, but they add so much to this piece.

With that said, the instrumentation again directly references Goron City because there’s a similar idea between the two. I’m not going so far as to say that the Talus is directly connected to the Gorons, but rather just a thematic connection.

Low brass often is used to depict slow movement and stumbling around. Even the show Family Guy had a cutaway gag on this. Both Gorons and the Talus have this kind of stumbling music. Percussion is used in a way to accentuate both tracks being in a mountainous region. We can tell this because all of the percussion hits are pretty hard. Most percussion instruments can be played with a wide variety of mallets or sticks. The hits in this track are all very striking, making an impact. It’s very clear that we’re looking at instrumentation that like a pickaxe, is looking to chip away.

Overall, this track is really cool, and really fun. I love this one, and it’s one of the ones I think might go unnoticed in the game in the grand scheme of things. With that said though, there’s only so much it does that’s different from like tracks. But the idea of connecting like ideas through music is one that simply can’t be ignored. Even though we might not notice it upfront, our subconscious matters.

Takeaways for Developers: Finding ways to connect subjects together, even if it’s only super subtly can be a way to provide a little bit of subconscious connection.

Takeaways for Composers: Reusing instrumentation for like areas/events can be good ways to make tracks that aren’t similar have just a little connection. This can provide just a little bit more meaning in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks for joining me guys. Next time, we move to a different fight.

#The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Breath of the Wild #BotW #Zelda #Nintendo #Zelda Music #Music #Game Music #Video Game Music #VGMusic #VGM #Video Games #Game Development #Game Developer #Game Composer #Composer #Indie game #Kylydian

[kylydian]

Breath of the Wild Soundtrack Analysis: Day 5

Sorry for the break guys! I was off at Game Developers Conference for a week or so. Definitely was the time of my life! Shout out to my Conference Associate family! 

Here we go back on track!

TWO tracks in one day? Oh man, it’s time for a double dose of Minimalist Impressions of Zelda Music!

Tracks 6 & 7: Riding (Day and Night)

Genre: Impressionism, Minimalism

Featured Instruments: Piano, Strings

Compositional Techniques: Pointillism, Thematic Usage

Takeaways for Composers: Hiding famous melodies in the middle of new content is a great way to get listeners to associate with and accept new genres.

Takeaways for Developers: Blending new and old within the context of music allows for easy, natural progression in game music.

I have to say, riding a horse is incredibly satisfying in Breath of the Wild. There’s something really awesome about finding a horse in the wild, taming it and finally riding off into the distance. You also get to name it.

What did I name mine?

Chad.

His name is Chad.

I hear these tracks talked about pretty frequently whenever conversation arises about Breath of the Wild’s music. And there’s definitely good reason for it. I mentioned previously in my Undertale post that people naturally associate with thematic material, and these two tracks are some of the only ones in the game to use traditional Zelda themes. But what’s really great about them is how they’re presented. Truly, it’s just a glimpse of the past.

We’re talking about both at once because the two tracks use the same ideas and don’t really deviate from each other. In fact, they’re kind of an extension of themselves. So rather than break them up, let’s keep them together.

In starting, let’s take a look at the instrumentation. We’ve only got two instruments, piano and strings. The piano plays pretty quick lines that are very Impressionistic in nature. The notes echo the style of intervals and feel used in the daytime field track covered in the past, just much quicker, providing a feeling of motion because…well…you’re riding a horse. However, this is also done through a pointillistic nature as well. The notes seem as if they’re picked at random, but in actuality they’re likely picked for timbre as well as melody. This is especially evident at the end of every piano line, where the notes jump around between different octave. It sounds random, but it’s very methodical.

Along with this though, we also have an element of heavy minimalism. If you remember from my post about the daytime battle music, Minimalism is a style of music that features heavy repetition with minor changes over time. The Battle theme used the entrances of various instruments to create the minimalist effect, but with these two tracks minimalism is used in a more traditional sense. Most phrases of the piano line repeat itself a few times, until finally only one or two notes change. 

The changes are incredibly small, and probably wouldn’t be easily noticed, especially in game. Overtime it changes more and more, until finally you have lines that are fairly different from the beginning but maintain the same feel overall.

However, the violin does something that is completely in opposition to this, but gels incredibly well. It plays a known melody from the Zelda series. It enters after many repetitions around halfway through the track, and it truly enters pretty quietly, and it’s gone as quickly as it entered. The melody used in the daytime track is Zelda’s Lullaby, and in the nighttime track it’s the main theme. It seems as if each melody is played much slower than that of the piano, but we’ll touch on that in a little bit. Once the melody is gone, the original piano lines continue until finally there’s a short closing segment to close out the piece.

Strings are used in this case probably for the fact that strings often carry melody in this soundtrack, and that piano and strings are known to be complimentary instruments.

Keep in mind that this is true across both tracks. Both tracks use the exact same ideas of Impressionism, Minimalism, thematic material. Both are structured the same way as well.

So, let’s talk about tempo, or speed of the pieces. Both are also around the same tempo, and in both it sounds like the strings are quite a bit slower than that of the piano. However, this isn’t entirely accurate. The tracks themselves aren’t that fast really. They’re hovering around 100 beats per minute. The reason for the discrepancy in feeling the tempo is in relation to the fact that there’s only two instruments. The piano is playing primarily sixteenth notes (Meaning that there’s four notes per beat) and eighth notes (Two notes per beat.) This means that the line feels as if it has more motion, even though the beat itself is only at a moderate pace. Normally we wouldn’t associate this line as being “fast” but we do because we only had one context for tempo at the beginning. This is marked even further by the fact that when the melody comes in it’s being played in longer held notes. These are at the same tempo, but feel as if it’s moving slower. This is augmented by the fact that these held notes are really held. Again, we wouldn’t really notice this to this extent if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s only two instruments and the one before it was only moving with quicker notes.

These two instruments and singular tempo in general provide us with two feelings. One is the feeling of riding a horse, and the other is exploring Hyrule, something that I’m sure most of us are already familiar with. But the small instrumentation again reflects the open yet sparse world, entirely different from everything we’ve come to know.

But the night time track does something different, something markedly different than the other track.

“But Kyle, the two sound identical!?!!”

Oh man. You’re right! And that’s why these two need to be looked at together. The opening line of the night time track is a different rhythm from what came in the daytime track. It’s an incredibly small change and you have to be listening for it. The notes and intervals are almost the same too. It’s really like they’re the same piece, but there’s just a small difference between how the first one ends (before the outro), and the second one begins.

That’s because the beginning of the second track is a minimalist change to the ending of the first track. Minimalism is a small change that should barely be noticed if even noticed at all. Same instrumentation, similar key, starting with a different rhythm and almost the same notes.

If these two tracks played back to back without stopping, this would be a post on only one track, and I wouldn’t be talking about a minimalist change between two tracks.

It’s really cool though. The fact that the composer used minimalism to continue the feeling of one track over to the next. Connecting similar ideas over two tracks to essentially make one cohesive track split in to two?

It’s absolutely brilliant.

One other thing. I want to bring up the fact that people seem to always bring up this track. In earlier posts, I had mentioned that there’s many people who don’t like the Breath of the Wild music. I think this has to do with the sparse scoring, and musical style somewhat, but I think it has more to do with the lack of thematic material. The fact that these tracks are some of the ones that people bring up first is evidence of that to me.

These tracks are more accessible because they have themes people already know. They aren’t necessarily the focal point, and in my opinion they’re background noise to the piano (I might be biased though because I’m a weird 20th century experimental music nut.) But regardless, I think tracks like these are important for this OST to make the other music approachable.

These two tracks are a good introduction to the type of music that the Breath of the Wild soundtrack is built around. Impressionism, Minimalism etc aren’t what I would call genres that are easily loved, so building themes and music that people already know and have emotional ties to is a great way to get the listeners’ ears wet to appreciate the rest of the soundtrack. In fact, it might have the effect of getting the player to listen more intently to the soundtrack to try to pick up other melodies they might hear.

And when writing game music that might not be as easily appreciated, finding ways to help people understand and appreciate the music is absolutely imperative. Blending old and new is a great way to do that.

What’s the break down? Are you asking what can I take away from all of this? It’s simple music, but there’s some great takeaways here.

For Composers: A lot of people might have a hard time adapting to new or unique musical styles. Find ways to blend the old and the new together to help people ease into musical change. Featuring lines that have different feelings of tempos is a great way to build motion and conflicting yet accentuating feelings.

For Developers: Push composers towards combining musical styles for a few tracks early in the game if you’re wanting to go with a progressive soundtrack. This will help players get acclimated to the newer style of music. “Fast” does not always mean fast when dealing with music. The quickness of individual lines does not necessarily indicate speed.

I love these tracks. They’re so simple yet hide great meaning for us as composers and developers. Next up is another personal favorite of mine. This one does some different stuff with traditional melodies, so we’ll talk reharmonization along with philosophy in the next installment.

#Zelda #The Legend of Zelda #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Breath of the Wild #Nintendo #Video Game #Video Game Music #VGM #Indie Dev #Game Developer #Video Game Developer #Video Game Development #Indie Music #Impressionism #Game Audio #Game Music #Kylydian

[kylydian]

Impressionism in Breath of the Wild

2017 was a year FULL of incredible soundtracks.  The amount of experimentation that occurred in game music this year was off the charts. Believe me, we’re going to be touching on all of these games eventually as there’s simply too much good information to pass up.  The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is probably my soundtrack of last year, and truthfully, it’s why I decided to start this musical journey.  Breath of the Wild does an insane amount of good for the video game world, but how does it do it?  And what inspiration does it draw from to do this?  Let’s talk about Impressionism to find out.

Let’s get a timeframe of this concept first.  Impressionism falls at a unique place in music history, and can be viewed from a few different perspectives on the timeline.  Many subscribe to the idea that it falls as an extension of the Romantic Era (Beethoven, Chopin, Mahler, Wagner etc) and took harmonic extremities of the time to a new level by doing (somewhat) away with common music theory practice in western music. Others view it as a kind of bridging the gap between modernism and classical music innovation of the 1900s.  But it could also be viewed as the start of modernist movement, as the Impressionists were trying to break away from the shackles of the common man’s music.  I like to think of it in this last way, even though the true answer is that it’s probably a combination. Regardless, there’s only two Impressionists in music history that we talk about: Ravel and Debussy.  Going even further, I’d even say that Ravel blurred the line between Romantic and Impressionist.

Again, I want to state that Impressionists were trying to break the shackles of music history.

So, what is impressionism?  The quickest explanation is that it’s painting pictures with music. Say that you want to paint a picture of a morning sunrise, what would it look like?  Well, it would look like a morning sunrise.  You’d be able to see it physically and say “Man, that’s a nice morning.”

This is what impressionists did with music.  They would write music that would describe locations, people, or ideas through music alone.  Using melody, harmony, rhythm and motifs they wrote music that was meant to describe something.  By saying this, it makes it sound like all video game music is impressionistic, but it’s important to note that’s not accurate.  Impressionism is more concerned with how the piece feels evocatively, rather than focusing on traditional music techniques.  There’s a very particular feel that impressionism seeks at all times.  It’s better to think of impressionist music asking ’Musically how does this feel?” rather than asking “How does this sound?”

So again, you’re probably a bit confused.  Video game music exists to accompany gameplay, so of course you’re going to write music to the feeling of scenes, characters, locations etc.  I would think of the separation in this context as impressionism describing experiences, while traditional video game music heightens experiences.  Music in video games is meant primarily to heighten the experience for the player.  

So. Zelda.

Zelda has a huge musical history of heightening player emotions through music. My god they have a practically non-stop touring orchestra that only plays Zelda music. The only other series I know that has this is Final Fantasy.  Zelda music has been written to accompany every aspect of gameplay and story, and people will fight tooth and nail on what their favorite track, OST, or musical cue is from the game.  From the huge sweeping orchestral scores, the beautiful melodies, and the implications behind them, it’s hard to argue against Zelda having some of the best video game music.  I can talk about any Zelda soundtrack and tell you why it works from a traditional music standpoint, but in the end the answer just boils down to a few things.

· Memorable themes.

· Emotional connection to gameplay

· It’s simply good music.

So, what does Breath of the Wild do?  It gets rid of a lot of themes, has silence for a lot of the soundtrack, and is considered by many to not be good music.

Damn.

So. Impressionism in Zelda.

Breath of the Wild reworked EVERYTHING about the Zelda series.  You’re given all of your tools in the beginning, you’re told to go kill Ganon instantly if you’d like, or you’re told to go in a direction.  But you don’t have to follow this.  You have an enormous landscape to explore that sprawls forever.  Gone is the world music, gone is the character music, gone is the Ocarina or other instruments. It’s just you and the wild.  Visually, no longer do you see a mountain off in the distance and ignore it as background information. Instead you might think “Oh. I can go there if I want.”  So, you go there in silence.  You start climbing the mountain, encounter snow that quickly turns into a winter veil.  And suddenly you realize that music has been playing for who knows how long.  The music is far in the background, almost as far back as the mountain was when you first noticed it.  There’s no singable melody, but it wouldn’t be called pure ambient music either.  This music isn’t accompanying what you’re doing, where you are or who you’re with. It doesn’t do any of that. Rather, if the mountain had naturally occurring music, what would that music be?

It would be the music of a mountain.

This is Impressionism in The Legend of Zelda:  Breath of the Wild.  It’s music that you can’t sing, music that you might not notice, but music that describes your experience.

Impressionism describes, themes heighten.

This is the exact experience I had when the soundtrack really clicked for me.  It’s music that entirely describes the Breath of the Wild experience.  On a mountain, what would you hear in nature?  Probably wind, snowstorms, footsteps, and animals among other things. As I mentioned in a previous post, sound can have musical qualities, but isn’t in and of itself music.  Music can be written through sound design, but these occurring sounds wouldn’t be music.  How would these sounds be translated into traditional music? I think the answer is through Impressionism.  The music at this point in the game was answering the question “What would the naturally occurring music on this mountain be?” And much of the soundtrack is structured around these ideas!  There are more traditional tracks in the game, but most of the environmental music is this way.

However, environmental music isn’t the only type of music that employs these techniques.  A couple of the battle themes use similar ideas too. Take for instance the Guardian music. It starts off with a very skittish piano solo, and then brings in some more instruments at seemingly random intervals. It occasionally has a full sound, and features many syncopated rhythms.  This is definitely battle music, but it doesn’t really feel like it accompanies battle.  I’ve heard many people describe this music as frightening, and I think that’s very accurate! Guardians are something that you don’t really know a lot about, and even late in the game they can kill you extremely easily.  Every time you encounter one of the large, quick ones, this frantic piano leads us into battle.  And the piano sounds scared, mirroring what you’re probably feeling and doing as you try to distance yourself from the guardian to form a plan of attack.  And throughout the track, it maintains a sense of fear, but the repeating piano starts to seem a bit braver as well and have staying power. The music appears to get more comfortable as you make it longer in a fight.  Which is really neat, because the longer you make it against a guardian, the better you know how to fight them and the higher your chance of victory, meaning that even though the fear of death is still there, you know you’re capable at that point. The music reflects on this feeling. There’s some other stuff that happens in this music, but we’ll talk about that at a later date.

The music is battle music, but in no way is it traditional.

The harmonies and melodies used by impressionists were very unique too, and in listening to the music, the compositions reflect this.  There’s long pauses between notes, harmonies move in parallel fifths or fourths at times, or there might only be a few notes.  Scales used are often non-traditional and often have no resolution.  

The Impressionism in Breath of the Wild has a strong impact on the overall game score.  There are definitely other examples of impressionism in game music, but I think this is one of the best.  I truly believe that a score like in the Zeldas of old simply wouldn’t work in this case.  Location specific music wouldn’t make sense in most places, and an abundance of character themes would clutter the score.  Even themes that represent feelings or emotions such as The Song of Healing, The Song of Time and The Song of Storms are absent.  A few of these unique mainstay themes are used at different moments in the score, but overall they’re replaced with short ideas or musical cues to represent the same feeling.

I believe that Impressionism has a huge, and mostly unexplored place in the video game music world.  Impressionist ideas shouldn’t be placed into every soundtrack, because the ideas won’t always fit.  But in making games that feature exploration, or games that have a lot of ambiguity, I think Impressionism is an excellent technique to provide a bit more wonder and uncertainty to the world.

This might have been a lot of confusing information, especially for non-musicians, so here’s a short breakdown.

For Developers

· Game music often heightens the experience for the player, Impressionist game music describes player experience.

· Impressionism is a powerful form of music used to evoke emotions, ideas or pictures through sound.

· Impressionist music can be used for both specific and non-specific location music, but I find it to be most effective for non-specific locations.

· Impressionism is best served alongside a world that allows the music to accompany the world, and the world to accompany the music.

For Composers

· As with any genre of music, the best way to understand is to listen.

· Look for locations in the game and score that can describe rather than accompany.

· Impressionistic cues can be especially powerful, and often shouldn’t sound out of place next to a more standard soundtrack.

· Experiment with scales and harmonies outside of the common practice period.

It’s important for both developers and composers to remember that if the music sounds right, it probably is right.  It’s hard to break molds of what we’ve already established, and that’s why we’re encountering a lot of backlash from much of the Zelda fanbase.  What these people don’t understand is that if we had a score similar to Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild wouldn’t make sense.  The gameplay, story, graphics and world design of Breath of the Wild are all very Impressionistic as well, so it only makes sense to have a soundtrack that partially follows in the steps of Debussy.  

This isn’t to say that Impressionism is the only style used in Breath of the Wild. We’ll be revisiting this game very frequently to explore other musical styles, and we might even do some analysis of the music at some point to find out specifics of what makes the music great.

#Nintendo #The Legend of Zelda #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Breath of the Wild #Video Games #Video Game Music #Indie Music #Impressionism #Indie Game #Game Developer #Video Game Composer #Composer #Kylydian

[kylydian]

Writing a Strong, Memorable Melody

It’s been a while!  Been constantly busy lately. A lot of new music projects coming up that I’m pretty excited for!  

I’ve got a bunch of posts queued up, but I’ve got a two part series coming your way. Melody and then loops. 

Here we go! 

Also, heads up. This is a long one. Get ready!

Music. It’s what we hear.

Melody. It’s what we sing.

That’s a big blanket statement, but in talking with people who literally know zero about music, this is how I’ll generally describe melody. More or less, it’s true that the melody would be the singable line, and if it’s not, it’ll be the line that is most likely the most prominent.  What makes a good melody, and what makes a good one in the context of video games? Do you always need a melody? I’m here to share my thoughts with you!

Just a heads up, this post is going to primarily be for composers, or those interested in the workings of music. There will be a developer take away at the end, but we’re here today for the construction of music. It also might be a bit long…as we’re dealing with a lot of information today. So, keep reading!

I’m often told in my composition that I have a very melodic way of writing, and that my melodies are generally very good. I don’t know if I agree with this necessarily, but I would agree that I approach composition from a very melody first perspective. In writing, people generally start with either harmony or melody, and sometimes to a lesser extent rhythm. None of these answers are right, but none of them are wrong either. There are plenty of great composers who write music from a harmony first perspective that are leagues better than I am. But what makes a good melody? What makes a melody bad? How might we approach the idea of melodies in games?

A good melody is very subjective, so we need to identify some objective qualities to start this off. In my opinion a good melody will have:

·        A Statement

·        Repetition

·        Variation

·        An Answer

·        A high note

·        A low note

·        A climax

·        A resolution

That’s a lot of stuff just for a melody! I should clarify that depending on the type of melody you’re writing, you’re going to use different amounts of these qualities, or maybe feature different qualities.  

Let’s talk about each of these so we’re on the same page. We’ll use a few different melodies throughout as examples.

Statement: A statement is the very first thing you say with your melody. For instance, the first line of “Happy Birthday” would be a statement. The statement is also the snippet that could most easily be used as leitmotif material or musical cues if necessary.

Repetition: Repetition is repeating any part of a melody, even if it’s at a different pitch. In this case, the repetition would be known as a sequence. Repetition allows us to get the opening segment or any important part of a melody stuck in the listener’s head. It’s very often that repetition will be found right after the opening statement. Following our example, singing the next line of Happy Birthday would be an instance of repetition when it’s sang after the opening statement, even though it goes up to a different pitch, it’s similar enough that this would be repetition/sequence.

Variation: Variation of a statement or another part of a melody is especially useful in my opinion. In varying the statement, you get similar material, while also providing new music to work with. Variation will usually be first introduced after the statement or the first repetition. For example, “Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear someone.”  This would be a variation of the original statement and repetition. It’s similar enough but provides new material so our ears don’t get tired.  

Answer: An answer is simply what would come after an initial statement or repetition.  It’s usually material that’s similar to the statement, but you could think of it as completing a statement.  A great example is “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as a statement and “How I wonder what you are?” as an answer. In addition, you could view the previous example of variation as an answer as well.  Either view point is correct!

Climax: A climax is self-explanatory, but in general will be the most intense part of a melody. This is usually done through the highest pitch in a phrase and will usually occur in the last part of a melody. A great example of a climax is in the American National Anthem “The Land of the Free.”

High Note: In relation to the climax, the high note should be the highest note of a melody, and there should only be one of this pitch. The high note provides a focal point for us to build to, and the high note should almost always occur in the climax section.  

Low Note: A low note is also exactly what it sounds like. It’s important to say that a low note, much like the high note should be lower than every other note in the melody. For example, if the lowest note in the main part of a melody is a D, then the “low note” should be an Eb or lower. This is to give a bit of a variation and point of focus for us. I believe the low note should occur in the later half of the melody, but truthfully it can appear anywhere.

Resolution: After the climax should come the resolution, or where you bring the melody back to a similar place where it started. I like making the resolution either be an answer to the climax, or a reference to the opening statement, but truthfully there are many correct ways to write a resolution. A resolution can also lead to the following section.

At the beginning of your melody is your first statement, or the very first thing that you say. After this, you have a couple choices, you can either go for a repetition of the statement, either at the same pitches, higher/lower, or you can create a continuation/variation of the statement. During this continuation/variation/repetition, you create more or less intensity, before you return to a similar feeling as the beginning. At the beginning of measure five you have a couple options, you can either use the statement again, or you can create an answer to the statement. An answer should be different, but hold similar qualities as the statement. From this, you build the melody to a climax, and after the climax, you bring it back down to relax the feeling, then you either leave it down there, or bring it back up home.  

After your initial melody, you have a couple options, you can either repeat the same melody again, repeat the melody again with more variation, or continue with a new idea. For me, what I do is really up to the style that I’m writing in.

Again, it’s important to note that this shape of melody will not and should not occur 100% of the time. This is just a general guideline to provide an example. In addition, a climax does not always have to be related to pitch, it’s just that it most often will be. It’s also possible that a low note could be your climax, and your least intense section could contain the highest note.

This was an example with two phrases, but you could also structure this in many other ways within the span of eight bars. For instance, the melody could be in four, two bar phrases. In a case like this, you would probably repeat the statement two times, then you would write an answer and climax on the third and bring it back in on the fourth. For eight measures, it would simply be a longer format!

You can expand this out to a full 16 measures or however many you need as well, just double the numbers of everything involved!  

I don’t approach every melody in measuring the numbers of bars, but I find this technique to be incredibly effective for loops, which is a lot of what we write as video game composers.

Even when I follow these guidelines, I frequently still write bad melodies. There isn’t a golden formula to writing a good melody, just things we can be aware of.

One of the best exercises I’ve ever seen done was in a master class with Marty O’Donnel of Halo fame. He talked a lot about the music he wrote and the concepts behind his music. At one point, he talked about writing a good melody, and said that the best way to learn what makes a melody good is to alter an already great melody to make it bad. He did this example with “Yesterday” written by Paul McCartney. He took much of what made this melody good, the chromaticism, the repetition, the variation etc, and completely removed it. It turned into something that was essentially a major scale with a couple of skips. While I won’t do this exercise for the sake of your time, feel free to do it yourself. Take a melody that you think is really good, and change a couple notes, a couple rhythms, and make it bad. This is one of the quickest ways for us to learn about the inner workings of melody.

But other than this, what might we be able to think of when writing our own?  

Like many people, my first go to when writing a melody is to plunk away at the piano or play my saxophone until I play something that I like. When I strike a good statement, I begin adding the above qualities to it, and see if anything comes out of that fragment. Sometimes I get something usable, and many times I don’t. Other times I just feel like I can’t write music to save my life, so I have to start approaching melody from a different perspective.  

I mentioned before that I’m a melody first type of dude, but sometimes I like to combine the practice of writing harmony and melody together. Whatever time signature I’m in, I start by writing one held note per measure, and I find an implied melodic and harmonic structure that I think sounds good. After this, I add one note, usually a quarter note to connect the pitches, but sometimes a half or an eighth note, and I’ll put the same rhythm or a variation of it in every measure that I had previously written. This extra note alone makes the previous statement much more interesting. After this, I’ll start to add either another note, or change the rhythm that I had previously written. I do this for every measure. Then I do this again, and again until I have a good melody. I make sure to always have some kind of landing on the original note I had written for each measure, but slowly I tend to get a very usable melody this way. All the while, I make sure to incorporate the aspects I included above about a good melody.  

This provides a bit more direction than just messing around on my instrument until something comes from it.

In addition, some other things that I think about when writing melodies include:

·        The use of non-chord tones

·        Not losing momentum of the melody even on held notes

·        How the melody might be able to be used in the future

·        How I could vary the melody in future iterations.

A quick run down of these items since I’m getting long winded. Using non-chord tones adds interest to a melody that might not have been there otherwise. These however should not be included if they distract from the overall melodic idea. In keeping momentum, I generally keep moving harmony, or a driving/building rhythm behind held notes if the melody is not moving. I think about the implications of melodies in the overall picture and keep lists of how I might want to use them in the future. Finally, for future iterations of the melody, I think about how I could vary them, even in the second statement if there is one.    

This is a lot of information, and I could keep talking about it forever, but let’s transition to how this applies to video games.

We’ve talked about melodies in games already, and how they apply to themes. But good singable melodies are important for video games because it provides the musical glue to focus our auditory attention on. It’s true that we don’t always need melody, more rhythmic tracks are often important, but in general the video game music that you and I both remember feature strong, memorable melodies. The thing about video game melodies though that other mediums don’t have to worry about as much however, is the concept of loops.  

Loops are a very prominent form of video game music, essentially meaning that the music is going to repeat at some point, usually at the beginning, or after an intro.  Loops are generally between one and a half to three minutes, so if you’re in a level that takes you fifteen minutes to complete, that means you’re going to hear the loop 5-10 times. This in turn means that the player is going to hear the melodies often double that amount in the course of a level! So, what does this mean for the melody? In no way whatsoever should the melody ever get tiresome.

This is so important in writing loops I can’t stress it enough. Your melodies need to be structured for loops so that they don’t get tiring no matter how long they’re played for. This is a delicate balance of making sure the melody is both at the forefront and in the background. I have a few strategies to write strong loops, so we’ll save that for the following post.  Right now, the best advice I have for writing loops is to listen to what you write. And I mean critically listen to them. This is my step by step process of when I write loops.

·        As I’m writing the music, I play it on repeat in the background while I take             breaks

·        I finish the piece of music, and I listen to it for at least 2 hours that same               day.  

·        I listen to it once the following morning.  

·        I listen to it for another hour later in the day.

·        I listen to it before I go to bed that day.

·        The next couple weeks, I put it in my phone and listen to it a few times a day as I drive to and from work or game events.

·        If I ever get tired of the loop at any point, I change something about it.  

I do this for every loop that I write.

The way that I view this process, is if I ever get tired of my music, then other people will get tired of my music faster. If I don’t get tired of my music, then the chances of people getting tired of my music are lower. Not gone. Just lower. Loops that get tiring are likely too busy, or too complicated. It’s best to find ways to hide the complexity through other aspects such as harmony or rhythm if you run into this problem. But it’s so important to make sure to listen to what we write critically.

As I mentioned before, sometimes it’s best that we don’t use melodies, and instead feature rhythmic or harmonic movement. I don’t have advice on when to employ more harmonic or rhythmic tracks, as that’s very much up to the team and individual. But I will say that an important reason that you should consider adding tracks along these lines is to avoid auditory exhaustion. Much like we can get tired from looking at similar scenery, we also get tired of hearing the same things. Take the initiative to not make your soundtracks repetitive!

Writing good melodies is the first step to writing great music. Get good at writing melodies, and so much else will start to fall in line. In the next post, we’ll take a more in depth look at forms in music, and how we might be able to use musical forms to help us write good loops.

Also, if you managed to stay with me for this entire time, congrats! I had a hard time staying involved in editing this one myself...

#Music #Classical Music #Melody #Video Game Music #Composer #Video Game Composer #VGM #Kylydian #Loops #Game Audio #Game Dev #Game Developer #Game Development #Video Game Developer #Game Music #Indie Music #Indie Game

[kylydian]

Here’s a new track I just finished! I promise I haven’t forgotten about my blog posts, just still been insanely busy! Also might have some exciting things to talk about in the nearish future! :)

#SoundCloud #music #Kylydian #Video Game #Electronic #Dance #EDM

[kylydian]

Breath of the Wild: Soundtrack Analysis Day 1

As I was listening to the Breath of the Wild soundtrack again, I started thinking to myself, that I should do an individual analysis of every track, exploring what each piece does to make this soundtrack special. In most tracks, there’s so much that we can learn from conceptually, musically and philosophically.

I said we’d be coming back to BoTW in the future, and I was originally thinking about taking more time before revisiting it. But upon thinking about it more, I think it’s best to strike when the iron is hot. We’ll actually start this examination with track 2, as the first track does some really really really awesome things, but to fully appreciate what the main theme does we need to go through every track in the game first. No joke.  We have to talk about everyyyyyything else first. So, for these posts I’m going to do a brief summary to organize thoughts and prep you to be on the same page as me.

Let’s get wild.

Track 2: Field (Day)

Genre: Impressionism

Featured Instrument: Piano

Compositional Techniques: Pointillism & Silence

Takeaways for Composers: Don’t be afraid of silence. Experiment with tone color.

Takeaways for Developers: Sparse music can be great for open worlds.

Simply titled “Field,” the first track we’re looking at is truly the heart of the Impressionist style that I had talked about before. If you need a refresher, feel free to go back and check that out, as it will set a good base knowledge to expand on this topic.

This track is the epitome of music in BoTW. And it’s simply used for…well, the field during the day.  The music is incredibly sparse, full of little motifs that seem connected, but only by composer intention, and they’re are gone before they can be comprehended. The harmonies are definitely non-traditional, and have a lot of fifths, fourths, and seconds. These harmonies are very definitive of Impressionism, as is the motivic development that seems as if it’s trying to describe feeling rather than doing.

The feeling in this case is exploring a huge, vast world that’s full of life, but at the same time needs to be fully traversed. The world is truly open-ended, and the music reflects this.  You hear a lot of silence between motives, because if music was playing the entire time it simply wouldn’t make sense with the sparse but dense world. There’s a vast feeling to the breathing world, so in turn the music needs to breathe as well for the player. Tension is added through the harmonies, almost based on feeling, but because the harmonies and ideas are so fleeting, they’re never distracting. It’s almost as if music is playing without having it be present. This relates directly to what I talked about with music being written to scenery. “Field” is music that could be naturally occurring in the soundscape of Breath of the Wild, and it accomplishes this through the use of harmony, and silence.

However, there’s more techniques being used here than just harmony and silence. Composition wise, the piece uses a style of composition known as “Pointillism.” Pointillism is a style of writing that was prominent somewhat during the Impressionist era, but often was employed by later composers in it’s truest form during the stages of expressionism and total control.

The idea of musical pointillism is taken from visual art, where paintings are created with individual dots. In a musical fashion, melodies and to a lesser extent harmony, are created with individual notes spread across registers, or instrument tones. This gives a very skittish feeling to the music, as it’s hard to focus your attention in one place. It’s not used enough to say “This was a pointillist composer” much like you could say Debussy was an Impressionist composer, but rather it’s a style of composition that was used to convey feelings and ideas. Much like the art of Impressionism itself.

Pointillism is used here in a couple ways. There’s a few instances of where the melody skips around registers. Piano is one of the most effective instruments to use pointillism, as it’s arguably the instrument that sounds the most one with itself across registers. In this track we only have piano, and occasionally it does seem as if notes are dotting the landscape of not only the music, but the field of gameplay as well. However, traditional pointillism isn’t used too often in this track, and only occasionally for what could be considered very large melodic leaps. Overall the focus of the music is on the contrast between open and tight knit harmonies, as well as the silence.

That’s why I would argue that there’s another type of pointillism used compositionally in this piece, and god it’s going to sound redundant. But it’s actually the use of music.

I swear it doesn’t sound like I know what I’m talking about sometimes.

The melodic fragments of this piece never really sound complete, they’re fragments of ideas that are loosely connected by feel. There’s long periods of silence. It’s not as noticeable during gameplay, but when you just listen to the track away from gameplay, it’s very evident that these instances of silence are long. When the music comes in, it’s a welcomed type of relaxation. This is why I would say that the use of music in this track is pointillistic. It’s pointillism simply by composition. Every time that a new fragment enters, we’re treated to an instance of pointillism simply because each cell exists by itself.

That’s not normal, but it’s really cool.

The different cells often focus on a different type of harmony, quartal/quintal or secundal. Some are more melodic, while others are essentially just chords. This further heightens the idea that each fragment exists on its own, but transitions into the next. Regardless of the type of harmony though, this means that the emphasis of harmony is meant to seek a specific tone color for each phrase. The piano is a very homogenous instrument, and the use of tone color capitalizes on this. We go back and forth compositionally between tension and release of the harmony, and oftentimes the release of the harmony is open fourths or fifths, which is the most ambiguous harmony, since there’s no tension, nor major/minor denomination. This is pretty common Impressionistic writing and serves to provide subconscious musical context to the world already marked by Impressionism.

The music leaves us relaxed and is as sparse as the world we’re exploring. But it’s marked by pointillistic points of interest, much like the world. This is music that’s truly a musical representation of the field during the day. It’s exploration music, and music that fully explores and captures the feeling of the wild.

Revisiting the points of interest at the beginning.

For Composers:

Silence is a powerful motivator in music. When used properly it can push emotions to new heights simply because the player is wanting music. Take the player to the point of where they start to find the silence uncomfortable, then take them just a little further before you bring music back for maximum effect.

In writing Impressionism or any genre of music, experiment with tone color between instruments and intervals. There’s a lot that can be said by the color of harmony. Oftentimes this will stray away from traditional harmony, and that’s okay. Push boundaries, don’t fall into routines.

For Developers:

As said in my earlier post, huge, open, sparse worlds excel with sparse music. The music should accompany the world, and the world should accompany the music. If there’s a vast landscape ahead of the player, take advantage of that in your music. Make your players want music, make them revel in silence. Find ways through the addition and subtraction of music to keep them subconsciously engaged.

Conclusion

As said in the previous post, much about Breath of the Wild as a game as well as musically is Impressionistic. This track is in my mind the basis for creating this sense of Impressionism, as it’s likely one of the first ones we hear. It preps our ears for everything to come, and honestly that might be part of the reason it’s so different as well.

There’s so much great information just to be gained from this one short track. These ideas can be applied across a wide variety of genres, instruments and games. The great thing about this information though?

There’s 23 more tracks to go on the OST.

We’re just getting started.

#The Legend of Zelda #Zelda #Breath of the Wild #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Nintendo #Video Game Music #Music #Impressionism #Pointillism #VGM #Kylydian #Game Development #Game Developer #Composer #indie dev #indie muisc #new music #new ideas

[kylydian]

Music: To Theory, or Not to Theory?

Taking a post or two break from my Zelda series! 

Disclaimer: Normally my posts are for musicians and developers, but this post is centered on those with music knowledge.

For those of you joining me for the first time, a lot of this is going to focus around music theory in a video game music setting. This is a different story when dealing with a lot of strictly classical performance music.

Something I hear a lot among game developers is how “Well I do everything except music and sound.”

Something I hear a lot among composers is “Well I do everything except music theory.”

Sticking my nose up in the air a bit, to a college trained classical musician such as myself, my first reaction is always “Well of course you do.” So I should provide a little bit of background on where this initial reaction comes from.

I had a really strong theory background in college. And I mean really strong. Other than counterpoint (which I was never good at…still working on it…) I more or less have theory down. This is because at my state college, the theory courses that were offered were equivalent to master’s level theory at some conservatories. No joke. I often ask people who went to other colleges for reference, and often I hear they never learned about how to resolve Neopolitan 6th chords correctly, or never had to think about writing fugues, or write correctly formatted 12 tone pieces using Babbitt Squares. We really went all out in my program.

So here I am and I’m like “Pssssssshhhh game music needs theory duh.”

But really, this probably isn’t true.

Well, it is. But it..more so isn’t.

Let me explain.

The common complaint I hear against music theory is that it stifles creativity. Which I do understand that complaint. You can find arguments for this throughout music history, especially as we head into modernism. But the interesting thing is, very little music actually does completely away with music theory. Overtime people who had a problem with theory never really abandoned it, rather they pushed it. They extended out chords, the increased the frequency of borrowed chords, they found new ways to tonicize notes. But this still all within the confines of traditional music theory, and honestly it expanded our concept of music theory today.

So, theory didn’t really stifle creativity in this case, rather they adapted theory to fit their creativity. Which in and of itself is a creative process.

That’s some meta-creating.

But still, this complaint is said frequently. And I do understand it. There’s something to be said about playing whatever you want on your instrument while not having to worry about voice leading, or augmented seconds, or making sure that you’re doubling correctly in second inversion. This can lead to more “natural” music.

I argue this though It cannot be denied that music theory is based in the science of understanding why things sound good. This means that a knowledge of music theory can help you. So why would you ignore something that can help you? Many famous composers don’t know music theory, and they take pride in it sometimes! But why? To me it almost seems as if it’s kind of a “I made it without doing it the traditional way type of thing.”

However, again let’s focus on the argument that it stifles musical creativity. Because of this argument, oftentimes I will ignore traditional music theory. I’ll sometimes forget about using inversions simply because I love that solid feel you get from root position chords. I love parallel fourths and fifths. I’m of the weird mindset that they provide a unique otherworldly sound to music frequently, so often when I write and I accidently put in parallel fifths, I’ll leave them in. I’ll write melodies not worried about major or minor, or I’ll mix modes frequently, or even throw in seemingly random notes just to add a bit of variety to my music. This though naturally will lead to some issues in writing music.

I don’t write this sporadically at all times, and it does depend on what I’m writing for. Oftentimes I follow theory conventions from the start. But in these cases of seeming randomness, here’s where theory can come in for me.

If something doesn’t sound right, go through and do a roman numeral analysis. This will show you your progression, your non chord tones, and give you a visual representation of your music.  A clearer picture of what sounds wrong and how to fix it. Just the other day when I was chaining secondary chords together which isn’t too common, and found that something sounded off, so I analyzed my progression and saw that I had accidently written a V/vi when I meant to have a V/iii. It’s a simple mistake, that I was able to correct and fix easily because of my knowledge of theory.

I think when writing video game music especially, this retroactive use of music theory really shines. It allows us to not be “stifled by creativity”, but allows us to ensure things sound good from a theoretical music perspective.

Other than this, another common complain I hear frequently is learning theory is too difficult. And I promise it isn’t that bad, especially with a basic knowledge of music already. It’s just applying information you know in a different way. And honestly, I do think there is a stopping point. You don’t need a huge knowledge of theory, but even a little can go a long way.

If anything, learn to read notation. This can help you in so many ways we would be in this post for the rest of my lifetime.

But in writing music, a basic understanding of music theory will allow you to subconsciously use it while not stifling your creativity. And if it does stifle it for some reason, feel free to expand your concept of what theory is. Sure you might not be Debussy or Wagner, but you too are a creative.

To sum, no I don’t think music theory is necessary. There are soooooooo many better musicians out there than me who can’t even read music. But again, I raise the question, why would you avoid something that can only help you? It’s a handy reference guide for when things aren’t going your way, and the time put into studying theory will help rise you to greater heights than you could have otherwise.

#Music #Music Theory #Video Game Music #VGM #Game Audio #Classical Music #Composer #Kylydian

[kylydian]

Breath of the Wild Soundtrack Analysis: Day 7

*insert crazy piano solo*

“RUN IT’S A GUARDIAN!!!!!”

Yeah…if you’ve been reading these posts for a while now…you already know that’s the part I’m least impressed with. Let’s talk about dance music today. Specifically waltzes.

I’m not kidding. It takes two to waltz, so join me on this journey. Let’s go!

Track 9: Guardian Battle

Genre: Waltz

Featured Instruments: Piano, Strings, Synths, A lot of other stuff

Compositional Techniques: Minimalism

Takeaways for Developers: All music within a certain context does not need to be what people expect for them to like it.

Takeaways for Composers: There’s room for all styles of music for any situation. Finding these unique opportunities allows for new musical experiences.

In my very first post about Breath of the Wild back when I first started this blog, I talked really briefly about this track, and it all definitely applies still. But today we’re gonna go much deeper.

Originally, we talked about the piano solo, a sense of fear and the staying power of the music in relation to battle. So really quickly, let’s review.

The piano solo that everyone always talks about is truly a good piano solo and is brilliant writing, but it’s only around for a couple seconds then it disappears. This first solo I described as “skittish” and establishing a sense of fear. This still holds true. The skittishness mirrors the movement of these large guardians, which in contrast to their smaller counterparts, is very sporadic and unpredictable. The piano brings to mind instantly that these are enemies that can kill us with one hit, maybe two if we’re geared well. And after this, you get a lot of repetition, which we’ve come to know as minimalism in certain settings.

If you’re joining us for the first time now, Minimalism is a technique that features repetition in music with incredibly minor changes overtime. But I wouldn’t label this piece minimalist in genre necessarily. Rather it uses minimalist ideas instead of building a minimalist piece. I don’t think it features enough variation to warrant the genre being minimalism.

Regardless, this repetition gives us staying power, and overtime it begins to sound a little hopeful. As this unsettling rhythm begins to fall to the back of your mind it’s likely to instill a sense of bravery.

Okay review done!

So, how does the music accomplish this? This track is pretty different in structure to other battle music in Breath of the Wild, even when compared to the shrine battle music. Again, we need to focus on the visuals to start our discussion.

This has a much thicker sound to it. The natural reason for this would be because this guardian is bigger….? Right?

Nah, it has more to do with the strength and fear factor of the enemy, and the fact that it’s much harder to fight fairly. You’re likely to have your shield up, hoping to get that laser reflection. The two of you will probably be circling around each other, looking for an opening. You’ll be doing this dance for a while, especially if you don’t know how to fight them.

And there we are. To me this fight is a bit like a dance. And the music? Well, as I’ve said a few times now, the music is a traditional waltz, although it doesn’t sound like it at first pass.

So, lets break away a bit from Zelda to talk about exactly what a waltz is. If you have a broad knowledge of music, you’ll likely know that a waltz is a piece of music with a feeling of three. Specifically, this is 3/4 time, meaning that for every bar (segment) of music, there’s three beats. Normally you feel this time in three beats (duh), but waltzes are generally felt in one because they’re usually at a pretty brisk pace. You’ll feel a very strong beat first, where the notes that come after feel more relaxed, or maybe floating away. Then right away you’ll feel that strong beat again. If you were to say, “One two three one two three one two three.” Putting a small emphasis on the bolded “one” you would now be saying a basic waltz feel. The dance is marked by this strong initial beat.

So, let’s look back over to the track in question. Immediately after the piano solo, this really synth heavy rhythm enters that’s honestly a bit hard to figure out. It might be tough to grasp hold of the rhythm or feel of it, but we do know one thing immediately. There’s a strong accented beat from a kick drum. If we focus in on this, we can find the primary beat pretty easily.

Boom..Boom..Boom.

And in between these strong beats, we get two more notes that feel lighter, that are harder to notice.

Bah dah. Bah dah. Bah dah.

Occasionally the dah part has an extra note in it, but never makes the rhythm feel longer.

Bah dah. Bah dah. Bah dahdaht.  

Let’s put it all together.

Boom bah dah. Boom bah dah. Boom bah dah. Boom bah dahdaht. Boom bah dah…….

Remember, that each bolded word gets a bit of emphasis, and the others feel a bit lighter.

This is the basic feel right after the piano solo, and is the staying rhythm of the entire piece. This is a waltz feel, and it’s incredibly easy to miss not only in gameplay, but listening to the track as well. The music is very hectic, and honestly this rhythm does not have a lot of time to get established before your attention is yanked away. But no matter what enters, this “Boom bah dah” is what has the staying power previously mentioned.

As a waltz, this feeling directly mimics the idea of a human squaring off against a huge mechanical monster dancing together in combat. Waltzes take two to dance. The instrumentation used as well as rhythmic variance makes it hard to notice the waltz, almost like it’s lopsided. It mirrors the movement of the guardian, but not necessarily Link. Overtime though, this rhythm falls to the back of your mind, and it becomes not as noticeable. Now you’re likely feeling like you’ve got a chance.

Now you’re dancing in battle together.

With that said, this isn’t all that’s happening. Over this waltz feeling we’ve got a melody on solo violin. This is an agitated melody, one that feels skittish just like the piano solo, but has a bit more reason. This feels as if it’s in a different time in comparison to the waltz, and it almost feels like a melody that you would hear in a tango, a different type of dance. However, it fits perfectly into the time if you listen closely, and there are many things that this melody could be considered to represent.

Me? Well, I think it’s neat to think of it as Link. Dancing to a different beat, but still within the boundaries set by his opponent.

Overtime, this staying power turns into something entirely different. Here we get remnants of the piano solo, the waltz beat, different rhythms, and honestly a lot of different ideas all coming at once. It’s like all of the ideas are coming together for a brief moment. And just like that…it’s gone. You’re back to the death waltz again. But this time the waltz isn’t a thing of fear. I find it more a waltz of courage.

You’ve survived this long. Maybe you’ve got a shot.

So, what does this talk of dances, movement, music, sound, and melodies all mean?

It’s about establishing a unique, appropriate, yet contrasting feel to music. Guardian fights are different from every other encounter in the game. And they’re drastically different. They were made to be different from the very first footage of Breath of the Wild. If you were watching the game awards like I was, seeing a huge robotic, futuristic enemy come out of nowhere randomly shooting lasers was one of the coolest yet most jarring things I’ve ever seen in Zelda. From the beginning, guardians were made to be different. The music has to accompany this. As we’ve already talked about, the other battle music in the game does things differently as well, but they all share similar ideas (As we’ll talk about in the next post.) Generally, you’re fighting one enemy in guardian fights. In a game where most enemies move in groups, that singular enemy is a variance.

That enemy is your dance partner. Let the music accentuate that.  

Let’s break it down.

…did that turn into a dance pun this time?

Takeaways for Developers: Find moments in your game that you want to have a distinct feel, and let composers know when you need sections to have a different sound. Music impacts gameplay and player emotions even if we don’t notice it.

Takeaways for Composers: All musical styles have a purpose in games. Keep in mind situations and differences in gameplay and characters. Capitalize on these ideas to not only provide fitting music, but variance in your score as well as gameplay.

All music has a place in games at some point or another. Break expectations, smash boundaries and find ways to make something new, especially if we’re wanting to stand out.

Next time, we fight a different battle.

#Zelda #The Legend of Zelda #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Nintendno #Video Game #Video Games #video game music #VGM #VGMusic #Indie Developer #Game Developer #Game Development #Waltz #Link #Game Music #Music #Kylydian

[kylydian]

Music and Cross Art Discipline in Games: Bridging the Gap

Video games take a lot of different artistic disciplines and make something cohesive.  That might have been the most redundant statement I’ve ever said... In video games, you have developers, writers, artists, composers, sound designers, modelers, marketers and oh so many people who add artistic direction to the vision. Many times, these disciplines come together to create something amazing, but so many times does it feel that music is just added on top.  I believe that the music of a game should encompass all that a game is, and that the game should also encompass all that the music is.  The same could be said about the art and music, or art and game, or story and music, or any combination of disciplines!  The game wouldn’t exist without the art, so likewise should the game not exist without music or purposeful lack of music.

Now I just sound pretentious….

Artistic disciplines have been combined for millennia, most notably through dance, drama, and music, but now have expanded to encompass all art forms within the last couple centuries. However, video games are an extremely new medium in the annuals of time.  So often do you play a game that has good music, but has music that simply exists.  While this music may be great, all too often does it fall back in our mind as we dismiss the soundtrack.  But what about the great soundtracks?  Why do we remember soundtracks that are deemed incredible?  I’m of the belief that we remember these because they present music as being equal to everything else in the game.  It’s almost like the music is so present that it’s fighting the art, sound, story and the game itself, while also working together with them to make a better product.  

So how do we achieve these seemingly effortless mergers of the arts like you see in Super Mario Galaxy, Nier Automata and Persona 5?  There’s many ways to do this, but I think most people’s gut response would be through trial and error.  Don’t get me wrong, trial and error are part of it.  But I think there’s something more.  Something less obvious.  You can understand art without actually understanding it.  In cases like this, if we look on the surface we’re already dooming ourselves to the same monotony that so many other games fall into musically. I think the answer lies in understanding each other.  

As composers, we have an idea of where we want music to fall in the spectrum of a project, but developers also have an idea about this.  We need to understand the visions of developers, and where our music falls in a creation mindset within the world we’re creating.  However, this is pretty obvious.  We’re hired to help bring a vision to life.  The key to a breakthrough is that developers also need to understand the vision of the composer.  Composers have an idea of how a game is going to sound, and there needs to be a supportive back and forth between dev and composer, between dev and artist, and even between composer and artist.  Everyone needs to have the same vision.

There’s an incredible GDC talk from Mick Gordon, the composer of the 2016 reboot of Doom that describes this relationship much better than I ever could. 

To summarize it briefly, Gordon was presented with a very clear, but impossible vision.  The vision was so clear that he realized he needed to approach the entire project from a different angle.  When he originally thought he found the answer, he was told that his unique idea wasn’t good enough, but that he was on the right track and to keep trying.  This instantly validated the work, the person, and the vision while also allowing the developers to say that this wasn’t what they had in mind.  He went back to the drawing board and found the answer to the “Doom Instrument” that is heavily featured in the game.  In turn, the sound team said they didn’t want guitars in the soundtrack.  Slowly Gordon began to implement guitars into the soundtrack, telling them, “Guys this is Doom. You need guitars.”  He also had a vision of what the soundtrack needed to sound like. This is a perfect example of composer, developer, and the sound team working together to create something that was truly fitting.  The soundtrack to Doom 2016 was one of the most appropriate soundtracks in recent memory, and it wasn’t only because it was metal as fuck. The different teams worked together, and continuously verified each other work.  To make a cohesive game across the arts, taking the time to understand each other’s vision is absolutely imperative.  

The visual arts tend to not struggle as much in communicating.  Don’t get me wrong, it still happens all the time.  But if you think about the amount of times an average person looks at something critically versus listens to something critically you’ll notice there’s a huge difference in frequency.  If developers don’t like a model or a piece of art, they’re going to easily be able to say “Hey, I wasn’t really thinking that for the claw. I was thinking more of a tiger claw instead of a bear.” As humans, we pass visual criticism all the time, doing so somewhat accurately, even without a direct understanding of visual art.  That’s because it’s normal to us.  For music and sound though, not everyone is equipped with this skill set. Most people have preferences on music, and can tell if they like or don’t like a piece. But if a developer doesn’t like a track we write, it’s all too common to hear back “I don’t like this, I don’t know what it is, but something needs to change.” And as musicians we’re sitting here and are asking ourselves “Oh god. What did we do wrong? Was the melody bad? Maybe the harmony was repetitive? No that can’t be it, the harmony was pretty varied. Maybe the mix was unbalanced?  Did they not like the use of trombone over a more traditional string melody?”  And we have no idea what to fix or how to make our client happy.  Often when I reply back to responses like this, I’m greeted with something like “I don’t really know how to describe it. It was a little low.”

“What was a little low? Was the bass too soft? Should the melody be higher? Do I need to put it in a higher key?” Our thoughts race again, until we ask:

“What do you mean by ‘a little low’?”

“I don’t know, you’re the composer.”

This is so counterproductive.

When talking with developers, I find it very beneficial to set up some key terms about music that make communication much more effective.  These can vary from vocabulary terms, musical ideas, instruments, genres, or literally anything about music.  I’ll generally try to establish different key terms depending on the project, because each one is different.  

The situation presented above might have been prevented if we took the time to talk with the developers to find a mutual understanding about music.  If we had done this, the first time they might have been able to say “Hey, I thought that the lowest bass instrument was pitched too low. Could you maybe bring that up a bit?” This is much easier for us as musicians to understand.  By this we instantly know that that our lowest instrument was too low in pitch, and that we might need to bring it up an octave.  Obviously, this still isn’t too specific for composers, but we now know what the problem is, and we can devise a plan to fix it.  

And granted, sometimes I don’t have to do this!  One thing I really liked, was about a month ago someone I’m working with told me “I’d really like it if we could begin to implement some leitmotif ideas into this track.”

Bam.  That’s a winner right there.

But just imagine what would have happened if the developer didn’t know how to articulate this.  I don’t want to think about it…

And this same kind of tactic can be employed with all types of disciplines within the game industry. The music should compliment all other forms of art in a game.  When possible, I like to run the music by everyone in the team to get their opinions. There’s going to be one person who has the final say, but if everyone is aware of what you’re doing, I think it’s beneficial for the entire team.

I try to start writing music only after I see visual art for what it is I’m writing for, and a plot summary for the game or scene.  I can’t do this at all times, but I feel that my music is much more appropriate when I’m able to do that.  In turn, my music then can influence the art and gameplay.  

Granted this is just what I prefer to do, everyone has a different process.  

So. Takeaways

For Developers

· Communicate your vision with everyone on the team

· Listen to everyone else’s take on the vision, but remember in the end it’s your project

· Validate the work of not only composers, but every creative discipline

· Provide pointed and directed feedback

· If you don’t understand how to articulate something, ask your creatives for advice

For Composers

· Writing truly fitting music comes from sharing the same vision as the entire team

· Take the time to understand the vision of everyone, and also make your        interpretation known

· Educate those who aren’t able to provide detailed feedback on music or sound

· Be flexible on the needs and wants of the team

What it all boils down to is understanding the vision of the team.  Everyone will have opinions on what the project should look like, but to create truly immersive experiences that I would call complete packages, everyone needs to have the same or a similar vision.  Communication and education is key for creating industry defining games.

Games are shared knowledge, and shared dreams. Make them that way.

We’re creators, let’s create something great.

#Video Games #Video Game Developer #Video Game Development #Video Game Music #Music #Art #teamwork #indie dev #indie music #indie game #ost #soundtrack #arts #Kylydian

[kylydian]

Musical Concepts in Animal Crossing

Let’s start our journey of looking at concepts of new ideas in music by first focusing on everyone’s favorite animal life simulator, Animal Crossing.  But Kyle!? Why Animal Crossing? That’s so laid back, how does the music do interesting thing?!  Because not only is it my favorite game, but because it’s a great example of using thematic material!  Also, the soundtracks are surprisingly large, and this leaves us a lot of inspiration and ideas for us to use.  Granted, there’s better music out there, and much of the Animal Crossing soundtrack is similar, but the importance of this music shouldn’t be overlooked. Ideas gained from the music of Animal Crossing can be applied across all genres of video games and music.

And where else would be a better place to start off with other than with our favorite in game dog musician: K.K. Slider.  

K.K. is honestly who I believe conceptually the entire soundtrack revolves around.  But these concepts are hidden behind who exactly K.K. is as a musician. His songs are so specific in nature.  You walk up to him on a Saturday night and say “Hey K.K.! Play me a ballad!” Or you want parade music? You got it.  His songs are named are named true to the genres as well. Most of his songs are titled “K.K. Rock, K.K. Bossa, K.K. Love Song” or something similar. Thinking about it on the outside, this is all there is, but diving into the compositions, I believe name becomes more than just a name.

K.K. Rock is…well…a rock song. It’s nothing more.  And nothing less.  Is it a good composition? Sure.  It’s fine, it’s rock music through and through.  It doesn’t break any ground as rock music, instead the piece plays it safe. This to me could be a musical definition of rock music in its absolute purest form. Taking this definition farther, we could say that this is K.K. Slider (And Totaka effectively) answering the question “What does rock music sound like as a concept?” This “concept” is so important and is not thought about often in my opinion. K.K. Rock captures the essence of an art form, and being able to do that shows a level of mastery that I know I don’t have. This is a piece meant to be played in your home in-game.  If rock music is your favorite genre, it’s very likely you’ll have it playing in one of your rooms. And the brilliant thing about all of the other “K.K. Insert Genre Here” songs is that each one does this exact same thing.  Animal Crossing is a game about communicating in so many different ways. But above all it’s a game about communicating yourself.  Each of these tracks incorporates something that an individual could use to define them, and they do it through music that the listener will probably like if they’re a fan. And that’s really cool.

This concept doesn’t stop here though.  In all actuality, I believe that the rest of the Animal Crossing soundtrack is structured around the idea of writing to concepts.  The true genius of the soundtrack lies in the main theme of each game. Main themes are critical to understanding what a game is about, but in many ways the main theme of Animal Crossing is almost more important, and even more all encompassing. Example: It plays at every hour of every day in every game. The main theme of these games have to be written in a way that you never get tired of them.  And they do this in a brilliant way.  First of all, the main theme has to be good. Really good. You can’t pull this off if the theme itself gets annoying.  The main theme of each game is present enough that you hear it, but background enough that it quickly fades to the subconscious. They’re melodies and harmonies that are easily understood by the human ear.  Naturally though, even the best written melody will become tiresome if it’s all you hear. That’s why for each hour of the day, the main theme is presented in a different arrangement. Each hour has a different feeling when compared to each other, and adjacent hours often share similarities in musical style or concept.  To me the music answers the question of “If music was playing around me at this point in time, what would it sound like?” This is the true brilliance of the sound track.  It answers questions such as:  “What does 7:00 am sound like? What about 12:00 pm? Why do these hours sound that way?  How are they different? What about 7:00 o’clock, how are am and pm related at this time?” In addition to this, each track needs to be appropriate for every season of the year! Writing tracks that encompass so much with such simplicity is the true magic of this music.

Each hour is a different arrangement featuring the main theme or fragments from the main theme.  All of the arrangements are different enough from each other that the main theme never gets tired.  At the same time, answering the question of what this time of day sounds like allows the player to be drawn farther into the world subconsciously. This musical glue is in many ways a key feature of why I believe Animal Crossing can be played in long bursts for days on end.  This concept goes back to the idea of K.K. Slider and answering what a genre of music would sound like in the purest form.  Animal Crossing has music that puts ideas into a musical space, allowing our brains to make sense of what we’re playing. Going even further, there’s a slight alteration of each hour for when it’s snowing or raining!  The variety is endless! Animal Crossing is a series that has marketed itself as the game that never stops, and this movement of music overtime plays right in to that idea.

Tired yet? There’s a couple more concepts left!

Next, let’s focus on the town tune.  I’ve seen people either love this idea, or never really pay it any mind, but in the context of Animal Crossing’s music it simply can’t be ignored.  For those of you who aren’t familiar When you move in to town, there’s already a town tune, but to put it bluntly, it’s not good. This encourages players to change it early on, adding some immediate sense of your personality to your town. Some people write original compositions, some put in their favorite Nintendo music, or maybe even a pop song.  But whatever it is, it always reflects the individual.  The neat thing though about this composition you write is it plays constantly.  Well, not constantly like the hour music, but you get the idea. Walk into a store? There it is. Oh the hour changed? Here’s the town tune.  Going to talk to a villager?  Cue your song. This is truly the anthem of your town.  But similar concepts have been done before.  So let’s talk about the way it’s presented. Every time you talk to an animal, your town tune is going to play, but never the same. For every animal in the game, the town tune has a different sound to it.  This often reflects the type of animal you’re talking to.  If you walk up to a duck, the tune is going to have some quacking quality to it.  A mouse is likely to be high pitched with some squeaks, and a dog is going to greet you with a barking rendition.  In addition, each personality type will influence the sound as well.  This once again takes something that we know all too well and shoves it to the back of our mind because we never hear it the same way. There are TONS of characters in Animal Crossing, so there might be some repeats among villagers somewhere that I don’t know about, but even so there are countless versions! And if you happen to ever get tired of the song you wrote? Well…it’s good that you can go change it!

Animal Crossing is a game about defining yourself while escaping from real life. The music in the game is all about this.  It strikes this truly unique balance between defining what you know and characterizing what’s happening, but it finds ways to use repetition over and over again so that you don’t notice repetition.  This allows both the game and the music to help blur the distinction between world and game.  This is awesome to see a game do, and it provides so many unique ways for us to think of repetition in our own games.

Concepts such as these are easily applicable in our own games and music. Varying melodies or rearranging them is extremely common in games, but it’s often only presented in a few ways.  Writing all encompassing melodies has been done all throughout music history (more on that in future posts), but I find it to be extremely effective when a melody is used to such lengths.  The challenge comes in making it sound consistently fresh to the player and listener. Something though that I think should be done more is the idea of writing to concepts. I’m going to be talking about this a lot over time, which is the true reason why I wanted to start with Animal Crossing.  So much video game music is written to accompany battle, story, or location that I think it’s easily forgotten that there’s other ways to enhance game play through music.  I think Animal Crossing presents these ideas in a more approachable way than other games I’m going to talk about.  As we go over other examples of writing music to concepts, not everything else is going to be as easy as “What does a rock song sound like?”  And even with answering that question, answers are sure to vary! I’m not necessarily here to provide answers at all times, but give different ways of looking at music.  Again, music is a subjective topic while possessing objective qualities.  I want innovation to happen, and without conflicting ideas innovation is going to remain something that is all elusive.

Kylydian

#Animal Crossing #Nintendo #Music #video game music #video game #indie #indie music #sound design #game music #game audio #game #Kylydian #k.k. slider #indie game #game development #indie dev #indie developer

[kylydian]

I have been working very hard on a youtube video essay series on video game music! Here's my first video on Animal Crossing! https://youtu.be/ddjg21tlaoM It would mean a ton to me if you checked it out, gave a like or even subscribed to help me cut through the YouTube algorithms! I'm approaching the series from a musicology perspective rather than a technical side, as many other people already do that. And I'm trying to make the series accessible to people who don't know anything about music as well. There's definitely issues as it's my first video I've EVER done, but it's only up from here! #animalcrossing #animalcrossingnewhorizons #acnh #gamemusic #nintendoswitch #nintendo #vgm #videogamemusic #videogames #music #musicology #gamecomposer #composer #youtube #videoessay #kkslider #indiemusic #indiedev #indiedeveloper #animalcrossingnewleaf #gameaudio #kylydian https://www.instagram.com/p/B-AOW5mJZtD/?igshid=i9iw8j7szcg

#animalcrossing #animalcrossingnewhorizons #acnh #gamemusic #nintendoswitch #nintendo #vgm #videogamemusic #videogames #music #musicology #gamecomposer #composer #youtube #videoessay #kkslider #indiemusic #indiedev #indiedeveloper #animalcrossingnewleaf #gameaudio #kylydian

[kylydian]

Quick Note on Music Blogging Progress

Hey guys! 

This is more of a quick note to the people who follow me for my music posts. I know there’s a few of you who are following my Zelda series right now. I haven’t forgotten about it or you!

I’ve been crazy busy right now in trying to figure a lot of stuff out. A quick list of what I’ve been doing.

-Wrapping up rehearsals for a commissioned wind ensemble piece. Performance is on June 4th! -Working on a part time sound design project. -Working on an EDM style track for a game. -Talking with several devs on securing some soundtracks. -Writing a talk that I’ll be pitching for PAX DEV Right now I’ve got a lot on my plate, and my normal writing time is being taken up with chatting to devs and the talk. I promise I’ll be back in the next few weeks! In the meantime, it’d be dope if you checked out some of my music. You can find it here. https://soundcloud.com/kylydian Stay awesome guys.

[kylydian]

Introduction to Pushing Boundaries in Video Game Music

Someone once said that if you have thoughts, you should put them out in the open so others can read them to tell you you’re wrong.

I’m Kyle Martin, or you can call me Kylydian as I probably have the second most common name after something like James Smith (Sorry to any James Smith’s out there!) I’m a composer and sound designer for video games based out of Seattle Washington, and I’m going to talk to you about a bunch of video game music related topics that everybody needs to hear.

Here’s a bit of background on me so you can trust me a bit hopefully!

I’ve been a composer for around 10 years now, but I’ve been playing saxophone for around 17 years or so.  I attended Central Washington University for seven years where I was put through hell and back, learning literally everything about music to earn two measly pieces of paper.  One said I could teach music, and one that said I can play saxophone (I could do this already...) I decided eventually that teaching wasn’t for me so I decided to turn to my childhood dream of getting into the video game industry.

As a game composer, I was staff composer and sound designer for a start up company called AeonSigma, and I’ve picked up small contract work elsewhere.  Before this, I was requested to compose and arrange for numerous college recitals, have debuted works at national conventions and am currently being commissioned to write a piece for a very high quality high school wind ensemble.  

Naturally, classical is my favorite genre to write, but I feel just as comfortable writing symphonies as I do dropping bass at this point.  My extensive background and research into music history, ethnomusicology and current video game music trends allow me to stay on top of my game. Ha..ha!

But you’re probably wondering, why am I starting this blog?  Well, for a few reasons.

One: I love game music.  I really really really love game music.  And I ESPECIALLY love unique game music.  I’m a firm believer in stealing ideas from each other, and I hope that you as a game developer, composer or person can steal some ideas or knowledge/insight from me.  If you walk away from even one of my posts with a new idea I’ll be doing my job here.

Two: This is a testing ground for some talks I’m writing up.  This blog will hopefully allow me to receive feedback and learn from you!  I’m very open to writing on topics that you want to see within video games or even general classical music.  

Three: I want to.  Kay!?

But what am I going to talk about here?  

Well, that’s everything.  Literally. Everything.

Just kidding.

Again, I love video game music.  But I think that video game music as a medium is somewhat stuck in a rut right now.  There’s some really great music being written every day, but it feels like it isn’t...doing anything. It’s just pretty background noise.

There’s composers out there though who are fighting against this.  There’s game soundtracks that are taking unique ideas and shoving them subtly and some not so subtly into people’s faces.  When we think about the soundtracks that stand out today, they all do something different, something a bit out of the ordinary.  Or maybe they do something really ordinary, but do it extremely well. Together we’re going to take some really good game music, and figure out musically, conceptually, and philosophically why this music is damn good.  In addition to this, I’ll go over some techniques that these soundtracks do to get the desired effects so that we can begin to implement them in our own music, or maybe even improve on them!  Some information is going to be purely speculative, some is going to go over music theory, and others might just be for fun.  But we’re in this journey together.  

Before this though, we need to come to some mutual understandings.  We need to tackle the daunting task of defining music.  This blog is about pushing boundaries in music.  If we can’t define what it is we’re talking about, we can’t hope to find new ideas.  We’re going to get really weird at times, and push the definition of music to its extremes. Other times we’ll be back at a safe normal home for music.  And who knows, maybe sometime I’ll even talk about some techniques that I’m doing in my music or personal life to continue pushing the boundaries. 

This information is going to be for everyone.  My goal is to educate developers and musicians on more possibilities and opening some minds.

Let’s make music together.

Kylydian

#music #video game #video game music #kylydian #indie music #game music #video game development #video games #video game developer #indie dev #indie game #indie #Seattle