Scorbit – Game Audio Essentials

Game Audio Essentials – Lesson 3

Scoring For Games: part 2

24m 02s Intermediate
Author: Akash Thakkar

Course Details
Lesson Details

Game Audio Essentials is a 6-part course that serves as an introduction to the technical and creative aspects of video game audio. In the course we cover everything from game audio history, creating interactive musical scores, sound design, and breaking in to the game industry as a whole. This course is taught by Akash Thakkar, Berklee College of Music alumnus and active game composer/sound designer. No prior game scoring experience is necessary, but a love of video games is a plus! Students are recommended to own or have access to a computer with MIDI sequencing and audio recording software to complete the course challenges.

By the end of the course you will be able to:

Analyze interactive audio in games
Work with and understand common game audio tools
Compose your own video game music
Create your own sound effects
Promote yourself in the game industry

Lesson 3 – Scoring for Games: part 2

Creating looping audio files
Working with layered compositions
Working with branching compositions
Aligning audio layers and prepping for game engine implementation
Adding reverb tail into the start of each stem

Rik

Great info for this one Akash! I had no idea about the reverb tails! Love it when I learn new things!

Rik Pfenninger
Akash

Thanks Rik! Glad you found it helpful!
Kevin

I’m having a little bit of trouble distinguishing between layered and branching pieces. Do either layered or branching pieces NEED to have audio playing the whole time? I understand that for some game engines, there needs to be a track played all the way though, but for parts to come in and out, do one of those, layering or branching need to have audio playing the whole time? Sorry if this is a confusing explanation, I hope it makes sense.
- Chris
  
  Hi Kevin, good questions. Yes, if you are going to have any music audio file, it shouldn’t contain large gaps of silence. That isn’t to say it can’t be a minimal, sparse composition – that might fit the game perfectly. The big difference between branching and layering is that with layering you are fading in and out stems which play simultaneously, and with branching you have complete compositions and fade between them.
  To understand how the music should work interactively with the game events, it helps to understand ways that the audio tracks can be implemented. Here’s a good article from Game Sound Design that goes into that some with Wwise: http://www.gamesounddesign.com/making-interactive-music-for-games-part-one.html
Kevin

Another way to say it is – Is it ok to have a track at any time playing silence, instead of an instrument? Or does say layer 3 need to have an instrument playing throughout. The demo in this is a little different than the one in Chris’ Layering & Looping tutorial, which has music on each track throughout the loop.
- Jason
  
  Hey Kevin,
  
  Until Chris responds:
  
  It really depends on the game. If your layers all represent gradually travelling to different areas of the map or any other gradual shift in story or gameplay, it probably wouldn’t be a problem if you had gaps in audio.
  
  The reason why in most situations you want to make sure you don’t have gaps in audio is because it’s unlikely that the player of the game is coincidentally only going to start a battle on bar 1 of your loop (where you might have a bit of music). The idea is that you should be able to fade up your layers at any point in the piece and be able to instantly recognize a dynamic shift. This way your action layer jumps into the action with the player when they do, not 3 bars later.
  
  I hope that makes sense!
  - Jason
    
    By Chris of course I mean Chris or Akash. : )
  - Kevin
    
    This makes total sense, thanks so much for your response. I was pretty sure that I had that same understanding of it. It certainly helps to have you back it up. Thank you! 🙂
  - Chris
    
    Good points Jason, thanks for weighing in!

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Game Audio Essentials – Lesson 3

Scoring For Games: part 2