Melody in game music

[Winifred Phillips]

Hi guys,

There's a video on YouTube of a talk I did a few days ago called Assassin's Creed Liberation: The Power of Musical Themes. During the Montreal International Game Summit, I talked about the music I composed for that game. The talk goes into detail about the importance of melodies in video game music.

You'll find that video here:



Please let me know what you think!


-Winifred Phillips

Author of the book, A COMPOSER'S GUIDE TO GAME MUSIC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (The MIT Press)
Available in bookstores and online, February 14th, 2014
To receive updates about this book, subscribe here:
http://www.winifredphillips.com/ComposersGuide/

[GirTheRobot]

Wow this sounds fascinating! I'll watch the video when I'm not about to fall asleep. I'm really interested in your book, too.

[Winifred Phillips]

Thanks, GirTheRobot! I appreciate that.

[stringtapper]

Winifred,

Thank you for posting this. I was only able to watch the first ten minutes for now but your talk is very interesting so far.

I hear some of the same things you talk about in your presentation in Lorne Balfe's score to AC3 with the blend of colonial folk and Native American styles.

I look forward to experiencing your score when Liberation HD is released next year!


Oh, and the book sounds amazing.

[Nightpolymath]

Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff. As for melody in music, here's two words: Koji Kondo. He writes some of the most enduring scores ever for video games, Ocarina of Time being one of them. I can remember playing that game and whistling that ocarina tune in my head for like six whole months!

[Winifred Phillips]

Winifred,

Thank you for posting this. I was only able to watch the first ten minutes for now but your talk is very interesting so far.

I hear some of the same things you talk about in your presentation in Lorne Balfe's score to AC3 with the blend of colonial folk and Native American styles.

I look forward to experiencing your score when Liberation HD is released next year!


Oh, and the book sounds amazing.

Thanks very much, stringtapper! So glad you're enjoying my talk from the Montreal International Game Summit.

The blend of styles is very interesting for Assassin's Creed games. There are historical influences, and modern influences (from the science-fiction aspects of the story) and all sorts of cultural considerations that have bearing on the musical style. Each game tends to be different musically, since they are set in dramatically different locales.

I'm glad you're looking forward to Liberation HD's release -- I'm excited that it's coming out on January 14th! Thanks so much for the support, stringtapper!

[Winifred Phillips]

Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff. As for melody in music, here's two words: Koji Kondo. He writes some of the most enduring scores ever for video games, Ocarina of Time being one of them. I can remember playing that game and whistling that ocarina tune in my head for like six whole months!

I have a warm place in my heart for Koji Kondo, since I did a cover of his Super Mario Bros. music for the "Best of the Best" album. Had a lot of fun doing that track.

Here's the song on YouTube:

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[Nightpolymath]

Haha that sounded like a fun track, reminds me of Gould's "So you want to write a fugue" (hardly related, but different nonetheless).

Is the book going to be in electronic form? If iBooks, even better.

[Winifred Phillips]

I loved that "So you want to write a fugue" video - funny and fantastic! Thanks for posting that!

I actually wrote a fugato (which is a "little fugue") for the LittleBigPlanet 2 video game. The track was called "Victoria's Aria et Fugato." Here's a link to the music video for that track:



As per your question: yes, A Composer's Guide to Game Music will be released in electronic form, and will be an iBook.

[Nightpolymath]

That's good stuff. I like it. I haven't come across a lot of Baroque-style counterpoint in game music, perhaps just one or two in the Final Fantasy series (and I cannot even remember which ones). I think there is a lot of potential, however. When layered with some dark minor key melody the emotional impact can be weighty. Some of Bach's double concertos fit this mold. Of course it needs to complement a particular game situation rather than the other way round. I find a lot of Japanese games using counterpoint more than others.

[GeckoYamori]

When game music was limited to a few monophonic channels, it was more common for Japanese composers to harmonize with countermelodies, while European ones resorted to fast arpeggios to retain the common bass/chord/melody structure.

[Winifred Phillips]

Thanks, Nightpolymath. I agree -- I haven't come across a lot of Baroque-style counterpoint in game music. The technique of counterpoint itself has a lot of functional utility in games, and I talked about this in my speech in Montreal.

GeckoYamori, great point about the impact of early game audio technology on the use of countermelodies. When the amount of simultaneously-occurring note events was so strictly limited, having a counterpoint structure could be useful for establishing both harmonic structure and thematic lines within those limitations. Melodies are such a great way to help a video game become more memorable to the player, because the melodies can linger in the mind, reminding the player of gameplay experiences. I think melodies can be very powerful in that way - don't we all have a game melody that we'll never forget?

[Nightpolymath]

I can definitely recall a few I can probably never forget, particular those in RPGs coming out of Japan. FF VII and X would come to mind, as well as adventure games from Nintendo - Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, and of course Super Mario. Any Legend of Zelda title would generally have a good soundtrack, due to Kondo. Can't say the same for first person shooters in general; most have memorable recurrent motifs, but not really melody per se. Take Halo, for instance. There's much music on a grand and majestic scale, ala Hollywood, and these don't betray any 8-bit origins, since most of these titles are new franchises.

[Winifred Phillips]

Yeah, the big story-driven games (like RPGs and adventure/action-adventure games) are great for memorable melodies. A more complex story can be highly complimented by a more melodic soundtrack - story seems to lend itself to melody, doesn't it?

[HiEnergy]

About baroque music: The earliest examples of "baroque" sounding computer music I remember having heard were those: