The idea of motif and theme continuity is an important one. Much like a writer, thematic phrases allow composers to build and tell a story. However, as George “The Fatman” Sanger describes in Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness, one of the mistaken assumptions for the intermediate-level composer is “I should repeat my musical themes in order to emphasize them, just as I learned in composition class.” The thought is that repetition and reiteration of themes can be grating on the listener (to say the least). I mean, how many times can you listen to the same melody over and over again before you just mute the game and listen to your MP3’s? It happens quite a lot—and, in my humble opinion, mostly in the video game industry.
But fear not! I’m going to suggest taking a different approach to thematic writing in your soundtrack. Normally composers consider melodies to be themes as melodies are the most obvious channels for communicating the theme. But if you think about it, melody is only one of several components to a composition, right? What about harmonic intervals? Rhythm? Instrumentation? Register? If you really think about it, there are a LOT of puzzle pieces to a composition. So naturally, that means that all of these ‘puzzle pieces’ are part of your theme.
You can use any one of these elements to reiterate and develop themes. Take a look at this demo piece that I put together to show this. Notice how the melody drops out in the second part of the piece, but you can still feel continuity between the first and the second parts. This is because I am reiterating the theme in a variety of alternative ways…mainly rhythmically and harmonically.
So, fellow video game composer, I implore you. Don’t make me sit through hours of gameplay where I listen to the same theme every time I see the bad guy. Switch it up and make the score an interesting, organic tapestry of storytelling!
Kunal mentioned in his review of LA Scoring Strings a few weeks back that strings are particularly challenging to recreate in a synthesized environment. Well, if you’re like me and prefer to use synthesized sounds, you’ve probably heard of Omnisphere, Spectrasonics’ flagship soft synth (or ‘Power Synth,’ as they refer to it).
While Dale reviewed the original release of Omnisphere a couple years ago, Spectrastonics recently launched version 1.5, offering more sounds and capabilities, so I thought I’d take a stab at this beast, and have even written two tracks using the software for your listening pleasure.
Hit the jump for our full review of Omnisphere v1.5! (more…)
String instruments have always been a difficult sound to faithfully capture.
Audiobro’s LA Scoring Strings (affectionately referred to as ‘LASS’) has become an industry standard for scoring–and one of the standard tools in media composers’ collective belt when it comes to string sampling. But how does it really stack up? I’ve had some time to play with my copy of LASS Lite.
Check out my review after the jump!
Last week, my little brother sent me a link to this video. Some of you have probably seen this already, since the video is about six months old (it was reported on by our own Josh Kopstein at time of release over at Motherboard).
What we have here is the creation of Swedish mastermind Linus Åkesson. Using both keyboards, the foot pedals for bass, and a variety of knobs and switches on the top board, Linus demonstrates how he can re-create virtually any 8-bit score live with his modded organ, which he calls “the chipophone.”
Linus has done some other real-instrument-and-chiptune fusion. We thought (and still think) this sort of stuff is awesome. Anyone else think they have the ingenuity to pull this off? And if so, can you bring your crazy inventions to next year’s MAGFest so the OSV staff can check it out? Thanks!
Yes, while most of our team was away in Alexandria having a blast covering MAGFest 9, I was stuck in bright and sunny California, and decided to waste away at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Show 2011. Held in Anaheim, CA for as long as anyone can remember, the show brings together manufacturers of everything from pipe organs to MIDI cable connectors. It’s all here, and I explored miles upon miles of floor space to see if there was anything new and exciting on the horizon. And there was.
Touchpad guitars? Neon guitar strings? A miniature piano? It was all there, and you can see these and more after the jump! (more…)
Photo by Emi Spicer
Mustin, head of OneUp Studios and many of the projects within the OUS umbrella, sat down to talk with us after The OneUps performed at MAGFest. It was at MAGFest that they dropped their newest EP, Intergalactic Redux. I had not yet listened to the album; however, I’d heard the entire album performed live at their show. So I was fully prepared to talk shop about this groovy new album.
After the jump, get the details on Intergalactic Redux and other OUS projects, and/or be entertained by my inability to act like a normal person after 3 hours of sleep. Furthermore, expect a review of the Intergalactic Redux EP in the coming days (or hours?). (more…)
The 70s saw much of the beginning of electronic music. Part of the inventiveness and spirit of that decade saw the beginning of new synthesizer instruments often referred to as string machines. Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, and Pink Floyd among other artists made use of them.
Of course the analogue eventually has travelled into the digital domain with more or less successful emulations making their appearances. What is especially interesting to see is that a few affordable plugins have appeared which claim to reproduce these original instruments in all their retro glory. We decided to compare two different virtual instruments whose ambition is to emulate the string machine sound to see what kind of harmonies might come out. The lucky two are Vintage Strings MKIII and String Dream Synthesizer.
Read more of this exiting match-up by clicking here. (more…)
Synapse Audio is a German software publisher known for publishing a couple of well thought out software synths in VST and AU format, and perhaps more notably, for the digital audio workstation Orion, which is the dark horse in the saturated pool of competing software solutions targeted at producers.
X-Poly is the reinvention of what used to be called Poly 850. Rather then aiming to be a do-it-all synthesizer like so many others, it takes the novel approach of focusing on generating a certain type of sound which falls outside of the norm. Gigabyte sample libraries abound these days, and quality instruments that go in the opposite direction are becoming less and less frequent.
Does this lightweight VSTi offer up something fresh and innovative? Continue to read our review of the X-Poly synthesizer after the jump. (more…)
Wow, it’s been forever since I’ve heard anything about Prodigy. I liked them in high school, and still find myself confusing them with The Prodigy from time to time. Well, YouTube poster Jim Pavloff has created an interesting 10-minute tutorial video recreating the track in Ableton using the original samples that Prodigy used to create the track.
Granted, I doubt you or I could ever do something like this, as you need a lot of technical know-how to do all the modifications that this guy does to the samples. Also, there is some fast-forwarding that occurs throughout the video, so it really would take longer than 10 minutes. It’s still cool to see such a widely known track recreated before your eyes on YouTube!
Are you a fan of the Prodigy? Are you surprised by the relative simplicity of this track?
[Thanks Mary!]
We recently interviewed Neil Baldwin, the NES music guru and director at Eurocom, responsible for many of Eurocom games both musically and in pretty much every other development area. During that interview, we spoke about his future plans and what he wanted to do next, and 2 projects especially interested him, one being an NES music engine for the computer, and the other and perhaps the most interesting of the two, a native NES tracker, running on the original hardware!
He just released the music engine, named Nijuu. It’s sure to be a treat for all chip musicians out there, and all feedback would be appreciated as he is still actively working on it, fixing bugs and other issues. The native tracker is called NTRQ, and as mentioned, runs on NES hardware, much like LSDJ on the Game Boy. This allows you to type in notes and effects on the actual NES and create your own chiptunes authentically. The video showcases the interface and how it’s laid out, but no sound can be made yet, which explains the silent video. You can read more about both projects at Baldwin’s website Duty Cycle Generator.
What are your thoughts on these ambitious projects?
A few months ago, we gave you our take on Redbana’s MMO rhythm game Audition. Hopefully some of you took interest and gave the game a try.
But whether you’re a huge fan of the game or not, if you have music remixing skills, you may want to check out this contest.
Basically, you take three Christmas/Holiday classics: Angels We Have Heard On High, Jingle Bells, and Deck the Halls. You mash ‘em up. You add whatever original instruments or vocals you want to add. You get an account on Musicshake and post the song there. If people like your song more than anyone else, you could get your song featured in Audition! You can also win an iPod Shuffle and a couple of other nifty treats.
You have until December 21st to enter your remix. So put your Santa hat on, bust out whatever music-mixing software you have, and get to work!
One of the biggest surprises in the gaming universe this year came hammering along this summer in the form of THQ’s sandbox-styled actioner, Red Faction: Guerrilla. In fact, this weeks marks the release of the third downloadable content package some five months after its initial release. Not only is it widely regarded as one of the best games of this year, but here at OSV we’re quite confident it’s one of the strongest soundtracks as well.
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit down and have a lengthy conversation with Timothy Wynn, the game’s cinematics composer. As you may already know, I am quite the fan of this soundtrack and was quite curious to hear the genesis of this score and its process. Click the jump to find out the very interesting tidbits behind the genesis of the score, how Wynn conducted it himself, and how he lovingly punched my technical musical prowess right in the balls (yes, I deserved it, but he later agreed with me… sort of. You’ll just have to read on.) (more…)