Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound:
Audio is always the stepchild that needs to be there which is very important but thought of as last, Audio has always been viewed as the ugly step sister of video, Winning of game signaled as ringing of bell which rewards player, signs placed ontop of machines that called them music machines. Music players inside the games were cheap versions of music boxes, pinball visceral experience, bells on table to make ding sound to make it more exciting, chime units and bells to reinforce excitement of playing, games were electromagnetic, early80s pinballs went solid state and used micro processors, modern machines would play movie sound on theme of machine, space invaders, increasing speed and pitch of aliens coming closer to base would trigger tense and on edge emotion, operators would crank up sound to attract players into the establishment, public space is an acoustic war zone, sound design is to fit into tiny window as noises in arcades make the sound muddy, analogue audio, taking diode reversing it, adding current to it, driving square waves crazy (Square waves are the most simple thing you can do with digital technology), 3 sound channels, limitations, sound effects would take up one of the 3 channels, limitations breed innovation, arpeggiate notes at fast speeds to recreate chords, sound and music had to be programmed into the games using code, composers wrote down notes then took that and turned it into a system that started with 0 and ended with f, music was code and numbers, primitive, Q-bert, TIA Atarti 2600, challenge is trying to create something musical with the Atari, NES could only use 3 electronic sounds for the music split them into bass, melody and part of chord or just bass and 2 sounds for melody, concept of loops in game music you have to fit the music onto small memory so you have to use loops, Commodore 64, FM sound chips marble madness first game to use FM, SEGA Genesis had FM synthesis, Soundblaster sound card 9 voice FM synth card no effects, general MIDI, instrument chosen by composer will play back on multiple devices, MT-32 made for desktop music making, write music in 4 different versions (1 note versions, 3 note versions, etc), general midi emulation tones for the fm sound cards, sound canvas, SNES had samples with more than 1 channels 100K storage, Octamed, melodies were short and popped in and out of chords that were playing, composers began to change the constant looping of video game audio’s past by muting loops and letting them reintroduce, lucasarts introduced iMUSE which was used with monkey island 2 which came out in 1991 was done so well that no-one noticed, MIDI changes triggered by actions in-game, CD-ROMS introduced which also had memory limitations which would force the audio to lose quality or to change bit rate, Xbox had 5.1 surround sound, Facebook game audio and the App Store
Beep DVD Extras:
Ryu Umemoto Japanese composer, Dynamic interactive music systems, Video game music needs to tell the story on its own narrative, chance Thomas, music systems, wwise, Music needs to create a sonic world, studied Python, hardest part of game audio is getting work,
Penny arcades / Slot machines – Pinball,
Ludic – showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness, Adaptive – capable of, suited to, or contributing to adaptation, Interactive – allowing a two-way flow of information between a computer and a computer-user, responding to a user’s input
Further Research – The Sound Handbook by Tim Crook. The Game Audio Tutorial Book by Dave Raybould and Richard Stevens, Playing With Sound by Karen Collins, Gamesound.com
