-good evening.a smaller room, close to the festival, with less noise.music and video game, the topic's name is thematic,and quite broad, since it's not problem orientied.the topic is open, so open that i have five guests.starting with the one you might have seen yesterday or last year : mehdi debbadi-zourgani, host and creator of "je game moi non plus",podcasts analysing video game, in charge of teaching "culture and video game"
in the eurasiam school.mehdi. mathieu weisser, phd in contemporary musicology from the criham laboratory, musicology, art, and history interdisciplinary researchcenter in the poitiers social science university, he is interested in narrativity in video games, especially in nobuo uematsu's compositions, and in the intermedia phenomenon in order to understand the media interactions in video game.mathieu. franck weber, defines himself as a sound disruptor, composer
and sound designer for audiovisual, objects and places. he is a member of one life remains, experimental games collective, in which he is in charge of sound management. he is a sound practitioner.franck. antoine tuloup, nesblog host of the after bit broadcast on jeuxvideo.com, co-founder of bit the bit with charles bardin, multimedia musical creation and sound design studio, 2nd year of musicology research master in the st etienne university.antoine.
charles bardin, passionate musician and gamer, founder of bit the bit with antoinetuloup, host of the after bit broadcast on jeuxvideo.com, that analyses video games' sound tracks. fond of composition, he applied to the electro acoustic music and composition courses in the lyon conservatoire. he also is guitar player, singer and sound fiddler in the rock band retropolis. charles. and i, yann chauviere, aka cdv, planner of the conferences,
co-founder of nes known via the community website nesblog. i'll make a quick introduction, quick because there are many panelists that all have a lot to tell, i'll quickly give them the floor. it'll be a "talk", in a convivial spirit, maybe less academic... we'll see what will happen.a six person adventure, and i'll introduce this adventure.music and video game. i'll give a few definitions, and sketch a few approaches that will be deepened by the panelists.sound and music. a sound is a stimulus, a physical phenomenon
of mecanical vibration of a milieu. we receive them via hearing. music is a meaningful and intentional ensemble of organized sounds. harmony, melody, rythm and timbre are different elements to describe those meaningful things, and to organize them. harmony means verticality and melody horizontality. so, what are sounds and music ?basicaly, in mundane environment, sounds are an information source on the environment. a snake at your feet will produce a certain sound that will induce a specific behavior, a reflex to step back.you can as well detect water dropping
etc. things that evolution and adaptation selected within the environment,so that we could survive as hunters-gatherers and then as homo-sapiens-sapiens. they bind us to our environment. and in communication, with the typical structure :emitter-message-receiver, for now, let's put aside the medium, sound is what binds us to others. thus, sound binds us to environment and to others. it is as well a source as such, that reaches us in the esthetic first sense, that is experiential. we are physically touched.
fun thing is, most part of the definitionsi gave could be transposed to video game.sound is used to bind the player to the environment and to other players,and to various other things such as explaining the rules, help immersion, create tensions and relaxations. tell, maybe, though it gets problematic, and we would have to define what is told, and if it is really possibleto tell stories with music. we know for sure that music is used as a gameplay element. and video games has an other issue, as you may know, it was at first a hack of computing and itis,
historicaly, strongly linked to technical evolution, and particularly regarding music. so this technical evolution may be considered as constraints and possibilities for creation. hardware and software constraints. there is an historicity of use, and an historicity of reception. all of this has to be considered, and i will let a first panelist take the floor and the plunge. there's more inertia as we are six, now... -i'd like to present the things i wanted to develop this evening. you hear me ?great.
i would like to talk about video game as a music pedagogy. meaning, the roles that musical games,and especially instrumental games, can play in musical learning.the definition of music yann gave was rather accurate, i won't add much on this. to define music, there are three major elements : music is sound frequencies, that is notes, rhythm, which is the place these notes will occupy in time,and intentions, nuances, timbres, as you said.i don't know if any of my colleague want to add something... there are many things that may be
added... -not really about the definition, but there is something still discussed, which is noise. when you add noise to music, is it part of the music, then is it still noise? with relative answers, noise may be musical, and silence, as well, which is a relative notion. simpler, though, on a partition, there are rests, silences that areintentional and thought through. those can be added to music, ehr... mainly, there are notes, rhythm, but there are some sub-parts
that can be troublesome when you try to theorize and think music. -in this regard, silence is really important.there's the example of john cage, with 4'33 and other compositions that are based on silence. what ? ah ! sorry.4'33 is a piece by a composer named john cage, i don't know if you heard about him... and this piece proves several things by its mere existence, that silence does not exist, if there is a musical rest, there's noise because of the room's diffusion. real silence does not exist in this case. i don't know if you want to add anything ?
-i would like to.actually, john cage experimented silence in an anechoic chamber. an anechoic chamber, i think there's one in the citã© des sciencesor the citã© de la musique, in paris, is a chamber where there is no sound.with a negative decibel level. and john cage did this experience in the anechoic chamber, and heard two sounds : one very high,and the other very low. the high sound was produced by his nervous system, like a light tinnitus,and the low sound was produced by his blood flowing through his veins, the sound of his heart.
from this experiment, he stated that complete silence did not exist.even in an anechoic chamber, where total silence is supposed to exist, to an human's ear, there is no total silence.and he intended to illustrate this with 4'33,three-movements piece for a piano, in which the pianist doesn't play.he sits at the piano, but he doesn't play. it is quite confusing, so, imagine you are in the audience, you cough, you laugh,doors are slamming, some people run away"what's this ? we came
to listen to music and there's nothing."and it brings silence to life. and he wanted as well to create unintentional music. music that would not be created by humans but by chance. -yes. i missed my cue.there are already several questions about what is music.and even for us that work in the field, it's annoying, because there arearbitrary classifications, there are... well, mainly, i think, that we are at a peculiar time in music history, because during the 20th century,music was... i was going to say fucked
up,but deconstructed is more fashionable. it started with the integration of noisein music. futurists did that. we broke keys, harmony,and decided to put everything on the same level,white and black keys of a piano it brought some beautiful compositionsby schã¶nberg. recording allowed us to put soundon a medium, and in a sense, to listen to it again, to edit it, to cut it.i'm as well talking about musique concrã¨te,a complete deconstruction of the notes sound, so that it becomes noise,
serial music, generative musicsilent music, with cage, the question of partitions, when you lookat morton fledman's work, okay, he was john cage's roommate,he was composing on grids. he changed the representation of music,and he was interested in random... so we are in a time when everything is mixed, confused, and yet,we tried to give back a sense into music. so to give a definition of musicis extremely complicated. and then, there is the questionwhat is music within video game ? there are standards, experiments,an amazing bestiary of practices
and a porosity between these sound materials. of course, after the 20th century we had,the question of music and fx... ah, i wanted to mime, but i can't...there's a porosity between these, and when you look at the video game world, you find a peculiar landscape,i'll explain this later, as for now we are giving a definition. -you talk about the partition evolution, and i'd like us to speak a bit, on the visual partition in video game.in their way of dealing with music, musical games have very different definitions.
i guess everyone has ever eitherplayed or seen musical games, guitar hero, or anything.there are ways to visualy represent musicthat can be very different. i'll give examples otherwiseit might be untidy. i'll try not to be academic either.in most games, most musical games, not games that gravitate around music, but musical gamesthere are series of notes passing and reaching a specific spot where the player needs to press a button. for instance, this game,samba de amigo.
what you can notice is that, we were mentioning three things that define music :notes, rhythm and nuances, and here there is only one of them,that is, rhythm. represented by bubbles reaching other bubbles, meaning you have to press the buttonat this moment. only one of music component is used,here. i'll give a second example,guitar hero. you recognized hotel california. so there's a second component used,notes. used, but only partly,
because you can't write a real partitionwith this. meaning erh... several notes can be played with a single button. there are only five buttons... or four ?five ? great. on a guitar hero guitar,and it narrows music representations, you can't compose with this system.it only works within the video game. -i saw, in karen collins' book"from pac-man to pop music" there's a paper on music representationin guitar hero, and especially, on melodies reduction,to find the fundamentals that would then be used to represent the reductedmelodies,
depending on the difficulty level.as the difficulty increases, you have more notes to play.and he shows, with the traditional partition,the notes that are kept, and the intervals that are simplifiedto match the 5 buttons model. -so you can't write a partitionthat would be usable without guitar hero. there's a game that went a bit further,rock smith, i don't know if you know it. the same idea, but the principle is that you play with a real guitar. guitar hero's limit came fromthe five buttons system. now, with a real guitar...
there, so, i don't know if there aremusicians in the room, and if we'll agree, but i, personaly, am a guitar playerand a musician, and, to me, this is unreadable. -i think that you are a guitar player aswell, and so am i, and first thing,it looks like a guitar tab, except that there's a direction, almost sacred, the lowest are at the bottomand the highest at the top, and there, it's the contrary. -as a guitar player, it's gibberish,as a system.
you may get used to it, it's a game system that goes further than the two others i showed you,because it takes account of notes and rhythmbut it still does not uses the nuances. meaning that, looking at most ofmusical games, it bothers me that nuances, are hardly used.and this system does not. then, on this idea of dealing withpartitions in video games;we've seen examples with guitar, as it is the most used instrument. on internet, we have synthesia, that is a lot used.for those who don't know,
it looks like this. a quite complete system for pianosand keyboards. and that could competewith traditional partition. that is, to provide a new reading systemthat would be simplified, because anybody can read this,you don't need to have studied musical theory,however, it's still limited, as for sight-reading, it is still longer.maybe you wanted to add something ? -yes, on musical pedagogy,i'm wondering why don't we put aside these classic representations
you learn in musical theory.i have guitar freaks in mind, you were talking about guitar hero,but one should know there's the guitar freaks series,that was created in japan, in the late nineties,designed for the arcade, and that was then adpated to ps1,like guitar hero. it's not even the ancestor,guitar hero and rock band are just copies of this game.not rock smith, though, i'll get to that later.at first, i was wondering why this idea had success in japan,but did not cross the borders;
whereas we usually thinkthat music is a kind of language, that can cross borders.there, it did not happen. the game stuck to j-pop,j-rock, and the japanese never thought of expanding.and harmonics, guitar hero's producers, rubbed their hands, and we knowthe success it met. why do we need this pedagogic representation ? the example of rock smith you saw,it couldn't be more copied and pasted, it participates in this fantasyto have a teacher at home, but with no constraint.it nourishes the auto-didact fantasy,
and it's not somethingthat we can find in japanese productions, that always use some alternate figuration. -i mostly agree, yet, the point i don't agree on, is that i showed all this examplesbecause i think that from a pedagogic perspective,unforntunatly, these games do not contribute muchin learning music. if we take another look at guitar heroor samba de amigo, in fact, you could play them with nosound, i've tried.you can just follow the chain and...
-it's behaviourist, in fact.the system tells you : "do this" -that's it -and then it tells you :"do this faster" -that's it.and it does not provide musical knowledge, for you to learn.and... maybe i'll stop hogging the debate. i'll get back to this, regarding another game called rhythm paradize, i don't know if you know it, i suppose some of you do,that has an approach of musical learning,
well, of rhythm only as its name states,that seems more interesting to me, still in this learning and pedagogic perspective. it gives you things to absorbrather than only being reproducing an input sequence that pass through the screen. -about learning and nuances,there is something a bit weird. in one of rock smith's latest versions,there's a mode to work if not learn improvisation.you choose a scale, the game shows you the notesthat you can play, you choose the instrumentsthat will accompany you, and you're set.
the idea of improvisation, usually,is that you change your improvisation according to what you hearfrom other instruments. yet in the game, the instruments accompanying literaly accompany you.there will be no sound as long as you don't play.if you don't play a note, instruments won't play,and depending on what you play, they will adapt to your phrase.which is reversing the idea of improvisation.improvisation is developing musical phrases depending on what you hear,
but there, you always come first.the program will, depending on what you play,decide to play this or that, and will do it properly or not,because music implies various interperetations,so, they tried to bring nuances into the game,but in my opinion, it does not work at all as a pedagogy. -to go a bit furtherin this pedagogic prespective, you mentioned rests,and i think that in musical games, there is a difficulty to apprehendthese rests.
there are very few experiencesusing these and only two are interesting. one uses the musical theory model,yet, not entirely, and to me is an ancestor of this musical pedagogy,it's mario paint. it was a coloring game,like the photocopies you were supposed to colour when you were a kid,but with a mouse. and in there were other minigames,and among them a fly-swatting game, and a musical programming game,that was using icons of the mario world, a yoshi means this 16 bit sound, and soon. the game is still using a stave.the second game that was mentioned
during a previous stunfest conference,three or four years ago... is electroplankton.that is, to me, one of the rare examples of total improvisation.you have an interface that is build in order for you to improvize. -it's interesting, and in electroplankton,you deal with raw sounds, and not with an intrument.you play with sound and improvize with sound.and i think that in the prospect of learning sound attention, it's an interesting experience. -and one last thing.we spend last night's conference trying
to get rid of cultural colors in videogames, but i can't help noticing that, the only games allowing this real improvisation are japanese.when you look at rock smith, i can't help but to think to these"click and play" games, where you were supposed to learnhistory, yes, there was an adventure,but a some pedagogy was required. and there was this definition :is it a learning software, is it a video game,and boundaries are unclear. -i agree with you on japanes video games,they consider music in general
in a totally different way.in many musical games, we have a very competitive idea of music.and as a musician, it's always surprising, to read "you rock", "you suck",when you are playing. i don't think that this is why you make music as a rock musician. it is an idea of music in generalthat is quite surprising. i won't question the competitive aspect,because it makes it a good video game, but the idea of music that it conveys. -i'll just remind that in the 70s,the term guitar hero was used, literally, it's something that exists.i don't mean that any young guitar player
wants shine, or is caught in an erotic... i mean egotic drift. but erotic works as well, it was a goodslip. there's this idea ofperformance and adulation, but to keep it to a strictly musicological definition, and it can be observed in heavy metaland its variations, the execution speed is a main criterion,an esthetic criterion. some will say"this guitar player is so fast" you completely remove dynamics,it's caricatural. metal has a lot variations,but in heavy metal,
you would often remove nuances,and have these esthetic standards. and guitar hero, indeed, follows this lead.speed, and... "i want a statue of me playing guitar"because it's a dream, and part of this dream is sold,but as an arcade game and not a musical one. -but you can't deny it's fun.and the competitive aspect is interesting as well.but in a learning perspective, i can't yet understand what is taught with this system. and, true, it does not uses nuances.it's something i'm fond of,
and now, music in general,on the radio or in many cases... everything is always cranked up.and as musician, it's annoying, because music is over compressedand gives no room to nuances. and it's a shame, because,with all the experiments you may take, musical games,and especially instrumental games, do not use nuances enough. -you mentioned compressed music,and, indeed, there's a tendency that appeared in the late 90s,when we started to compress a lot. i don't know if you understand...yes. okay.
the idea is to max out the volume.but some musical movements used compression in a more creative way.using side chaining, which is a technique to use compression, not as a sound engineer, but in a creative way, to create effects.for instance, music that uses rhythms as references spots, that will modify other tracks. you have a pad that goes uuuuuuhand you'll use the beat, to aspirate the pad's sound.and the music will be extremely compressed -it creates holes in the volume
-yes, it's been used in abstract hip hop,and its variations, in dub-step as well,there's this logic of enormous compression.it's not only a higher volume, even if it's what we have in mind,there are people who thought : "we can create something out of this"that is, to use a mistake in a creative way, to produce new contents.that is, to me, the lesson to learn with compression.that's what i wanted to add. -i wanted to come backon the competitive aspect of musicians, and guitar players in particular,i have two examples in mind,
and they both are from the u.s.the first is in the movie this is it, with michael jackson,there's a moment in the show when there are two guitar player,a man and a woman, that are fighting with soli, who'll be the fastest, guitar in the back, whatever,and it is directed as a fight. in the end, they slap themself on theback, "you're the best""no, you are" but another example, i don't know the name of the movie, i saw an excerpt on the internet,once again, it's a competition,
and an american movie, for sure.and what's intersting is the representationsof the competitors. one is the young country boy,with a fender telecaster, american guitar, old jeans and a some kind of beret.and his opponent is a metalhead, with leather trousers, bleached hair, an asian guitar, on which he's shredding, like a viruoso.it's a battle on who will play better and faster,and the leather-trousers man, of course, loses and gives up,and it was really the japanes guitar against the good american guy.
-it's political. -maybe. -shall we talk about video games ?because we had hotel california, that gave me nightmares for twenty years,so now we'll talk about yngwie malmsteen,satriani, and it will remind me of my youth...but as a practicioner, getting my hands dirty,and i'd be more interested in talking about my workand about the hard time we have defining what is music within video game.there are standards.
in the industry standards,there's a distinction between music that has an emotional function,and fxs, that bring feedback. but these categories are rather fuzzy,and there are many other categories to define music within video game.and depending on the way you define it, you'll be influenced by different cultural contents. according to the music type,and the way you think of this music, you'll be influenced by cinema...and now that i mentioned cinema, i hope we won't divert out of video game.there's as well an interesting distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic.the empathy question, that is intersting
as well...sound systems in video games... i wanted to try to define musicwithin video game, is it bind to some codes,and how is it built ? and my opinion, is that it's builtin a weird way, but i make experimental games,so, obviously. and i wanted as well,to question this distinction between fx and music,because they are not this different, there are some entry points, links between these two. -since you mentioned cinema...to be done with it,
i know you wanted to talkabout the links between video games music and cinema music.because music is supposed to be a non-meaningful art,if you listen to some music you don't know,and have no explanation, it might evoke feelings and stuff,but you would not be able to say "the music illustrates a man in a greensweater coming in the room" there is no sense as clear and deep.but there are connotations and stereotypes that are createdby the recuring uses of some recipes, and especially in cinema,because the video medium
tend to get close to cinema,which narrows the creation in the video game medium.we'll get to that later. -yes, but shall i ? -go. -okay. i think that big video games,big productions, block busters, what is called aaa productions,are getting closer and closer to cinema. there's a desire of this big video game,that is not all video game, video game is not just big productions,a desire to look like cinema. for instance, heavy rain, and other david cage's productions,
that wants to be as close as possibleto hollywood's cinema. and, even if he's french,he'll hire an american composer, whom you certainly know,that is hans zimmer. but why ?why hans zimmer, while cage is french, and there are french composers,like christophe hã©ral, olivier deriviã¨re,there are persons able to impose their own style.why do i throw needles at hans zimmer ? in fact, my idea is to understand,how the music of hans zimmer or another composer's,james horner or howard shore...
and i don't want to put them on trial,but just to specify that... i will say that to me, these person'smusic, is standardized.i dare say it. you might think that this is subjectivein a sense that... what is standardized music ?to me, there is no real definition, but it consists in musical principles,that are used, and used again, that are so ubiquitous, that it becomes standardized. music that is so recurrent inits structure, its rhythms, its harmony, its timbres,that it becomes a standard.
and that's why i call itstandardized music. and now, it's rather an objectivedefinition than a subjective statement.i'll play an excerpt of hans zimmer's music,so that you can listen to a bit of standardized music.it's rockin'. -while you look for your excerpt,did you want to add something ? -yes, i wanted to add something,this question of standardizing, that is linked to the industrialization,what's interesting is that, cinema was already standardized.and video game's standardization
is just the continuation ofa pre-existing standardization. -he just told my conclusion. -sorry, really. -no problem -i'll rewind, like in braid... -i was going to say that, this standardization exists in the cinema, and as aaa video gamestry to look like cinema, they use a certain type of cinema's codes,not bollywood's cinema, not japanese cinema,but hollywood's cinema.
and it should be reminded that, hollywood's cinema was created by european migrantsthat wanted to realize the american dream,and they build hollywood in the early 20th century, to make an industry out of cinema, that was still a new technique in 1910.and hollywood always was the cinema industry.and it's the world's economical pole of cinema, may it be good or bad...and there is a real peculiar history of music in hollywood's cinema.at first, sound-picture synchronization techniques were experimented,like george antheil's ballet mã©canique,
with fernand leger's and dudley murphy's movie. a movie with no script,but with kaleidoscopic pictures, moving objects and things like that.and it was decided that the movie's sound track would bea piece of music by george antheil, an american composer (1900-1959)and whom created a mechanical music. that can be seen as the continuationof the futurists movement, like luigi russolo,and he... -maybe you should precisewhat is futurism -ah, right, futurism;futurists were people that considered
that noise was music.so they created instruments that produced noise, hell of a racket, it hurts your ears, i'm thinking to the russolophone,an instrument russolo invented, that interprets a partition with noise,poems shouted... the idea was to consider noise as music.. -and there was hacking,they took regular instruments like a piano,they removed the strings, and replaced them with beer bottlesand played with this. -that's it. and there were experiments,involving movie pictures,
there were people improvising on piano,to accompany the first black and white movies,then, as hollywood grew bigger, there were composers hiredto compose a movies' music, during the 40s and 50s,among them, george antheil who composed forthe pride and the passion and until the 70s,there was an eclectic climate, jazz was used, for instance,miles davis made the music for the movie elevator to the gallows... -and it's improvised
-a complete improvisation.there was this idea of experimentation, and in the 70s, arrived star wars,whose music was composed by john williams,and george lucas proposed to john williams to draw his inspirationfrom a pre-existing piece made by a composer called gustav holst,an english composer, and who composed a quite famous piece,especially one movement, that is called the planetscomposed from 1914 to 1917. so, john williams takes george lucas' advice, and agrees to compose somethingin the style of holst.
and he composed most of star wars'music, drawing his inspiration fromholst's the planets. i'll play mars, that is the first movement. -and for the anecdote,john williams also took the imperial marchfrom a belgian surrealist composer. -and this was also the musicof an old atari st game that i loved, epic, a space ship simulation game. -...? -we can't hear you.
-ah, sorry.so, you listened to this first movement, and what's the first thingthat pops in your mind ? does it sound like star wars ?indeed ! but it was 1914, sixty years before john williams' composition he used the same orchestral colors,the slow crescendos, the martial rhythm, i think you know it,but nontheless, i'll play john williams' imperial march...and we have here, this martial march, supported by the percussions,the theme played by the horns, and behind, the strings,violins, alti, celli and contrabasses
accompanying the theme. -as a sounddesigner, i felti had to make noises. -thank you.so there's a reusing of this orchestration. that is, a triangle of instruments :percussions, brasses, with horns, trombones, tubas and trumpets, and strings, with all the instrumentsi described. but not only.this triangle is put forward, but john williams is able,after that, to evolve with more subtles nuances,to let in a piccolo,
to let in woodwinds,flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; so john williams used a pre-existingstyle, but in the same time created his own.he has his way to compose his own theme.and i'll go furhter in time, there are complete reuses of a wholework like in 2001 space odyssey,with the introduction on richard strauss' also sprach zarathustra,i think you know it, and reuses that are so badly covert,that the rearrangement and the original work are almost the same.i'll play two excerpts,
jutpiter, from holst's the planets : this was jupiter, and now,the soundtrack of movie called the right stuff,whose music was composed by bill conti. it's not holst's jupiter.it's bill conti. you had no trouble noticingthe resemblance between jupiter and bill conti's compositionfor the right stuff. so this is only a reorchestration of a tune,taking the model, and transposing it, with little differences,the same string ostinato
the ostinato being the repetitionof the "tegedugudek" there. and in the 70s, hollywood's cinema reused the codes of these composers.i mentioned richard strauss and holst, i could mention wagner,tchaã¯kovsky, and many others. they take these codes,and they will adapt it to hollywood's cinema.because it has this epic propention, with strong nuances,and the brass-strings-percussion triangle, that works.and if we go further again, arrives a character i mentioned earlier,hans zimmer.
and you did not get to listen to somehans zimmer, we'll fix that. because i said it was standardized music, right ? i'll stand for my words.so, the dark knight rises. in general, you listen to ten secondsand you heard everything. so why do i get to hans zimmer,he has a peculiar story, he's an american composer,he had some success in europe but the moved to the u.sand made the music for rain man, with dustin hoffmanthat is rather good, i must say. oddly.he met a huge success
with the lion king,it's not him singing, he composed it, so he grew famouser, and the movie that made him extremely popular and in demand,was gladiator. i'll play an excerpt, gladiator... 2:52 it's gladiator.can you hear the ostinato that was in mars ?it's there as well. we agree to say that,with gladiator, hans zimmer reuses codes that john williams reused,he takes from the roots of these codes,
that is, the planets of holst and mars.and from this moment, he gets such a fame,that he creates a music studio for cinema, and hires some composersto compose lots of movie soundtracks around this one style, that is his.what happened in gladiator's music ? exactly what john williams did,or what danny elfman with his own style, he takes the codes, and he purges.meaning, that he simplifies nuances, there are less and less nuances,they are rather loud pieces, heroic, with the trianglebrass-percussion-strings, but just with these.so, the woodwinds, harps, pianos,
any other instrument, are removed.and he would rather add electronic percussions or electric guitars,like in inception. so, he purges, and thank to gladiator's success, and to this studiowhose name i forgot, that he founded with... i forgot the name.i forgot lots of names. he will impose a standard,he'll create a norm. his studio, from the year 2000to this day, composed in the name hans zimmer,70 movie sound tracks. i don't know if you realise,it's almost impossible.
i'll give you an idea of how long it takesto compose a real ost, there's the example of a composercalled gabriel yared, who composed forthe lives of others, an excellent composer,with music full of nuances and strenght, and that was supposed to composefor a peplum, and gladiator also markedthe peplum's comeback, so he was supposed to composefor this peplum : troy, that is a really bad movie,it's my opinion. so he worked for more than a year,writing music.
and in hollywood, they have a room,where they show the almost-done movie to a testing audiencethat gives its opinion on the movie, the music, the direction, and what'swrong. and when the testing audience came out they said that the music was too bold. and production said to gabriel yared,"you're nice, but your work is too bold we'll hire someone else, thank you, bye"and in the end they hired james horner. james horner composed for titanic,and did good things, like in der name der rose, with sean connery, and he started over,and he composed the whole ost
within four weeks.so, when you compare a year and half and four weeks of work.and when you know that james horner is part of this zimmerian movement,the purging of john williams model, that already was a reuse of holst's model,this production, this way of making music,is really quick. and the fact that hans zimmer andfriends created 70 ost from 2000 to 2012,for a composer like gabriel yared, it is not possible.it is not possible, even if you share the work with four other composers.it is a standard they set,
to produce efficient music massively,this music is very martial, compressed, everything is loud,there are no nuance, woodwinds are gone,and this way to make music became a standard,because it was used by hans zimmer and lots of composers,and as they composed for 70 movies, they established a musical supremacy,in the world of music for hollywood's cinema.and why am i talking about this ? -yes, i was about to ask you to focuson video game. -my point, yes, why mention all this in a discussion about video game ?
so, why in video games such as assassin's creed, call of duty, battlefield, do we find this type of music ?i have an hypothesis, because video games mimicshollywood's cinema. in several regards, i wrote them down,cutscenes, that are there to improve the player's immersion and the game's narration, the games engines,that are more and more powerful, and that gets photorealistic,gaming system that are now able to play symphonic musics and not only chiptunethere is no more limitations from the hardware,some video games budgets
are getting close to movies budgets.the blockbusters often are war games that is the appanage of hollywoodwith this kind of music. and also, certain hollywood composersthat now work in video game. that is why i mentioned heavy rainand david cage's last production, beyond two souls, thanks,whose composer is hans zimmer. and he also wrote call of duty's theme,so video game wants to look like hollywood's cinema,and hollywood's cinema reaches it out and as this cinema endorseda musical standardization, somehow, it is the logic continuation,that this kind of music
passes from hollywood's cinemato video game. -yeah. i think that beyondthis applied music, there's a surrounding idea.we know that hollywood's codes are more and more used in video games,it can involve other aspects. you mentioned the metaphor ofamerica's history, a land of migrants and the imageof the american dream, this can be found in cinema,with characters that are totally banal, like scarface, small charactersthat reach the top. and this model can be found in videogame,
once again, in a standardized way,but there's another model, that is not standardized,it's the one from the gta series, and rockstar studio,that would be a giant mix of all this, but in an other register.what you should know is that in all of rockstar's productions,and especially gta, the soundtrack really stands out,that is a mix made by several djs, and unexpected ones among them,like karl lagerfeld. and it nourishes the mythof the american dream, i'll try to get out of this cinema based reflection,
and to get back to video game,with authors that... -just, to finish,why are there percussions and brasses in video game and cinema ?that's because they are reproductions of military music.in these movies or these games, heroism is associated to the avataror the protagonist. and heroism in musicsince 4 or 5 centuries, is illustrated by military music,with lots of percussions, snares, march rhythms, and brasses.and little by little, the musical language was developped, and when heroism was to be illustrated...
in addition, there was the literary cultureof great avatars, wagner and siegfried, and reappropriations of legends andmyths that were to be transposed in music,and when they had to illustrate these with music, they used military music.that's why i said that music was a non-meaningful art, but it isan art highly connoted. military music induces heroism andcourage, positive aspects of war.whereas war has more than a lot of negative aspects... -you're taking risk, now.
-i'm not scared.and this culture, developped this language,snare, percussions, brasses, and violin lyrism,that are associated to courage and heroism.and in big movies, epic movies, you'll find this powerful symphonic orchestra. why no woodwinds ?because, anyway, you would not hear themyou said it was to simplify, yes of course, they'd be useless.and there's as well something about the theatre's speakers,that cannot use certains frequencies,
so if you can't hear them,don't use these instruments. and this language was transmittedto cinema, and as video game, copies the codes, but alsothe narrative themes such as heroism and courage,then : military music. it's the groudingof the musical topic theory, that studies stereotypical formulasand how they appear. how do you apprehend the signs,how these signs appear, why this sign rather than another one.raymond monelle wrote about it, books are in english, but quite digest,he wrote about musical topics.
and if you're interested in the subject,you can read, in french, marta grabocz, who wrote very good books in french. -and what is a musical topic,for those who weren't here last year ? -they are stereotyped musical formulas,that have a sense, a meaning, that is highly connoted, for instance,the military topic has been connoted for three or four centurieslike the pastoral topic, why would the bagpipe be pastoral ?because it reminds of the sheperd, a fictive sheperd,cause most of them don't play the bagpipe.and these formulas entered the language,
they settled and became symbolic,because they were conventionalities, and then were reused, recycled.because with cinema and video game, we try to make sense with music,great, but we do not always have the time, so sense has to be very evident.the musical message has to be understood quickly.and to use formulas that already connotedin your memory is quick and efficient. hans zimmer uses the military topic,but he has a style that is a bit taking over. because those topic can be reappropriated, hacked. and hans zimmer is an extreme example,with a style that is getting ubiquitous.
-briefly,this mars piece by holst that you listened to,uses the military themes, but differently. that is that,when he composed mars, he wanted to picturethe wwi's violence. the planets were composedduring the wwi, from 1914 to 1917,and he wanted to illustrate this violence. and in my opinion, in mars,there's no heroism and... -yes, you can do whatever you wantwith the topics, and reappropriate it. you know that snare and brassesis military, supposed to be heroic,
and then you can divert the purpose. -and the second thing, is thatjohn williams with the imperial march, uses this topic, but he is ableto add a subtle orchestration with woodwinds...so, it's possible, and you'll agree with me. and it's weird that hans zimmerremoves a part of the orchestra, removes subtleties and nuanceswith the absence of softer instruments. -just to make things clear,we often mention video game, the cinema impregnates video game, etc.but it's only a part of video games. it is clear that in games,that develop narration,
they will go, starving, to grab what works.since the camera appeared in games, it got worse.but not all games do that. obviously, systemic games,alternative games, strategy games, a plethora of games that do not usethese codes. -yes, there are games, that do no use,or that break those codes, and that works very well,and sometimes not because they broke the codes.and for instance, nobuo uematsu, reappropriates the musical topics,modifies them and uses them, and it's common fact that he isa good composer, that makes good
things,yet he uses stereotyped formulas, but no one is bothered. -as i said earlier,we diverged from video game, but it allowed to explain thestandardization of video game music.but i wanted to give a panel of composers and/or sound designersspeeches about their work. i'll explain the nuance, in my opinionit's important. i chose a few composer or sounddesigner, that i think are emblematic.a composer that is not really a composer,
as he defines himself as a sounddesigner, that is akira yamaoka,composer for konami's silent hill series, and recently, for grasshopper's shadow of the damned,and for killer is dead. why does he insist on being calledsound designer ? for two reasons,first, he works a lot on atmosphere, especially for the silent hills series,we mentioned the silence, in the beginning,he uses it almost as a craftsman would, we mentioned sound fx,and he explores noises,
of unbearable sounds, that can be linked to horror, silence is always, at some point,a synoym of anxiety, of questions, and he plays with these two opposites notions, total silence and complete saturation.the second reason why he wants to define himselfas a sound designer, is because he does not want to narrow his field of work, and also because, in the first place,he studied design. and he links his music, his compositions,to a certain concept of shapes and figures,and i'd even say of pictures.
and what's interesting is thathe takes the video game object in an architecture.because usually, image and sound are seen separatly, while he has an overall vision. a small interesting parallel,i promise it won't last long, he composed for the cinematic adpationof silent hill, directed by christophe gans,and people asked him why didn't you try something elsewhen you worked on the movie ? he explained that he thoughtit was pointless, as it only was the reproduction of a process to another.that it was an adaptation of a work
that he had understood, and didn't see the point of exploring something else in a movie adaptation.maybe if it was an original work he would have tried something else,but it's interesting that he would be so straightforward.another emblematic person, that you mentioned earlierolivier deriviã¨re, that composed for remember me,and of orcs and men, that works a lot on symphonic pieces,and electronic ones as well. and during his interviews,he insists a lot on the production conditions,we talked about it earlier,
of course, when you look at someonelike hans zimmer, you think, it's impossible to produce this much,but what deriviã¨re underlined, was not the repetitive or standardized production, but what are the production conditionsof a game's soundtrack. does the composer/sound designerintervenes in the conception process, does he participates in the definitionof the project ? is he part of the productionduring the whole process ? that is, is it just a skype call miles awayfrom the team, or is it a discussion in a real room,like with the one life remains collective.
-yes, in big studios,tasks are divided, but in a team of five, the composer and sound designeroften are the same people, and in some independent games,there's only one person writing the code, the story,and making the graphics and sound. there are differencesin the production perspective that have a huge impact.on the way we create sound, for instance, the fact that in big studios,there are 10 sound designers, each working on one sound,the fact that sounds are not made in the same time than music.that music is often made afterwards.
most of the time, the game is made,and they ask a composer to put some music on images,and not on a gameplay. in collective such as ours,everybody participates in everything. i participate in gameplay ideas,so when we'll produce the sounds, we'll produce them on minimalist bricks,there won't be any graphics, but sound will be discussedwe'll analyse the gameplay, take those gameplay bricksand try to project sound on it, and using emerging methods,we'll put sound in a game, and... run the system,and discover things.
i have an external position on videogame, 'cause i'm not called to put sound on images, but i participate in an overall project,in which music and gameplay related questions arelinked. sometimes we make a gameplay,we put music inside, and level design comes with the music.and we are listening for hours to think of what could occur.sometimes, nothing occurs. it happens. often.but sometimes amazing things occur. so, the production process,whether it is reversed or not,
changes the impact sound will have,especially in video game. -a quick word to echo a bit what you said,and to answer to the question in your conclusion, the production conditions mostly determine the final work.the division of labor, industry, craftsmanship,the workers proximity, hierarchy and powerwithin an organization... you just have to read marx,and you understand the economical structuresand the production model -and temporality as well.that is, the moment music is created
in the whole creation process...i don't want to get back on cinema but there are as wellpieces of music that exist before the movie is made,when you mention 2001, in fact, our friend kubrickused placeholders that are sounds used to test.but in the end, he kept it. too bad for the unemployed composer.but the music's pre-existence allows things to emerge,for instance, in 2001, playing an opera, scenery musicwill transform his movie into a ballet. that is obvious.the moment you create music,
and the fact that musicis already apprehended when images are made,will change a lot. another example : sergio leone,that worked with moricone, and when he was shooting,for once upon a time in the west, all the scenes with slow-mo, slowwalking, the music is played livewhile the scene is filmed. it avoids what i like to callmusic induction by image. when you have an imageand that you must put music on it, it's not at all the samethan to do differently,
and regarding video game,the central point, that we stand for in the collective,is gameplay. -in video game, there were lotsand lots of reuses of pre-existing music. at first, for instance, lots of wagnerbecause it was free of copyright. really convenient, economically.now, there are composers that create music that could work in the best way,so we could think, let's forget about the old things,but if there's a reflection on the use of music,and not just : "this tune is sweet, let's put it there""why is it sweet ?"
"don't know, i like it."but for instance, in the game spec ops : the line,there's a music used... nowhere to run,i can't remember the band's name, but it's from the sixties i think,really perky music, that is played when the squadis about to try to launch a signal to evacuate the population,and from the beginning, you know that it will fail.and this music that seems to pop out of nowhere,a reuse, and the title itself has a meaning, it foretells what will happen,and you're not disappointed, it fails,
and there no easy wayout of the ruins of dubai. and the perky music, that constrats sharply with the gameplay involving shooting andkilling the music does not fit withthe atmosphere, but it manages to make a deeper and more discretesense. and spec ops is an adaptationof a short story, a heart of darkness,and of apocalypse now, that was also an adaptation of this story,and in the movie good morning vietnam, that tells the story of a dj thatplays music to soldiers,
and nowhere to run is the first musicthat the dj plays in the movie. so the idea is that you can usepre-existing music to give a sense externalto the video game medium. and a subtle one. -i'm thinking about the composerthat wanted to be called sound designer, i can get that, becausewhen you work in video game, you have to think of sound systems,you can't just think of music, you have to think of sound systems,that would adapt to the interactions, that will flow and bouncesilence as well, how to bring it, and so
on...and you rather work on the sound space of a video game,rather than only music or fx. this wide notion of sound landscape,that you can display, that is more or less musical, that is, you can create a sound landscape with music as well as with noises.but this question is the main focus of a sound designer,he has to set efficient sound systems either to increase the action realism, or to create a distance. it is interesting as a production methodof course, you make sounds... but you have to have an overall reflexion.and of course, in a collective,
when you work in a bottom-up modewith lots and lots of iterations, lots of versions, we sometimeend up with a different big picture than the one we had in the beginning.we are guided by the gameplay. we fly blind, the gameplay builds itselfin front of us, and we try to hold this and to... to...so it's a quite peculiar practice, and everything is not that tidy, we build together, things emerge, and we don't have this overall visionof the sound system. it is built along with the game.it's not the same thing than have the game finished,being able to look at all the game's
aspects,and then to create the sound system. -and with these collectives,with the music made along with gameplay and narration, etc.it's interesting to notice, maybe not in your case,that sometimes there's a balance of powerbetween different persons working on a game.typically, for certain games, there's a lead game designer,that may be really authoritarian, a balance of power that would be vertical,as well as horizontal ones, and it changes the projects,do you have any experiences to share,
with vertical groups,and with a balance of power that... -we use a vertical and horizontal model.anybody can bring ideas, but at some point, the personwho's responsible for the domain decides.there's a bit of leadership, but lots of collaborative work as well.we don't talk only about video games, bounds are created with music as well.a game designer can speak on game's sound,domains are mixed. the balance of power is linkedto your skill and your knowledge on your work.and like every group,
we sometimes argue,but i think it's positive. of course, we make experimental games,that is to say that we consider video game is a mature mediumthat can deal with lots of questions political, social, philosophical questions,and we try to produce games that deal with these questions,so of course, our discussions are not just about sound,but also what's the sound impact, so not everybody agrees.and we do not listen to the same things, in the collective, we don't have the same tastes, we don't have the same knowledge,i, for instance, do not know gameplay
better than the game designer,i'm learning. there. we are rather in a sharing method,but as we work on quick protoypes, we come from game jams, the collective was built around jams, i don't know if you're familiarwith the concept, people create games in 24 hours, or in one hour.and in a way, as we come from this school, we are used to ermergency, used to tension. and we're called one life remains,it shows a will to propose a radical vision. -then again,on production conditions,
i mentioned oliver deriviã¨re,and i'll quote him, because he told an anecdotethat illustrates the strandardization of aaa productions, block busters,he often explains that he had a producer on alone in the dark,and there were brainstormings, where he would bring his tracks,to see if they would fit, and if the producer would like iteven though he had no video game knowledge,and less video game music knowledge. and one day, he proposed on a whim,bulgar singings, so he plays the bulgar singings,and the cigar smoking ceo,
bolts up in his armchair and says"you take these and put them everywhere in the game"i tell this anecdote because it is representative,and because deriviã¨re uses it quite often, there's a meaningful gap.i wanted to continue on the spectacular aspectin another register. i'm thinking of an american composer,called tommy tallarico, that is the initiator of video games live,gigs that play the most famous tunes of the video game culture,he is was well the composer for aladdin on genesis,and for earthworm jim,
the trouble of this reorchestration is that it conveys three images, that can be interesting,but that are bothering me. on one hand, this spectacular aspect,wavering between a classic show, with the conductor driving some tunes, and tommy tallarico's apparitions on stage,with an electric guitar, like the rockstar we mentioned before.and the trouble is, that these reorchestrations of classictunes, that have a nostalgic touch,it feels like they are a bit oversteping the mark,with these tunes that sometimes,
are only a recipient for nostalgia.typically, the tune that most of the time concludes video games live isone winged angel from ffvii sephiroth's theme, big vilain,and once again, the tune is quite emblematic,you'll explain this better than i would, so that's another view of video gamethat can be interesting regarding the reorchestration work,but that has its limits as well. and i'll conclude with one last point, and it's the one that most interests me, that are composers,that have a real reflection on their processes,not that akira yamaoka had not,
but it was a sharp and esthetic reflection.i think of tetsuya mizugushi, that composed for kyo enternaiment,and that now teaches sound design, in keio university, in japan.he composed for space channel 5, rez,sega rally. and we'll focus on rezand child of eden, because with these games,he edged close to performance, and once again, i turn to you,because i know that one life remains also proposes video game performancesthat question game design as long as sound design.and this is why i insist on saying
composer and/or sound designer,because for several years, here in the stunfest, we question this idea of game design, but sound design is a part of this idea,it belongs in a system, and maybe the term composer,reduces this idea. so i'll finish, often, when mizuguchiand his inflences are mentioned, you hear about kandinsky,vassily kandisky, a russian painter whom wrote a lot, on painting,on motion, on place within a frame, so on. easy to make a comparisonwith video games. and, i studied another painter,that is mondrian,
i think an image will remind you of him,this is one of mondrian's famous compositions,that was later used in fashion and pop culture, like yves st laurent,why do i mention this ? because, according to me,mizuguchi's work, especially in a game like lumines,a sort of tetris mixed with a rhythm game is much closer to mondrianthan to kandinsky, why ? because visually, there are these squares that you saw on the painting, and mizuguchi always usesthis synesthesia concept, synesthesia, briefly,is the idea to bind a sound to a color,
and vice versa,and mondrian, in the end of his career, stopped making these squares,his painting were no more demarcated, by those black lines,but on the contrary, were an explosion of space,and this was caused by music explosion and especially the surge of jazz in the usat his moment. why this parallel ?because, with games like child of eden or rez we are beginningto make video games that question the notion of performance in video game.child of eden is a game that is heavily inspired by rez,that was a shooting game
but with music pads that are evolving all along, and it adds kinect or ps move,the idea of motion and embodiement in the gaming experience. -yeah.i could reply to a lot of things you said. and i don't know where to start.maybe the easiest. on performance. in our collective,we are trying to open up video games, changing its location,it's one of our questions, what happens when you putvideo game on stage, as a regular show or a gig,in a museum, in the street...
so of course, it has a huge impacton sound questions, because you won't amplify a cartrifdge game as a gig game, or in the street.that was the first thing, i want to tell so much that i don't know where to begin, so i'll pass my turn. -i would raise the question of the senseand place of music within video game. and i can see my colleaguerubbing his hands, we've talked about experiments,we talked about olivier deriviã¨re, silent hill's composer, and the showman that is producer
and musician of video games live,but shouldn't we wonder what is the meaning of sound,of music, in a video game. why ?we are now in 2013 (?) and there already are lots of composersthat got huge, that had brilliant ideas for video games, and who codified it,in some way. why do we put sound in video games ? -to speak on sound, and not only music,experiments were conducted in warcraft, the rts, and hitman,the players would play for five or six hourswith the sound and
then the sound was muted.and more than damaging the atomsphere, it damaged the gameplay.in warcraft, what's on the screen is just a part of the map,so there's a minimap with visual signals, and also a lot of sound signals,indicating that a building is complete or if you're under attack somewhere,and people that were not used to the gamedid not look at the mini map, because they would trust the sounds,and they realize the importance of these sounds once it's muted,because they would find out that their base was destroyedfive minutes ago, and they did not notice
it.and in hitman, there are sound alerts to warn you that a place is dangerous,that you might get caught, etc. and with no sound, you lose all thesehints. so here the sense of soundis linked to gameplay. -an anecdote on the importance ofsound, you may know the gameodd world, abe's odysee, in which you play as a characterthat has to rescue his congeners, sneaking into a factory,and i recently read a piece of news that told about a player,that filmed himself playing,
and the player was blind.and he was able to beat the game with no image.because the game's sound design was enough to play it.with training, of course, but you train as well whenyou're able to see the game. -about meaning of musicused in narration, we have to apprehend the conceptof semantic contamination. ...michel chion wrote a lot about sound design in cinema.and he explains that each music will give a different sense to an image.and vice versa.
for instance, star wars,you picture darth vador walking on the imperial march,heroic, epic... you change the music to "le petit bonhomme en mousse".... -it won't be the same. -it will be very different.not that it would not work, it just be different.it's not the purpose in the movie, but image and soundconnote each other. in bioshock, there werereally dramatic pieces of music, not radio music that were diegetic,real non diegetic music,
escpecially in the end of the game,dramatic music, for the game is quite darkand the story is gloomy. when i finished the game,i was deeply moved by the music, and when i listened to it a bit later,without the game, i would still find it dramatic,but i wondered, if i had not played the game,how would i consider this music ? the music mainly consisted in slow pads,it's really contemplative, and it bothered me a bit,because without the 15-20 hours long game experience, music was not that great.
while when it was played on the game,with the narration, it brings back feelings,and it's really moving. -i think that spontaneously,if you don't try to analyze, a video game or a movie,you feel like there's an intrinsic sense, that is exploited by the dispositionof the signifying elements. that an image has a sense,and there is no need for music to understand this image, it is self-sufficient and it can make sense on its own.and you would add music to provide complementary informations,feedback with fx,
immersion or whatever,but complementary informations. yet it's be proved, in an experimentcalled sense plurality, that when you ask peopleto interpret images with a certain music, they do, and then you play the same sequence with another music,and the interpreations are completely different.it shows how meaning systems work, there are comes and goes with music,and we notice that music completely changes the interpretationof what we're watching. there's no real separation,but rather a whole.
different senses are impliedand you interpret differently what seems separate in our languagewe talk about image, about sound, while it seems they work together. -in addition, there are two differentmedias, but semantic contaminationcan occur with only one. one of the first experimentsto study that, is a montage, made by lev koulechovin the early 20th century. he took a picture of an actor,with a neutral facial expression, there an urban legendabout this experiment,
because the tapes were missing,lots of variations about how the experience was conductedi'll tell one of them, it was just editing, one medium : image.there was a soup image, the actor's face,a girl in a coffin, the actor's face, the same image,a woman laying on a couch, and once again, the actor's face.it was a famous actor, and he told people,"look at the subtle acting, we can see how starving he is, then mourning on his face, and lust in his eyes"and he was deceiving the audience.
this to show you how easy it isto abuse meanings with only one medium,so, with video game, where there are music, texts, andcontexts, gameplay, it is extremely complex.if you add to this the connotations of music, text and image,it makes a whole, indivisible, regarding meanings and sense.if you change one of these elements, and do it well, the sense will be slightly different. this, to sum up the intermedia principle,that there always are links between each primary media, for instance,
video game : image-text-sound,and each one of these medias has its own history, connotation,they can have an influence on the others, paraphrase each others, etc.and to study meaning in audovisual mediasyou have to consider the context in which music and image are used. -were there ever an experimentwith a game with no sound ? a silent game ? -some games propose tomute the sound. music or fx, independently.
-yes, with why not a game,where sound and music would be the topic ?i've always wonder why there never was any video gamewith the birth of sound. there was a game like evolandthat would transcribe the video games history,with 8bit and so on, and why not a video gamewith these questions applied to sound ? independent, i guess.a game that would try to explain the role of sound and music. -there are examples of gamesthough not musical games,
explore some functions of sound.a game like protheus, with a complex sound system,in which you stroll on an island and live incredible sound experiences, but to do this, they first had to naturalize soundto use old techniques, that have been used in music for a while,how do we mimic nature ? how can instruments mimic nature ?like in peter and the wolf, or romantic pieces of music,instruments were used to mimic. so, using this method,you end up with a composition that is entirely musical,but because of the imitation process,
you'll have the feeling to bebetween a musical system, and a sound system.i recommend that you try protheus, it's an amazing game,a game with a robust sound system you just have to move a bit,or let time pass by, to step near a leaf,and the composition changes. it is generative music.but at this level, you should not expect a chorus,you should not expect violin... there are lots of independent gamesthat create this kind of things. oddly, it's kind of a counter-example,but i like stanley's parable,
i don't know if people know it,because... well, you got that i'm interestedin this land between fx and music, i think that we were served music,but that sound space is pen falling on the floor, see ?and stanley's parable is the counter example for cinema.the whole cinema history was about creating links betweennarrations moments, silent moments, atmosphere momentsand musical moments. and to do this, for a long timewe created transitions between music and fx,typically, it's the example of the train,
that arrives at the stationand blows the whistle, and you use the whistle to start a melody,that will bring in music. we are permanentlyin these transitions logics that also are transitions betweenthe diegetic space, what is happening, and the non-diegetic space. and in stanley's parable,what's funny is that in a way, they use the less subtle wayto announce music, that is that, as there's a voice-over,it's the voice-over that tells you that the music will come in.and you find yourself
in a peculiar space,because when there was just the voice, and no music, it was a diegetic space,and when the voice announces the music, "now i'll play some music to entertainyou" you enter another space.this is interesting. it think that if we have to analyzesound space in video games, it is interesting to noticehow unsettled it is, how fuzzy it is.i'm also thinking of a game called silent edge,a point'n'click of some sort, where you can play with time,time is a gameplay element,
and sound space was made by the programmer. it's quite funny in fact, there's the classic fx area, musical interventions,that come in tensed moments, coming in a new room,by there also is something quite surprising,some kind of central sound, between a fan and drone music,that is a link between those to sound areas,noises and music. there is an link between those two,and it is a technique, in indie games, to work with layers.and there are lots experiments
on this matter.i was also thinkin of experiments on temporality,temporal feedbacks in games. music is used to do that.in a game like osmose, for instance, where you decrease the speed,and the music will render this effect. this feedback was not planned.it's very emergent. there are lots of examplesof sound questioning. look at braid, in which there's a music,that is pre-existing, and when he's rewinding...everybody knows braid, right ? no ?it's a platform game,
and you gather puzzle parts, and the game's thing, is that you can go back in time,with a button, you go back in time, to any point, and this effect,in addition to being interesting in the gameplay,as you're able to rewind when you die, or to access places that you could not access,there are clouds that... ...it's an instersting game regarding this,but in addition to that, it has no limit.you can endlessly rewind. and the game's creator,whose name... -jonathan blow
-jonathan blow, of course...what's funny is that he developped a sound system that is apart from the game. he thought,"it's to complicated, my rewind is not a resource, and i can't use it,so, i have to make this effect unlimited, and to put music and fxinside" so he used a distinct sound system,that lives on its own, and that fades slowly.so there, a constraint allowed to createa very peculiar sound system that permits to rewindboth music and fx
in a complete natural way.and it's not the game system that makes it,it's a distinct sound system that was created to do it. -this contradicts what we were saying before, when you talked about the waysto create music that had to be a cohesion, a collaborative work,and in this case, jonathan blow, maybe he was alone... -they were two with the illustrator -two ?well there, he takes some existing
material and he managesto make it coherent with the game, via the music's motions in relation withthe rewinds and forwards. -i don't think we can statewhether it's good or bad. using pre-existing music,if it's done correctly, why not ? kubrick did it.and furthermore, when you see that in very popular movies' soundtracks,some things were plagiarized... it's not new, i mean...vivaldi copied bach note for note. he stole his partitions, and adapted them for violin. so, these questions can be put into perspective.
in braid, fx are quite simplebing-boum-bam, childish things but it does not matter.because it's intentional, it's part of the game's art direction,so it does not bother me. -okay. -and i would like to talk about a gamethat i like, that sometimes is a subject of debate, i don't know why,a game named limbo, and... -i'll wait to hearwhat you have to say about it. -what i have to say is linkedto my personal experience, i find this game really interestingregarding the question of fear,
and the question of death,so i go : "so, you played the game,did you like it ?" "yeah, i liked it""what did you think of the music ?" "uh ? there's no music in limbo !"and i reply : "you're making two mistakes here,with one sentence, you make two mistakes, great score.first, you forgot that there is music in limbo. lots of pads that are not fx,many musical intervention, often during encounters with otherchildren, and there is music in the menu.and the second mistake you made,
is that the composer, whose name is anderson i think, for once i remember a name, he explained that what he created is a composition, he is convincedthat he made music. that he made what is calledan acousmatic composition, that is, he developed in this gamea sound universe of things that are unseenthat are behind, and in fact, he organizes his sound spaceas a composition around unseen sounds. and limbo is for me a very interesting example, for you can make two misinterpretations,not to hear music while there is,
and no to hear music,while if you have a wide conception of music,there's a really rich and interesting sound space. -funny thing, it sounds a bit like... -...synesthesia, yes, i thought so. -about limbo, which i didn't play muchfor various reasons, these acousmatic sounds are a bitvicious, because usually, acousmatic sounds,come from something off-camera, and that would engage you to go andcheck
and in limbo you can't do that.but it strenghtens the universe, because they are diegetic sounds,but that are off-camera, and there can be frustration,not being able to see, but in the same time, limbo,is a very dark game, you start in a forest,and the fear that comes with it and those unidentified noises,and these sounds, that are not explained, and the fact to be ableto pay no attention to these noises, adds to the game's atmosphere,that is really empathic, with lights, visuals and music.it creates this atomsphere,
and if the pads and sounds were missing,it'd be a big loss. -it reminds me of a personal interpretation about limbo we talked about mortal kombatearlier in the afternoon... -about a speedrun of mortal kombat. -we were talking about mortal kombatand the relation to body, this very discordant approach of music, and despite the photorealism of the graphics, the music is to no extent realistic. back to limbo :the work on music and sounds manages to create a discordant feeling,if not dissonant.
the character in limbo,is basically a black figure, with two white eyesthat glow in the dark, and you are this character,you get curious about the acou..? -acousmatic. -...about the acousmatic soundsthat is off camera, etc. but on the other side, i felt some kind of pleasure to make this character die,i don't want to pose as a sociopath, i'll explain, and this is whyi mentioned mortal kombat,
there is a pleasure, in mortal kombatand other games that explored this prospect,to let your avatar die. to dispose of its body,and in mortal kombat it's very inventive. in limbo, there's the same concept.another game, more recent, bayonetta, in whichall imaginable tortures are... but why do i tell this ?there's this potentiality of the off camera sounds,and in the same time, this character that you want to bringthere, and yet, this puppet aspect,disturbing, that makes you think
that if you'll bring there, on the way, you may make him fall, intentionally or not...it's a very personal interpretation... -funny to think thatthe guy who made the music for limbo considers he's a composer,while the guy who made the music for silent hill does not.there's a very different esthetical approach,yet there are similarities. the idea to enfold an image,either with acousmatic music, or with pads,it feels like there's a connection. because the images are a bit shabby, a bit violent, that are playing on fears,
limbo is in black and white,and plays on the fear of the dark, and in silent hill, there's as wellthis terrifying aspect, and yet, i'm thinking of another game,survival horror can be musicaly handled in a completely different way.in silent hill 2, there are motives consisting in sound crackles,in pads barely melodic, in silence, when you only hearthe sound of your footsteps, and yet, i'm thinking of another game,that is not very popular, called rule of rose,a survival horror with a completely different approach.the composer is the guy
who composed for the monkey ballgames and he's in a completely different approach, he uses a string quartet with a piano.two violins, an alto, a cello and a piano. and he composed music,sounding like jazz, slightly new orleans, rather heavy and langourous,and he manages to fit in influences like schã¶nberg, quite dissonant, music that isa mix of modal and atonal. and that is playedalmost all along the game. and he manages to enfold the game,that takes place in a zeppelin, quite dark and peculiar,but he manages to enfold the game
with the same kind of horrified feeling,with the same sadness, but in a completely different way.and with limbo and silent hill, it is an approach with sounds, of atmospheres that evoke shabbiness, disgust, insanity,but there, the music is very soft, and you feel more or lessthe same things. -and it's permanent ? -quasi-permanent, yes. -you could see this as the opposite side of the anxiety that silence can create.the permanence prevents
the distiction of a presence. -indeed, if we make a distinctionbetween fear and anxiety, we can easily find soundsthat are fit for one or another. if you surprise people to create tension,it's not the same as insidiously play a noise on the left, then on the rightso that they wonder if there is something behind the door,and actually, there is nothing, and you keep moving, in silence, and this would be anxiety. in a way, i think thatimmediate fear, that is linked to the survival horror question,because survival horror games
are typically the kind of gamesin which you get sounds before images. and the using of these soundsdepends on the game, some play with silence, and others... i can't remember the name...blade... a survival horror with zombies... -don't you have another hint ? -blade something with evil zombies.that's more accurate. and it's a cacophony, they play sounds all the time, music is loud, gunshots every twoseconds,
and when monsters arrive...almost everything has its sound. so there is the questionof the sound continuum, and i think it's worth talking about it.and it comes from cinema, but applies to video game.in cinema, not everything has its sound. of course, when you watch a car chase,you don't hear all the sounds they select some sounds, and then create transitions between these sounds, to create a continuum.in order to keep to linearity, and to prevent unintelligibility.some games play with thiss and others, that rather play on the unintelligibility, chaotic presence.
more... -presence-absence. -about this and rule of rose,when you mention presence-absence, there's something interesting in rule of rose, but it's hard to tell if it's intentional or not.it's that the sound loops are very short. and it has an impact.the game's soundtrack was quite criticized in this regard,but it's hard to know what went through the composer's mind, and you wonderwhether these short loops that are permanently repeatedhave an intentional horrifying effect,
that makes the player insane, in a way. -about insanity, there was a game,drakengard, whose ost was composed with rearrengements of musique savante,that was already recorded, but that was cut, looped, and when youplay 45 minutes with 45 seconds loops with repeated motiveswithin those 45 seconds, it is really alienating and it seems it was intentional. and on silent hill 2there's one tune that manages to gather all these things,the tune that is reused for the movie, that is called promise (reprise),and is played once in the game,
when you see angela for the second time,in her apartment, and she's holding a knife,and there's the idea of suicide. the music seems anempathic,it does not seem to fit the situation, there are small bells, a child's music box,and it sounds cute, but looking at the flat, the situation is not.and i thought "this character had problemsduring her childhood" because the music seemed to mean this.which was the case. but there's a piano melodythat gets scarier and scarier as you listen to it,because there's a motive
going up and down with semitones,permanent, that is really stressful, with an melodic ostinato, because notes that stay still are really stressful.you'd like it to move, to live, but it stays the same, and it stresses you.there are two parts, one being softer, and it loops, and even this first part,that did not seem stressful at first, creates uneasiness,in addition to the discussion, and events, and the music manages to beanempathic and empathic in the same timewhich may seem be impossible. maybe my interpretation sounds farfetched
yet, i think yamaoka intended it this way,knowing that its one of the few real tune, as there are lots of noises, industrial fx,and it's one of the rare music in the stereotypical sense,with a partition, a piano, etc. and it contrasts a lot in the game.as it is played in a very special moment during the game. -i'd like to answer to what you saidabout rule of rose, not about the musical analysis,but about the approach we may take, as if we were accountants,what i mean is that there's supposedly one track, that is continuous, then,
i caricaturate,the composer was lazy, there's just this one track,it's a bit lazy. we still are in this idea,we mentioned during the conference "art, culture and video game"that we should divide all the pieces of video game, as it was doneand is still done, in some video game magazine,music x/10, etc. and on the contrary,there can be a lot of compositions, and yet you'd not notice them.and yamaoka, for instance, in shadow of the damned, there are 30 or 40 tracks in the ost.
officialy, there are 120 tracks.there are alterations, in some storylines, when the avatar dies, the music changes.so you can finish the game, if you're skilled enough,and hear about 30 compositions, whereas in the game,there are 120 if not 130. -would it mean that in rule of rose,there was no reflection to match level design/gameplay and composition ?that the music was created aside ? -this i don't know.i just wanted to point this receptive approach :"one track, then it's lazy." while you can have bands like yes,that made lps with 4 or 5 tracks,
but the tracks were epicand 20 minutes long. -funny, you say that it may not seem enough when there's only one track in game,we are currently developing a game with only one sound.and this sound is modified by the code, by effects, and it's an interestingconstraint it shows that with one soundand a few effects, you can illustrate the contemporarytheory of sound modification, envelopes,things like that. and it's almost didactic.
-in rule of rose, there are several tracks.it's just that the loops were a bit short, and that they were repeated endlessly.but it reminds me of a game, with only one piece music,well, it's not the only game, but there's only one loop,that is dragon ball on nes, for what it's worth. -there's only one loop ?even during the dialogs... -no, only one...ah ! yes, right, during the dialogs. there's another one. -but true that on the map,during the game,
there's only one. -so there were three tracksin the whole ost. and it distracts the player,it tires him. if there were more musical tracksin the game, maybe the game would have been more interesting,more entertaining. -i'm not sure about that.briefly : there was a joueur du grenier video,that reviewed the game, and beyond the compositions,the game is not well designed, the whole game design is bad.
-which can be pleasant as well,this idea to pick a game in the attic, and to end up with somethingcompletly bugged. sometimes you find gamesand you wonder how could they make that -i finished the game several times,and it's not the game of the century, ok, but it had some interesting points,the graphical universe were kind of fascinating.i managed to find some narration, even if it was deconstructedcompared to akira toriyama's original workif the music was different,
if it correctly enfolded the different univereses the game had, maybe i'd have liked the game.but it's quite subjective. -yeah, yeah, me, on the contrary,i think maybe they should have emphasized the psychedelic aspectof the game. the colors are impossible,whereas it's a game based on a licence that every body knows,and you fight ennemies that look like deformed goombas, with asburd soundswhen you hit them. so, yes, maybe if they emphasizedthis convergence between these sounds and the fucked up graphics.
-conclusion :you should not neglect musical work. -time went,i wanted to have a break before the audience's questions,but will take them now. ... -about music in video games,whether it was created after or during the game creation.if it was created during the game's creation, is it better, or just different ? -red. no battery. -then i'll answer.
-depends on the game, actually.but in general, i think that it's a better thing,to make the music during the game creation,because it allows to take the creations steps in a same time.and that music may influence game play, game desing, etc.if you take rayman legends as an example,the ideas christophe hã©ral had an influence gameplayand vice versa. they interacted. so i think that it is in general better,because it brings more cohesion within the steps of creation of the game.
-i agree. i'd add that,your question is interesting but there's another question to raisebefore that is :"is sound is important in this game ?" if you make the music once the game is complete and that music is important for the game,within the production, it'll be different, but not necessarily less good. most of adaptative musicare made afterward. you have musical themesand you adapt it to the gameplay. adaptative music is music that adaptsto the player's action.
i'll sum this up in half a second,you are in a room there's no music, you get close to a monster,the music builds tension, and once you meet the monster,the music explodes. basically, this is adaptative.i talked about protheus, and it's as well adaptative musicbut that is a function of the game. it's rather the music's place...i'm looking at you, but i don't know if it was youwho asked the question. it's rather the music's placeand the way you think of it, that leads you to search solutionsso that when music
is put with gameplay,things happen. it's not really about wondering which is better : during or after. it's about observingcommunal production times, so that a dialog can occurbetween the two domains. so that it's not compartmentalizedso that it's not a chain, so that we are able to createa communal space that can allow things to emerge.there is no recipe saying if you make music durign the creation,it'll be better. how to put it...it's still experimental,
we don't know where we are heading.we still don't know, regarding sound, i said it in the beginning,the way you consider sound is deconstructed,and we are searching. there game studies on sound conducted,for instance karen collins, but this work is quite recent.our approach, that is not academic, but practical, even thoughthere are scholars among us, our approach is ratherto push the game to the limit and it shaped our working method,so that music would be one of the first things to create,and sometimes it's just a mundane matter
:what does the sound designer do while the others are workingon the gameplay ? nothing.so, rather than being bored, he'll participate in gameplay creation,and he'll begin thinking on his work, so, of course, in iterative processes,he thinks of things and the next day, the gameplay has completely changed,he ends up with useless things. or not.so the production process is interesting because it createscontacts between human beings, rather than between functions :"music meets gameplay"
it's not how it works,it's people making gameplay meeting people making music,and they work together. -i'd just like to qualify what you were saying, you mentioned adaptative music,and karen collins wrote about it, because, indeed,the moment music will be made depends on the music's nature.whether it is dynamic or not. non-dynamic being, the music starts, something else happens,and you stop it with a fade out, and this not necessarily bad,final fantasy games have
non-dynamic music, a trigger launches the music, and it stops when you move to another stage. in dynamic music, there are two sub-parts : the interactive music, when the player, with his/her actions, will create sound,for instance, in zelda the wind waker, when you hit an ennemy with your swordit plays a note. when you hit them several times,it plays a short melody. and there's the adaptative music,when the music follows the gameplay, a famous example :red dead redemption,
you are in the pampas,and there's nothing. you get on your horse,and a bass starts playing. thugs arrive, and musical elements are added, and there's an accumulation,the more violent it gets, the richer the music will be,and once you killed everybody, these elements are removedand silence comes back. and it's not only the musicbut the whole atmosphere. one of the problem of adaptative music,regarding the immersion, it's awesome, but it's really expensive,so not everyone can afford it,
i know that rockstar madea short documentary on red dead redemption's music,and they explain how they did it, thinking of which trigger would play this sound... but the problem with adaptative music,in my opinion, is that i can't remember anything from red dead redemption's ost. i can't sing anything,whereas in a final fantasy, even if you just heard a track once,you'd remember some things. adaptative music is so immersive,that you can't really enjoy it afterwards. it's my opinion, and the few peoplei asked about this agree.
but there's this idea,to know how you want the music to be remembered,you may considered that the soundtrack and the video gameare inseparable, or that it may still mark you memory, and leave a deeper impression. -before we take another question,we'll show something... -first of all, i'd like to mention something,that was quite oddly forgotten, when you mentioned odd world, and the deaf guy (?) who finished the game...there was limbo as well, in limbo, there are eggs to find,that in the end unlocks
a series of stagesthat are in complete dark, and with no atmosphere.and you go for the trials, using the saw sounds to avoid the saws.and i found it amusing, that in limbo, there was a part,using sound only and no image. i'm not even sure whetheryou can see the character's eyes or not. that was my first comment.and i wanted to ask, how, in your opinion, a video game can teach musical sensitivity,you mentioned guitar hero, earlier, do you think it is possible for a video game to correctly introduce
musical creation, and this kind of things, and how ? -actually, when i mentionedgames like guitar hero, i wanted as well to compare them with wii music, i don't know if you know it.the game was a lot criticized, whereas, in my opinion, it providesa good image of what music can be. we talked about improvisation,with rocksmith, and the way you test musicin a game like wii music, is not competitive at all.it's rather : "go, you've got modeling clay,some thing, lots of instruments,
try things, enjoy yourself,have fun". there is no score, it gives some room for discovery. you learn about the instruments, there are a lot in the game, you learn as well what improvisation can be, there are improvisation sequences,and the way it's done is quite surprising : you'll choose a tune, that'll have a key and you can remove everything,the partition, etc. and do whatever you want on it,it has limits, as you can't play off key, but it allows youto explore rhythm, intentions...
because what reached me as musician,in this game, it's that it's one of the few games i knowthat uses the notion of nuances. i a very simple way, you are playing trumpet, and if you raise your controller,it'll be louder, while if you lower it, it'll be softer.and i think that, regarding musical games,this kind of games may teach people different things aboutmusic. there's another mode,that is mii conductor, i think, and lots of people that are not musicians,do not know what's the conductor's job.
which is a legit question,when watch it from the outside, one could wonder what's the point of the guy. the game, allowing you to conduct a virtual orchestra with the wii mote, teaches a few notions, for instance, that the conductor gives the tempo and drives the intentions. and knowing this, regarding musical learning, i think this example is rather interesting. -can you learn music with guitar hero ?no, but you can learn rhythm. i like the example of the simonthat is interesting musical game...
the things it causes, i have not yetthougth on it, so i can't say for sure... your question is : how to teach with video games ? -how to make people clickabout musical sensitiviy ? -i'm an idealist,so i think that when you let people free, when you are less pushy,less "do that", it may bring creativity.i think that musical games must be open. they must carry the musicians' language,there are lots of things to be done, but the first thing, in my opinion is :you become a smart monkey when you repeat,but there's another stage,
and i'm once again back to proteus,you are a conductor in proteus, not with a baguette,but with motions. and after a few minutes,you're only doing this, edging close to a rabbit,waiting for the sunset, there is a strong interaction with themusic, and in these games, there is this clickyou mention. and it brings as well a different music.popular music, musique savante, whatever we want. -we'll be two idealists this evening,in this idea to access freely to learnings
and to music.and there are different approaches depending also on the country.in japan, there's a musical school that creates instruments as well,that is yamaha whose approach of musicis really close to montesorrian education. and the method was exported to europe,and maybe in the world, i don't know. so i think there are bridges to build.for instance, in france, and in europe, there's this idea of the conservatoire,quite dull, and i don't want to caricature it because it can grant a certain levelof skill and musical knowledge that may not be reached otherwise,i don't know.
anyway, for this access and this clickyou were mentionning, i'd agree with you thatat first, we should change our way to introduce this pedagogy,whether it is musical or not. -i think that what provokesmusical sensitivity, whether it is instinctive or learned is anotherquestion... -it starts on the 6th month of prengnancy,and it is stabilized around 17-18. -okay. you studied... -no, but it has been studied,you learn rhythm first... those are cognitive studies,that have been conducted for a few years,
and that shows some funny things, for instance, when you're a child, you don't learn everything at the sametime and kids younger than 5can't tell whether a tune is sad or not. there's this idea that there areminor and major chords, and one should be sad, and the other...and when you're a kid, you can't tell.you do not have the musical knowledge yetand the only way for a child of this age to get if the music is sad or joyful,is the execution speed. a fast tune is joyful, a slow one is sad.you can try this, if you have kids,
if you play them a really sad tuneand accelerate it, they'll find it joyful. -i'll caricaturate a bit, butlatest success in this field, renã©e la taupe and the chimpmunks...indeed, acceleration works. could they have used sad lyricsfor the same result ? -you can play your kids other things.it's possible. there are fast tunes, that are not... -i'd like to specify,that music's meaning is a cultural construction. -about what you said earlier,i think that video games and experiments
must question musical learing.you mentioned conservatoire and co earliermaybe all of this should lead the teachers to think of new ways of teaching.and actually, i think that everybody stand their ground,for instance, teachers in conservatoire, have a very bad image of video game music, "guys, you're making beeps, great"whereas there are lots of things to take regarding learning in the experimentsthat are conducted, and that you conduct. -yes...i'll answer once again to your question
because i thought of something else.we are using games as installations, so we are meeting very variousaudiences, and i think that we can imaginethat playing together creates the potentialityof a better learning. i think, and it may be just a hunch,that when we play together, we communicate certain things,musicians experienced this, this situation when everybody plays welltogether, and everybody is pleased, it's what makes the point ofmusicotherapy, so maybe inventing games,to play together, maybe party-games,
collaborative games, things like that...maybe we should find new gameplay so that people can play together. -pierre, you had a question. -yes, and i have a mic,i had two questions. the first mainly concerns the musiciansand sound designers among you, what is a sound creation process,and what kind of synthesis do you use ? and the second question,that concerns every one, to me, and i'm no gamer,it seems like a closed environment, and i work a lot with bands, and stepping in their shoes,
i wonder how to get in this environment, how to diffuse their musicon this kind of medium ? -my personal example is the jams.lots of people gathering to talk about video gamesduring creation competitions. i remember when we started,in 2010, i went to my first jam, and there was no sound designernone. the last jam we participated, a year ago,there were more sound designers, than visual designers.the stunfest is a place where you meet players,you talk about your practices,
i think it's not this closed, but you have to know where to go. then, how to make a sound.what kind of synthesis, depends on the sound, of course.i'm not fond of synthesis, i'd rather work with recording,i like to record things. -sampling, in a way. -yes, i'd rather use sampling,i'm a bit old, so that's where i come from. how to create a sound ?it depends a lot on the sound. sometimes you'll create it with yourfingers using sound effects,there are lot of people
that no more create their sounds,they take it from sound banks. you can take the shape of a sound,now, there are quite impressive tools, thanks to schafer,thanks to all these guys that drove this vision of sound.you can work on a spectral level, you can do incredible thingsto modify a sound. if we make a game with only one sound,it's because this sound can be processed in so many waysthat there are endless possibilities. so, how to make a sound ?there are millions of ways to do it, and none is better than another,it depends on you.
-so it's not just technique, there's an artistic part. -indeed, then again,regarding the sound properties, it's obvious that for video game,there's an efficiency question. that's not really the casefor experimental games in which you can afford to try out things,to desynchronise feedbacks you can have fun with these things,but in general, when you create a feedbackit has to be efficient, it has to transmit the emotion,and it should not delay the gameplay or the gaming experience.there's this idea : it has to match.
it's a bit fuzzy, but yeah,it has to work. and i think everybody can hear it,but maybe it's vague. there was a second question ?i answered it ? i answered everything ?ok, then. -i'd like to add, about sound composition,as he said, there are millions of ways, but i'd add that composing soundsand composing music may seem different, but actually, it's not.it's the same thing, because you'll be looking for efficiency,you'll try to give a sense to the image, or not, to experiment something,and with sound, it's the same
experimental approach.there's the same composition idea, the time you'll spendon a sound that is 1" long, the things you'll try, until it works,makes that it's close to composition, that requests the same hearing,not on melodies or harmonies, but it uses the same factorsthan music composition. -i suppose it's super long.before to get some satisfying results, especially if you start from nothing. -not necessarily.of course, everyone has his own technique.i like to start from nothing.
to start from a blank page.but composers do not usually do so. because you're always in pursuitof some personal quest, and you have your meanings,your experiences. and i wanted to improve my answer,because there's the question of the sound identity,that is really important. when i say : it has to be efficient,and it has to be an artistic proposition, it's because, what we're looking foris not the sound as such, but the whole thing, the sound landscape.and in a way, sounds will talk to each otherand as soon as there's art direction
it'll guide you, and you'll have to create identity. and then, the universe is important, in space, for instance, you can use pre-existing classical music, like in 2001, you can use classical musicinspired by former classical music, neo-romantic, like in star wars,as you can use what was used before 2001, mandolin, onde martenos,uuuu-uuuuuuuh, and sometimes, art direction will statethat there must be no sound. so it's an overall intention,that will carry the sound system, and not just the qualityof a sound or another.
there's the notion of a whole.and you can't do without it. -you need some cohesion. -a small detail, a few years ago,there was a game jam that was part of the lundum dare,a worldwide game jam, and it was a french collectivecalled turbodindon, great name that won the price of best sound designand best game as well. -i wanted to raise two questions,first, there's this idea of composed video game music that isrigid, written from the beginning to the endwhile video game is dynamic,
it's a gameplay and it adaptsto the player's actions, and we try to make the music dynamic,adaptative, etc. could there be a parallel to drawbetween music in a video game, and the script in a video game ?because, script is a bit similar it'll be written by a scriptwriter,it's more interesting when it is written and rigid,and music is the same, when it was fully composed,a composer thought of it as a whole and it'll be more interesting,and it opposes the idea that it should be dynamic,and that there should be flexibility,
a music intelligence,as there should be a script intelligence, that should adapt to the players actions... -do you mean musical evolutionsthat would follow the script ? -no, i just mean that the problem is the same. that we try to make dynamic musicas we tried to make dynamic scripts, that video game will draw its inspirationsfrom the cinema's codes, regarding music and the scripts,and scripts, at first, were rigid, and then we triedto create scripts with multiple branches, and now, we try to create musicthat will take a different direction
depending on the player's actions. -there's a problem,because, of course, having music that would follow the possible scriptsis appealing. i mentioned intermedialityas a temporal phenomenon, but rick altman considers it as an evolution phenomenon to establish a medium's existence,he's studying cinema, at first, the medium is brand new, we don't know what it is, image with sound, okay,and the medium uses every technique of these sub-medias, to showthat it can do as much.
and video gametends to reproduce cinema, says "i can do the same"and now, second stage, "i can do differently"better or not, we won't discuss this, but in this second exploitation stage,video game realizes that to copy is not really creative,and it's building its own identity, via gameplay, for instance,and once it has its own identity, established and endorsed,it becomes a complete medium. and the problem of written scripts,and written music and the too numerous similarities with cinema,there're still some things,
like multiple endings, adaptative,so it is a different medium, that can do different things,but in my opinion, it's too lightweight, and what seems paradoxicalis that it's the technological progress that allowed video game to look likecinema made it regress.nobuo uematsu said in an interview, that he prefered the 8bit and 16bit time,because when you have 3 tracks, you have to beat your brains outto compose something expressive, and now that we have,in addition to photorealism that was supposed to be a revolution,but that never was...
to develop these ideas,but multiple endings, adaptive music, are they the solutions ?i don't know. -the solution would be to be dynamicwhile remaining interesting and well-built, and it seems impossible. -i agree, but it can,in my case, ruin an experience. we mentioned heavy rain,which a good example of a game with multiple choices, and so on,and i think that the game does not propose enough of thesechoices and the music is there, and does not mean much
in relation with what you are doing,and maybe we could go way further in this way, in all these possibilities.then of course, there's the budget problem,that can change everything. -and on the contrary, there are gameslike journey, that are quite rare, in which the music is so relatedto the players action, i don't know how they did it,but it'd be interesting to study it, but the musical integrationis so linked to the motions, the actions of the player, the atmospheres,the universes, that it becomes narrative.it supplants narration.
and futhermore, the game has nonarration there are no text, no spoken language,but it's the music added to the image,that brings an added value to narration, and it's rare to see this kind of experimentand thanks to the new technologies, thanks to new ways of making music,adaptative music, evolving music. and thanks to orchestral music,that was composed by austin wintory, i think that this game extends the scopeof possibilities. -we are laughing stupidly.you're still thinking of mortal kombat, aren't you ?i like the example of the game spore.
music was made by brian enothat is adaptative, that will adapt to different scenarii, constructionsand evolutions. and it's as well generative music,generative music is in a way related to procedural.and in way, your question means : how far can we go with generation ?and this has been handled in the previous conference on proceduralthat will bind generative music and narration.because narration is a really slippery subject.in my opinion, in pong, there is narration.and when we were speaking earlier,
i reminded of what karen collins saidabout the first sounds in games, that were in very few bits,and she writes : "we decided to make music with noises"because, indeed, bit, at first is not an instrument, it's a noise.and it's interesting to notice that in video game genealogy,we started with games in which there were only noises.as space invaders, pong. noises. and then, we built musicwith these noises, and technological progressbrought us to this far end... and i wonder if, in a way,and it's one of the video game's issue,
as a medium binded to technology,to know when will the technology mislead us. to know, when,by dint of accumulation, we will lose what was the essence of gamesand of music, narration, and everything. -you mention minimalism, that is...when music becomes a protesting language. among other things, we mentioned a paper from the wired magazine,that is called 8bit punk and that studies chiptuneand minimalism is used for creation but also as a position that is opposedto the abundance of technique and technology, that are not necessarilyuseless, but it makes me think
of this saying :four horses in the engine, a donkey driving.you get the idea. there's this state of mind,and i think that the chiptune scene defends this position and this ideaof counter-culture, and to show that you can create a real musicalmessage in a different way. -is there another question ? -i think that we could try,not to compose as we write a script that is, with branches and so on,but to write scripts as we compose,
that is, with tracks, additions,and different levels of musical reading, it might be really interesting.and i had a question on the articulation of logic and analogic in musicalcomposition within the video game environment.if we think of how the music was composedin the early years of humanity, you start with sounds that are illogic,since the ear evolved to interpret sounds from environment, that are illogicfrom a mathematical perspective. and then we evovled articulating craftaround compositions, since we associate the creation of an instrumentto the sound it produces.
and recently, with electronic music,and especially with chiptunes, that is based on mathematical functionsthat are way simpler that the ones, used in analogical systems,we are using logical sounds, that we try to make less logicaladding composing systems that are close to the systemswe used before, with instruments that were not logical in essence.and my question is : what can be the player's role,in generative or procedural music, to add logic and structure as a conductor,as in proteus, or deconstruct in some cases,as the music that starts
when you get close to a monster,and you go back and forth, and the music starts again, while it's not surprising anymore. how is it articulated,are there smart articulations that were not mentionedand that may be interesting ? -sometimes, you have to be honnest :i didn't get your question. you understood ? -i have no real answer,you talked about music that would work with branches,i think it already exists, when there are sub-narrations, altered gameplay elements,
the composer can plan :action a plays this, possibility to go to action band they have to draw sketches in the beginning,because they have to foresee every possible situationdictated by the gameplay, they are told,this will happen, this will happen this might happen.and maybe it won't ever happen, depending on the player,yet the composer has to plan a composition for each possible branch.i don't have a game name to provide, but in any case, if it exists,it's not properly used,
but it's studied. -i'll write you to answer your question. -it was about mathematisation ?music has always been mathematised in the occident. musical writing,is a form of mathematisation. -music was a subpart of mathematicsin the ancient greece. -yet, since i didn't get the question,i can't... but i may have the answer !if you were kind enough to rephrase your question,i'd be glad to answer it ! -i'll try again.i was talking about musical evolution,
that started with instrumentsthat were producing sounds that were very complexin a musical analysis perspective. when a string vibrates,it resonates in the bow, with the harmonic timbre...mathematically, you may as well hang yourself.and on the other side, you take a square wave,modulate it, and obtain some "tiuiuuiuuiiu"that will then give interesting music. and what i find interesting,is that the games generating music, will try to make these logic soundsless logical, because a sinusoid loop
is not pleasant.they'll try to get it close to real world musicand on the contrary, real world music, they try to make it more logic,because white noise is not really interestingfrom a musical perspective. and the question is :what is the player's role, in these operations, bringing logicon one hand, for proteus, acting like a conductor,or on the other hand, bringing anti-logic, when you do the opposite of what the programmer planned.do you think that there are ways
to play with this logic-illogic alternance ? -of course. there are times to play on logic,and imitation, and times when you should not.but, to me, this is an artistic question. how far do we go ?and i talked about proteus, and the game is interesting,because every sound is made with synthesis.but some, like birds sounds, sound real. so i think that actually...erh... i have to think.i think that...
it's a tough one.i've a hard time answering. it's the player question :does he/she interprets ? and should you provide her/hima credible environment, that is logic, or an environment that is not,and in proteus it's a synth environment, that is not logic, and in a way,it's our capacity to receive this that is interesting.when i'm playing proteus, i'm giving in to this deceit,to this difference between logic and non-logic, real and non real.realism or not. it's a personal matter. i know that i can easily forgetthat i'm listening to music in proteus.
-then i think i have another definitionof the word "logic", i would have said "sensible" in a contextor "coherent" or "realistic" in another. i think i understood the question,and i may have elements to answer. instinctively, you think thatwhat produces the most realistic effect is a real sound, and a synthetic soundwould not produce this effect, but when you study a bit,you realize that it's often the opposite, and artificial sounds will produceeffects that will sound more realistic that what real objects can produce.a typical example : theatre and cinema. do artists in flesh and bone on a stage look more realistic than cinema,
which is watching a sequence of images.but when you ask spectators, you realize that cinema seemsmore realistic than theatre, it creates reality effects,ontologically, it is less real, but it produces more reality.in the reception perspective, at least, it is what happens.i don't know if your question was about this... -i'd like come back to what you saidbefore the question, and you said that chiptunewas a simple sound wave, mathematic, a simple frequency,and you say that by adding complexity
you make it illogic, and i do not agree,i'm still thinking of cage, and when a human being composes asound when he modifies a frequency,it always brings in intention. and intention means logic.so i don't think anyone would be able to create a sound, a musicin a non-logic way. i don't know exactly what you meant,but i can't apprehend that creation of a sound, of a music could be illogic.i can't be. because there are intentions. -well, i meant logicin the mathematical sense. of course there are intentions,and humain brains can't be illogic
regarding this.but in a mathematical sense, there are no logic developmentother than the composer's experience. that's what i meant by logic.a thunder sound is not logic mathematically.it's logic in a physical perspective, how weather functions and so on.this what i meant by logic, and not illogic as random. -okay, i get it now.but still i think that in the most complex sounds,what i'm about to say may seem a bit esoteric,i think there's a logic in these sounds.
but it's really subjective,and i can't bring more elements. -to explain a bit the relation betweenmusic and mathematics, music was tempered.scales were tempered, to bring in things that were out of tune.and there are two ways to calculate temperament from the the same postulateand you get two different results. tempered music is a mathematicalparadox and music that we consider tuned,actually, is not. and one of my teachers said thatmusic is a balance between chaos and logicmusic cannot be mathematically perfect,
as you go along, the scales sound off-keyand there are big gaps, and nothing can be done to fix it.so even 'real' music is mathematically out of tune.i'm sure it does not answer your question, but it may change your point of viewon the "real" music, analogic music. -what i gathered, beyond music,was the question of realiy and effects of reality.and it reminded me of the questions that are raised in theatre, brecht and the naturalist movement, that made things like :"this scene takes place at the butchers', so a few minutes before the show,we'll hang some meat
and let the blood drip, to create this reality effect" in the cinema as well, reality cinema, and the dogma among northern directors,that would always film with most minimalist equipment possible.and i think that it's quite amusing, because regarding video game,whether its music or the whole, we are having a hard timebecause for the first time, video game has the opposite problem.that is, we are not trying to create effects of reality, but the unreal stands to reason. with music, like you said,if the situation matches, even if it is
unrealthere's a representation power in the video game that makes it coherent.proteus is completely crazy, and yet i fall for this illusion,which cinema or literature cannot do, this illusion can go through video game,with interactivity for instance. -we went past schedule,but panelists are still full on so you can ask your questions afterwardslet us thank charles bardin, antoine tuloup, frank weber, mathieu weisser,
mehdi debbadi-zourgani.
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