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In the Mind of a Game Musician


Ever played a game with bad music? Maybe you liked the game anyway, but it could have been a lot better if the music had been good. I'm going to start this article by giving you a short example of how big an influence music can have on your imagination.

Imagine a cute, smiling doll sitting on a white, wooden chair matching the doll size. The music you hear is very happy and cute. You can almost imagine the sun shining in... isn't it lovely?

Now, stop that score and replace it with music that sounds twisted. Perhaps it sounds like a frightened choir is singing in a basement, with reverberating dripping-sounds and strings constantly playing at a very high pitch and the bass instruments playing at a very, very low level. Now, the doll isn't smiling because it's happy, it's smiling because it's thinking how fun it would be to kill you! Just waiting for you to fall asleep!

But it's still the same picture! It isn't the music itself that creates this scary feeling, since you didn't hear any. The music starts to play with your imagination. The primary purpose of game music -like it or not- isn't to be hit-music (well...maybe sometimes it is anyway...). Sometimes, if the music works correct, it's hardly noticed! That's the difference between "ordinary" musicians and game musicians -the game musician must be able to compose a much bigger perspective of styles, while the "ordinary" musicians manages OK with just one or two styles.



New Project


Contents
  Introduction
  New Project
  Getting Started
  The Two "C"s
  Composing Steps
  Test Your Music
  Music Formats
  Final Words

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