Debussy – Jeux

“Games” by Debussy has approximately 60 tempo markings, and this can be heard clearly in the music.

Debussy was asked to compose this for a ballet, but originally refused. He finally accepted when his fee was doubled (not surprising). The scenario for the play, described at its premiere, was as follows:

The scene is a garden at dusk; a tennis ball has been lost; a boy and two girls are searching for it. The artificial light of the large electric lamps shedding fantastic rays about them suggests the idea of childish games: they play hide and seek, they try to catch one another, they quarrel, they sulk without cause. The night is warm, the sky is bathed in pale light; they embrace. But the spell is broken by another tennis ball thrown in mischievously by an unknown hand. Surprised and alarmed, the boy and girls disappear into the nocturnal depths of the garden.

The original subject matter was to have three boys, as opposed to two girls and a boy.

The piece has a very playful quality about it, with its quick tempo changes and swelling melody. It appears to be through composed, with each new section growing out of the other, so that nothing is completely new, yet never repeated. Every theme is the child of the one before. The invention, delicacy, colour and power of instrumental thought, the ebb-and-flow of rising climax and retreat is masterful: and in the mounting tension of the final climax, when the waltz-tune appears in full and is only quelled after several pages of frantic freedom, and the music recedes to the mysterious portico-like chords of the opening. This bookends the work nicely.

Debussy did not like the subject matter of the ballet, and it is a credit to his professionalism and mastery that this dislike did not at all interfere with the music. There is so much feeling behind the music, that it’s almost as if he was writing for himself, rather than the ballet.

A beautiful and atmospherical piece of music, that easily created the beautiful imagery required.

Emma

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – Koji Kondo

Link conducting the wind using the Wind Waker. How relevant!!!

Well I can never resist doing at least one of my listening tasks on game music. So this week I’ve chosen to focus on Koji Kondo, and the music from Wind Waker! This music is particularly relevant to me at the moment, considering the animation project I am working on is based on a pirate theme, and involves playful graphics and character behaviour, much like this game!

It is also relevant because at times the music in this game adopts a very modular approach. One of the big promotional points of this game is that the music is in sync with the action you are making the character do in battle. Every strike of the sword, or technique you pull off is accompanied by a musical gesture to match. This is done by having various layers of music, each of which is revealed depending on the situation.

For example: in a standard battle scene, music mostly comprised of low orchestral instruments plays when an enemy is near. This acts as a warning to the player that danger is near. If the player draws his sword, then an upper string part is added on top of the base musical material. The rest of the music is then filled out with various orchestral sound objects depending of the type of swing the character takes at the enemy, and if it hits. The more complex the action, the more complex the musical event is that accompanies it. If the enemy is about to strike the character, a different, more threatening gesture is played, which also serves as an indication to the player to dodge, block or parry the enemy’s attack. The end result is music that never sounds exactly the same, but can always be recognised as the music for that particular situation, and as a piece on its own.

The way the music is written is such that the particular gestures played should always fit on top of the current harmony. This is not generative music, so all gestures are pre-composed. There is a bank of these gestures that are all matched up against the different sword techniques. While these gestures always fit harmonically, there is an issue with fitting rhythmically. As these gestures occur at the precise point of impact, there is no guarantee that it will fit into the pulse of the running musical material, in fact, it rarely does. Listening to it with no visual information makes it sound a bit messy, however with the visuals, the music fits nicely. Often visuals can act as a justification to bending or even breaking some of the rules listeners expect music to abide by.

I couldn’t find a video on the internet that shows only a battle as an example, except for gameplay videos which show that, and the rest of the game. So my only suggestion would be to play the game if you haven’t already!!!

And here is a video of a guy playing a medley of some of the music from Wind Waker, just for fun. I think it’s quite good!

- Dean.

the rise and fall of game audio

After the discussion today I thought I’d post a link to this essay by Matt Barton. Apologies if it bursts anyone’s bubble, but it’s a very worthwhile (if quite long) read. The Rise and Fall of Game Audio. Here is a short excerpt:

Once upon time, the story goes, there was only very primitive audio in videogames if any at all. The venerable old classics that established the genre were either silent or limited to beeps, buzzes, and the occasional wocka-wocka. These sounds were, at best, cute and at worst annoying, as any parent of a formerly Atari 2600 or Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) addicted child is painfully aware. Even top-shelf computers were limited to a tiny internal speaker about as musical as the buzzer in a cheap digital alarm clock. Thankfully, highly skilled engineers were soon able to improve the sound capabilities of gaming hardware. Game and computer systems began to feature multiple channels of sound at higher bit rates. Soon it was even possible to incorporate recognizable human speech and make a guitar sound like a real guitar. Games stopped sounding like games and started sounding like real life—the sound was just as good as that produced for Hollywood films and compact discs. Finally, granted a substantial budget to hire full orchestras or license the latest pop track, game audio professionals have reached the pinnacle of quality, and gamers can listen happily ever after without fear that their games will sound like something composed by a robot operator with a pocket calculator.

“We’ve come a long way from the bloops and beeps of yesteryear,” says the modern game professional. As if coming away from electronic sound was a desirable goal in the first place—as if games “sounding like games” was a bad thing⁴. I’ve always thought these sweeping generalizations were rather like a film enthusiast declaring, “Oh, how much better movies are today now that we have color and surround sound!” Yet most film critics and directors still cite Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) as the greatest movie ever made. The problem with modern game audio (and, as some would argue, the problem with modern games in general) is the same as the problem with modern films: The medium has evolved, the art, arguably, has not. Perhaps because the medium has evolved so quickly, artists simply have not had the time to catch up. Perhaps pressure from big business stifles creative energy and forces game audio artists to stay narrowly within the confines of the “tried and true” rather than engage in costly, risky experiments.