[NewMusic] game soundtracks

[kristin miltner]

everyone check out the Katamari soundtracks (Namco) -- both games,  Damacy
and We Love Katamari, have great soundtracks, and the game credits list at
least a dozen composers -- the BGMs span quite a few genres and are mostly
japanese twists on different types of popular music -- hip hop, swing,
electronica -- with a couple very 'wendy carlos' themes thrown in to
illustrate the regality of the king of the universe.I kind of infer from the
credits that a different composer was in charge of 2 or 3 different BGMS.
There was a separate team of sound designers -- all names listed --  for all
the action sfx. This is more credit than i have gotten -- usually I am only
credited if I am the audio lead on the project.
Mat's right , there is commonly one BGM for every level, but I have worked
on some interesting games where the intensity of the music is depeneant on
the health of the character, i.e. if the character is losing or takes a hit,
a different music loop is triiggerred. If the character is running along the
level doing well, a different piece of music is introduced.

k

On Dec 28, 2007 4:18 PM, Matt Davignon <mattdavignon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Currently, I don't think it's possible to include 100 hours of music
> in a game. Some role playing games take about 40-50 hours to complete.
> I think the average 'action/adventure' games now take about 10-15
> hours to finish.
>
> Some of the best in-game music I've heard was from the Tomb Raider
> series. The music in that game was lots of very short pieces, ranging
> from a few seconds to about 2 minutes, with several variations on
> similar themes. When playing the game you heard mostly silence and
> ambient sound. The music would pop in if you discovered something, if
> something came after you, or if you walked into a new environment.
>
> The standard game soundtrack for the last 10 years or so is to have a
> number of songs for each stage of the game. Usually the tracks loop
> after about 2 or 3 minutes, sometimes with a 'seamless' repeat so it
> sounds like the song never ends. As you can imagine, it gets painfully
> repetitive more often than not.
>
> Matt
>
> On Dec 28, 2007 1:43 PM, Sarah - 21 Grand <21grand at 21grand.org> was like:
>
> > Jon Raskin was all:
> > Barry, how many musicians are employed to create the 100 hours of music
> on a
> > game?  What do they get for the effort?  Is it fee based? Are their any
> > royalties available at least at the top end of the industry?
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-- 
kristin miltner
audio professional
www.myspace.com/miltnerunit