[NewMusic] game soundtracks

[Matt Davignon]

There are three different interesting things I can remember, but I
can't remember for the life of me which game they were:

One game would switch the music to a minor key with 'scarier'
instrumentation if your character was low on health. (Similarly, I
remember the game Parappa The Rapper also made the music sound more
'junky' when your timing was bad.)

In another game, all the stages were tied together, so there was no
loading time between them. The music was composed in a way that as you
crossed into new stages, it would gradually transition into the new
song, rather than having the first song end and the new song start. So
you could trigger orchestral swells by stepping in certain areas.

In the Grand Theft Auto games, the only in-game music is on the radios
of the cars you steal - you only hear it while you're driving. If you
pick up a car in the middle of the desert, it'll be either tuned to
the country station or the classic rock station. If you get it
downtown, it will be tuned to something more 'urban'. There's a
control while driving to change the station, and you could hear the
difference if your car had a nicer stereo (more bass). In the earlier
games, all the songs, on-air banter and commercials were composed
in-house. In the later games, they started licensing pre-existing
music.

I'm with Kristin on the Katamari Damacy soundtracks - very good and
weird. Unfortunately I've yet to find a way to get the songs without
recording them from the game.

Matt


On Dec 29, 2007 12:05 PM, kristin miltner <miltnerunit at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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