Apple yesterday described their iPad as “this magical pane of glass that can become anything you want it to be.” So – how about making mobile devices into what you want it to be?

With the help of author Peter Brinkmann and publisher O’Reilly, we’d like to give you a taste of Peter’s new book, Making Musical Apps: Real-time audio synthesis on Android and iOS. Imagining that a lot of you are especially curious about iOS, we’ll include the chapter on how to get started with development. It really gives you a sense of how easy this can be; the challenge is, as it should be, coming up with musical ideas. And Apple did say that they thought that technology was at its best when it was “invisible,” not when it was “inaudible.” So let’s make it make some noise.

(Android developers, libpd actually got its start on Android and runs quite well even on very primitive Android handsets, so consider this a sample; the full book – and the libpd site – include loads of examples on the Android side, too. In fact, because libpd works basically identically on the two platforms, it’s a great choice for making cross-platform development easier.)

In this excerpt, Peter covers:

• How to set up your development environment
• Starting a project with Xcode, and including Pd
• How to make a Pd patch run in your app
• Making the Pd patch and your UI connect with each other (here, from the app’s UI to Pd; the book covers both directions)

In fact, in just a few pages, you’ll have a working guitar tuner for iOS. Have a look:

Read it on CDM’s Scribd page:

Making Musical Apps (Excerpt: How to Build a Music App for iOS)

Direct PDF download link, hosted by CDM (please don’t link to this file directly):
Making Musical Apps (Excerpt) [PDF]

I’ve read an advance copy of the whole book, and my review is simple: if you’re curious about this stuff, get this book. Peter’s style is friendly and precise; no technical detail is left out, and yet those details aren’t overwhelming. The book can be accessible to those new to development, which is essential for a title that’s likely to be read by people who are used to Pd, but dipping their toes into Java and Objective-C for the first time in order to get their patches running on a device.

Ready for the full book?

Get a printed copy on Amazon:

Or read the Kindle edition:

For multi-platform epub, mobi, and PDF formats, head straight to the O’Reilly page:
Making Musical Apps [shop.oreilly.com]

http://libpd.cc/read-the-book/

Sound and music for games is already a growing frontier for professional music careers; mobile, then, triply so. But with the expanded opportunities come unique challenges. Learning about them requires real-world experience, and short of word of mouth, that kind of knowledge is often scarce – even in the Web age.

Composer, sound designer, and audio director Ben Long has put his sonic thumbprints on games and TV networks alike, and has recently turned his attention to sharing some of the industry secrets of the mobile realm, with work in game design textbooks and GDC China. Now, he has a new book entitled “Game Audio 101: Mobile” that assembles all that experience into a single reference. Launched at South by Southwest Interactive, it could prove invaluable to people aspiring in this area.

What’s especially unique about this title is not only its focus, but its insights into real-world case studies – fairly legendary ones, at that. Long gets tips and background on the making of sound for hit titles Angry Birds (iOS, Android), music app Drumkit (iOS), and RPG hit The Harvest (Windows Phone).

Nor is this generalist advice, painted in vague, broad strokes. There are specifics of platforms (not only iOS, but Windows Phone and Android), sound design technique, technical information, and career advice. Covered in the book:

• Basics of the mobile market, MIDI and mobile design
• Anatomy of specific titles and the techniques they used to make effective music and sound direction
• Particulars of everything from looping to sound cues, coupled with interviews with sound designers
• Tips on improving sound design, catering to specific platforms, and managing your career and negotiations

I should caution that this is more of a white paper of assembled research and tips than a front-to-back textbook. My one complaint is, therefore, it does feel a bit abridged, under fifty pages. There’s sometimes a copy-and-paste sense to the content, as well, in case you’re expecting something with the level of polish of, say, an O’Reilly e-book. The tips you can glean from it, though, could be worth the price of admission if this is a field about which you’re serious – and a lot more than you’d get out of a similarly-priced workshop or the massive cost of attending conferences. You’ll have to do a little digging – the title really picks up somewhere about halfway through – but you could easily get some nuggets that could transform a career.

To make things easier, we have a CDM-only discount code for readers, bringing the price down 50% off its current sale price to just $19.95. Enter the following code at checkout:
AT101ebooksxsw45

More information:

http://www.gameaudio101.com/about_book.php

Ben Long has also written a terrific reference exclusively for CDM, from January – much shorter than the book, but good if you want a taste of his writing:
Creating in 2011: A Composers’ View of Mobile Game Audio, From Trends to Slot Machine Sound Design

Let us know what you think – and definitely if you happen to get a good gig in the industry.

Composer/sound designer Ben Long has a resume of work on dozens of games. Here on CDM, he shares the topic on which he recently addressed GDC China: mobile. If mobile game audio is going to rise to people’s expectations, it’ll have to get past rushed developers and hardware obstacles, including revisiting the whole mono/stereo debate. Ben lets us know his insider take on that landscape, and shares with us the process for designing sounds for virtual slots. Everyone, drone in C with the slot machines… -Ed.

When I tell people “I make music and sounds for video games,” it usually brings responses ranging from people saying “neat!” to blank stares. This is often followed by the person asking “how did you get into that?”  It’s a long story, but I usually say something along the lines of this: “I have musical ADD and video games was a perfect fit!”

For years, I slept on the floor with some makeshift “studio” crammed in the corner.  Working IT jobs during the day and live gigs at night for 10 years paved the way to working on games. My very first ‘studio’ consisted of the Roland VS-880, a digital 8-track with a 2-inch, non-backlit LCD screen.  Mixing on this was thing like brushing your teeth with a tree branch, but hey, it was digital, baby — and this was back when a CD burner was $600.

I got used to being surrounded by bleeding-edge technology and noticed that the game industry was leading the pack.  It wasn’t long before I had my first gig, creating pirate music with MIDI.

So, having worked in the game industry, where does the future lie, and how can someone be prepared to meet it? The answer is clearly mobile.

Mobile Gaming: Challenges and Opportunities

Mobile is by far the fastest-growing sector of the game industry. Never before in history have so many people been exposed to video games. Mobile developers have the ability to take huge “leaps of faith’ of which other developers would not dream. These creative choices can go horribly wrong, but in the case of games like Angry Birds, they can be hugely successful.

The growth of that market is buoyed by an explosion in hardware. New mobile devices appear almost weekly, each promising heightened user experience. Each one has its own set of limitations and capabilities for audio. It’s no surprise that consumers are expecting better audio in their mobile games. The explosion of music-based games has created an interesting phenomenon: people are listening more.

No longer can mobile game developers rely on the visual canvas alone; there is an empty void around the device that can be occupied with captivating content. If a game is performing well in the marketplace, chances are it sounds great. Making audio for games is difficult, but factor in a tiny, mono speaker with extreme hardware/OS limitations and things get hairy. Luckily, mobile phones have rapidly evolved and the days of developers requesting that I create a 4K MIDI score have disappeared. Nevertheless, creating audio content for today’s mobile gaming devices requires a unique skill set.

Today’s mobile games are typically developed at breakneck speeds. As a result, audio often becomes the last ingredient, as developers scramble just to get their game out. To save time, they sometimes buy music tracks or sound effects from an online store. With the right set of ears, this can work, but audio is usually “thrown in” without much thought or testing. Such practices prevent a good game from climbing the charts. There is a reason why film producers hire a composer, sound designer and audio engineer rather than buying canned content – they want the final product to take on a life of its own.

In Living Mono: Starting with the Hardware

When Apple released the iPhone 3, they heralded the new features – including “enhanced mono”. Soon after release, this descriptive term was deleted from the specs. (Am I the only one that noticed the quick removal of that term from their description?) Technically, the iPhone/iPad speakers are not true stereo, but mono. The silky high frequencies make up for it, though – you can lay the device down and enjoy what you are hearing.

Of course, when using headphones you hear everything across the sonic spectrum. One challenge of creating audio content for mobile is taking into account the possibility of headphone usage. The iPad allows for a bit more mid-range frequency content, so I considered this when working with Backflip Studios on their new game “Backflip Slots.”

Developing Backflip Slots

Typically, a mobile game will have a looping background ambience, background music, dialogue and UI/gameplay sounds. For the menu ambience in Backflip Slots, I visited a casino here in Colorado and brought along my Zoom H4 handheld recorder to capture the casino soundscape. Luckily, security didn’t ask any questions as I entered the building with this strange little device. After finding my way to the rows of slots machines, I sat in the middle and started playing. This location gave me a nicely-balanced ambience, so I placed the recorder on the seat next to me and started experimenting with different configurations. All this was done without headphones, so I had to use my best judgement and just go for it.

The funny thing about casinos is that every slot machine plays their jingles in the key of C. The result is a hypnotizing cacophony that keeps the players hooked. I have actually played live gigs at casinos before and been instructed to keep every song in the key of C. This is surreal, much like playing alongside a choir of robots!

Since “Backflip Slots” was getting a more traditional look, we needed the sound to follow suit. For the reel spin, I went for a looping mechanical sound with a subtle friction texture. To achieve this, I combined the sound of a tractor engine with factory machinery samples from my own sound library. The two sounds were then mixed together and combined with elements from Native Instruments’ Sonic Fiction.

Seamless looping is commonplace in games but often brings technical challenges. That can detract from the creative focus, but it’s a necessary evil, given the technical limitations of the hardware platforms. The reel landing sounds needed more of a chunky ‘click’ feel that would not be too overbearing.

Each bonus spin-character icon has an animated sequence in which they come to life and jump off the screen. These actions received everything from an 8-bit flamethrower to the sound of a samurai sword being unsheathed. One of the keys to creating sonic appeal is subtlety and this can require extensive testing. Game sounds should not grate on the nerves even after being heard hundreds of times. This usually entails experimenting with volume, EQ and pitch shifting in the studio. The end result should always be a pleasant listening experience for the development team and ultimately, the player.

The win sequences were also in sharp contrast to the reel spins and button presses. Win animations explode on the screen with coins raining down on top of an animated logo. Add pulsating lasers and lightning strikes and you now have some serious eye candy! These received a good amount of ‘bling’ on the sonic end and went through extensive revisions before completion. Even when being piled on top of each other, each audio file must be audible and clean. Since the game featured all of their IP (Paper Toss, NinJump, Graffiti Ball, etc), I took the existing sounds from other games and remixed them to work within Slots. In the case of “NinJump”, I blended the hiyaahh with a gong cymbal for the combo win. Some of the combinations are buried deep in the game and will only be heard by the top players.

It’s always a blast working with Backflip on these games so stay tuned for some big suprises in 2011.

About the Author

Ben Long is a composer, sound designer and founder of NoiseBuffet. He recently spoke at GDC China on the subject of “creating audio content for mobile games” Ben’s sonic signature can be heard on over 40 games, including the forthcoming release of LodeRunner Mobile. In addition to games, his music is aired on every major TV network and was recently used in the Stevie Wonder Biography on A&E. Ben is a lifelong gamer and has been featured in three game design textbooks. Learn more about game audio and his new ebook at gameaudio101.com.

Brainpipe is a psychedellic journey down the neural pathways, a long, strange trip into the minds of an unusual band of independent game designers. And while some games demand muscular graphics cards or brilliant flat panels, this is one that requires playing with headphones. The immersive sense of the descent down this brain’s pathway is entirely dependent on its sound. While even big development houses often license sound engines, the band of hard-core designers at Digital Eel also rolled their own interactive audio code to make the sounds fully seamless.

Designers and developers Iikka Keränen (the primary coder) and Rich Carlson spoke to me about their work. (They make reference to artist Bill “Phosphorous” Sears, as well.) In the process, they have a lot to say about the design process, about ambient sound design and composition, that goes well beyond just the gaming world. This isn’t just about gaming: it’s truly about digital music.

Digital Eel has won three excellence in audio awards over the past six years from the Independent Games Festival, including, most recently, a nomination for the psychedellic hit “Brainpipe” at the Game Developer Conference this spring. Incredibly, though, says Digital Eel’s Brainpipe, in that time no one has interviewed them about the sound in their games. Independent of the interview, Rich concede to me the challenge of getting people to focus on sound:

People are focused on graphics –and gameplay– and, you know, sound always gets the short shrift, even at game companies.  Sound and music are always the smallest slice of the development budget pie.

But not so at Digital Eel.  Sound and music are integral and integrated with design from the first moment we have something happening on the screen.  We feel it must be, and not just sfx but music, especially music which so often sounds like something….like dressing, something painted on, like makeup or apartment paint to help cover up the picture holes on the walls.

Brainpipe Game Page (with Mac/Windows download links – demos available so if you hate this, you’ll find out!)

Brainpipe on Steam (Windows only)

At a glance:

Engine: Custom

Favorite inspiration: demoscene, The Dig, Star Control II, Stockhausen, Varese, Morton Subotnick, Ussachevsky

Special acheivements: hiding loop points, creating a seamless acoustic descent, tapping into your subconscious

Peter: Let’s talk about the game mechanic. Some of it feels familiar – this descent through a cylindrical pipe – but there’s something quirky and unique about your take on it. How did you settle on the interaction mechanic?

Iikka: This was quite literally the first thing I programmed for Brainpipe. We were trying to come up with a new "short" game after putting another larger project on the back burner because we didn’t have enough free time to work on it. Within a few hours I had the basic control scheme and the moving pipe running on the screen. This is similar to how some of our other short games (Plasmaworm, Dr. Blob’s Organism) got started; the first prototype is something you can play with. After that there were tweaks of course, but the feel stayed much the same.

Rich: Everybody likes the "wormhole effect" you see in space shows and movies, and we do, too, so we wanted to do something like that.  Iikka got the pipe happening and we began to play with it as a prototype. Originally, we just wanted the player to fly down the pipe having a kind of zen experience as the speed slowly increased, and that’s all.  Not much of game there, though.

We were talking about music right away and how the sound, the intensity of the patterns and colors on the pipe walls, and the speed of traveling through the pipe should all work together. [We wanted] a kind of triple whammy to suck the player in deeper and deeper — a strong, cumulative effect.

We did add obstacles and specials, things to scoop up, and plenty of things to avoid that look pretty but are lethal.  But the blend of music, color and pattern complexity, and speed remained as we’d originally intended — this began very early on in the game’s development.

Making sure each obstacle has a sustained sound so you can hear it coming in the distance in front of you and then hear it pass by and recede with Doppler shift certainly adds to the audio illusion.
I think the kicker is the way the intensity ramps in the game.  It’s sort of like a rising sawtooth waveform-shaped thing.  During each level, the intensity, the speed increases, Then, between each level, the intensity drops to give you a breather before the next level begins.  Each time the intensity drops, it is still at a higher intensity level than during the previous level break, and all of this ramps upward.

It kind of coaxes you along.  You might not realize that you’re actually moving faster and faster each level for a few levels.  It’s a good training system.  Eventually you’ll get it as the game approaches its highest intensity levels and speeds.  Anyway, I still think it’s really cool.

The sensation of synesthesia is something a handful of game designers have tried to achieve. What are some of the games that have inspired you? Are there games you feel have reached that fusion of sound and visuals?

Iikka:  My personal influence is the "demoscene" that I was a part of when I was younger; it’s a subculture of programmers and artists using computers to create non-interactive but real time audio-visual experiences.

Rich:  For me, LucasArts’ adventure game, The Dig, with its seamless looping of various Wagner themes and so on. The music would morph as scenes changed.  It was an amazing piece of work. 

The music from Star Control II innovated with music and visuals, and it directly inspired the music for Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.  The idea that each alien race should have their own theme music came from there (though this kind of thing is less unusual now than it was when SC2 was originally released), as did the idea to attach separate and distinctly different music to each thing, category of thing, item, window, pop up announcement –every action in the game and every flick of the interface … like a toddler’s "busy box" of sound.

Back to Brainpipe, other areas of music outside of games inspired us as well.  Aleatoric, musique concrete, avant garde — stuff Bill just naturally creates and stuff I’ve always loved since I was a kid. [I checked] out the LP’s at the library by Stockhausen, Varese, Morton Subotnick, Ussachevsky, all these wonderful pre-synthsizer electronic sound and found sound composers. And the records were awesome because they were always in pristine condition — relatively few others ever checked them out.

[It’s] mindblowing stuff to listen to while you’re listening to Steppenwolf on your Japanese transistor radio and playing John Phillips Sousa in your Junior High band.  Liberating.  Of course this stuff scares some people and some people react to it negatively –all strongly– but if you listen to it, put together by someone who pays attention to details while intuitively knowing what they’re doing, you can hear the music in the sighing of pond reeds, or on the heavy end, the music within industrial clamor and the beauty in the beast.

That seemed perfect for Brainpipe which really demanded a whole different musical approach and completely different kinds of music produced in ways that are not normal — not typical at all.

I love that you talk about sound being integral with the design process. Even for a musician, though, thinking in more than one medium can be a challenge. How do you approach this in terms of design; how do you make it part of the process in practice?

Rich:  When we make a game, music and sound are in right away.  From the first couple of hours, the basic prototype is on the screen, so they began to shape the sonic style of the game immediately.

Because sound and music are growing up at the same time as the art and programming is, all these elements influence each other pretty equally, so you don’t get music and sound that sound "separate" or tacked-on.  You get sound you can’t turn off, and you don’t want to, because it’s actually part of the game.

Sounds can also influence and inspire and change things.  You might be after a certain sound effect, but then you stumble across something else that’s much cooler, so the animation of a visual effect is changed to match the sound.

What was the compositional process like on this game? The sound design / sound score clearly fuse – with these recurrent "whooshing" sounds as an added layer. How were these assembled?

Rich:  Basically what you’re hearing is a series of loops.  Most of them are 16-second loops.

I knew right away that "music" with beats wasn’t the way to go.  The music had to create a soundscape, something that supports a mindscape, really — pun intended — rather than making you want to tap your foot.  It had to smoothly transition just as the "art" on the pipe wall and the speed of traveling through the pipe smoothly transition in the game.

I also knew that the music had to have a kind of primal power and evoke a sense of mystery about what is supposed to be going on and what is being revealed.  Bill was very much into this too.

At the same time, we wanted it to reflect the random thoughts floating through and bouncing around inside your brain.  One of the best ways to accomplish this was to leave conventional music behind, which is what Bill and I ended up doing.

It was important that the loops be seamless.  If you’re working with beats and grooves, that’s a very easy thing to do — it starts on one and ends on four.  You simply loop that, attaching the end to the beginning and it sounds fine because, for the most part, that’s how a bass/drums/guitar combo plays.

On top of that I knew we needed loops that didn’t sound like loops.  Loops gamers wouldn’t notice were loops, with no obvious "breaks" where the end of a loop would be obviously attached to the beginning, or the beginning of another.  The loops had to have no beginning or end!

The sources for the loops were varied. There are very successful loops in the game that are extremely simple, comprised of only two or three tracks or elements.  [But] some of them are monsters mapping out to 32 tracks or more.  Again, the idea was to create loops that don’t sound like loops with a range that would reach an orchestral level of density.

Finally, the soundtrack loops had to blend seamlessly with each other while increasing in intensity. One way to do this, of course, is to cross fade them, but that wasn’t going to be enough. The intensity and the components of each loop needed to be gauged so a dramatic and appropriate intensity ramp was reached.  I think we came very close to nailing it, but I want to keep experimenting with this.  We can go farther now, having only scratched the surface.

Can you talk about some of the found sounds that are collaged into the result? (I’m hearing the TARDIS materializing…)

Rich:  I don’t want to spoil the magic trick but, like most who do music and audio, I collect sounds from all kinds of sources.  I’ve been doing it for a long time, so if you listen carefully you’ll hear things from old TV shows, records, radio shows, interviews, sound effects records, and God knows what else folded in there. 

The soundtrack is meant to represent the background music of your own brain so references to "real life" should resonate –especially, we hoped, on an unconscious level.

I don’t want to list all the sources — some of them are in the credits –  because what is going on is also a sound trivia game.  It’s the Mystery Science Theater of game music, but the gamer is provoked to make guesses and speculate.

You noted that part of why you embarked on building your own sound engine was that OpenAL [a standard, open, cross-platform API for spatial audio] wound up being inadequate. What were some of the obstacles you encountered? Have you found other independent game creators dealing with the same issues?

Iikka:  We had to switch away from OpenAL because it made repeating clicking sounds on common integrated audio hardware. The lack of features is not terribly important, as you can always just use OpenAL as the output channel for your own sound mixing system. My sound code would be perfectly happy living on top of OpenAL if it was universally supported.

Sound is a rather underappreciated and underdeveloped area in games. To many game developers, especially smaller ones, it’s enough that it "makes a sound when something happens". The focus of development is very much on the visuals.

It seems like game audio lacks a functioning standard. OpenAL is promising but lacks some of the maturity of, say, the OpenGL API which game visuals can use. What’s your take on the landscape? Is there hope that a new standard or engine could address these issues, and result perhaps in better sound and music design in games?

Iikka:  I think it’s possible that OpenAL will mature to a point that it will work reliably on all common hardware some day, and at least form a standard foundation for people to base their sound engines on so they won’t need to learn a new API for each operating system they support.

As for workflow and design, I don’t view these as dependent on what is under the hood; they are the result of the mindset among the team members. Certainly one could imagine development tools that allow an audio artist to work more directly with the game, but a good first step is just making sure that everybody involved in the project is involved in designing the work flow.

Can you describe your custom sound engine? What functionality did you find you wanted to build into it? What would you want to put in the next iteration?

Iikka: I call it "eelmix". It’s a modular sound system in which sound sources, filters and mixers are arranged in a tree structure, like a scene graph of sorts. It’s analogous to musical instruments wired together, eventually converging to a master output to speakers.

The main goal was the modularity, the system makes it easy to make a "box" that takes a sound output (from any source), mangles it in some interesting way, and then feeds it to where it was originally going, without modifying either the source or the destination. We haven’t really used the full capabilities of this yet but the modular system is also useful for things like separating UI ("2d") sounds from the game ("3d") sounds that makes balancing them easier. And it eliminates the need to conform to some preset number of "channels".

There are other lesser goals, like eliminating clipping by using 32-bit precision internally and simulating a non-linear response curve when rendering the final output. This is a very simple and useful bit of code that really improves sound quality when there’s tons of sounds being played.
Going into the future, what’s left is mostly just filling in some blanks like including basic prefab filters, making sure that every kind of sound source can use every kind of sound sample, that sort of stuff.

Indie games it seems, like larger games, have struggled a bit on sound and music – perhaps because of the lack of better tools. But what are some smaller, experimental, or independent titles you feel have done good things with their soundtracks?

Rich:  A couple of indie games have had sound and music that was really special, I thought.  I loved the music from Saints & Sinners Bowling a few years ago.  Just great stuff that nestled right in there so you didn’t want to turn off, and that’s the true test.

Musaic Box which I encountered at this year’s IGF [Independent Games Festival] uses conventional music ingeniously.  You solve musical puzzles by ear, assembling melodies to reach certain goals. I think music is actually more integral to this game than it is in Brainpipe because it’s directly a part of gameplay.  You couldn’t play Musaic Box without it.

Flow stood out to me for doing something really quite gentle and tasteful and, well, flowy — even the soundtrack lived up to the game’s name.  That’s important I think, and that gets back to some of the things I’ve already said here.

Sounds to Hear

To head deeper into the strange sonic world the Digital Eels inhabit, Rich sent along some additional sonic resources:

Weird Worlds stuff
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/vault/the_single.mp3
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/vault/mfbtpv2_320Kbps.mp3

Misc. stuff from different games old & new:
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/voidprobe.mp3
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/vault/blok.mp3
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/vault/drblob.mp3
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/vault/forest.mp3
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/vault/plasmaworm.mp3
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/vault/haircut.mp3

An interview (Omaha Sternberg interviewing Bill, "Phosphorous") with a couple snippets of Brainpipe music in it:
http://www.digital-eel.com/files/omahaphos_intermix1_160.mp3

Enjoy. The game is really unusual, so I look forward to hearing what CDM readers think of the experience. And if you have other games (or other interactive experiences) about which you’d like to learn more or get an interview, let us know.

Kongregate is a bit like public access, only on steroids and for games. The idea is this: get indie game makers in one place contributing games, then get lots of people playing those games, then support the system with ad revenue shared with the game makers. The model has grown rapidly, with millions of users and over 15,000 original games.

The newest project from Kongregate looks to connect artistic talent on projects, including musicians, composers, and sound designers wanting to work on game projects. The Collabs section will see artists and sound and music creators uploading their work to find collaborators. Initially, there’s a contest on, with competition for attention, cash, and studio prizes.

http://www.kongregate.com/collabs

The competition aside, this could be the beginning of a successful community for collaboration in the indie Flash gaming world. Assets are often uploaded under a Creative Commons license, and I see one of the top sounds draws on samples from Freesound.org. While career success is an obvious goal, the contributors so far appear to see sharing as a way to get there – in stark contrast to the model in the mainstream, big-business game industry. Quality is, of course, variable, but ask anyone in the game industry how to become successful and the answer is always make as much as you can. Getting work out there, even primitive, can be part of a learning process. So I’m eager to see what transpires as these kinds of communities grow.

There is an invariable comparison to Deviant Art – and you’ll see they’ve already begun to invade.

Oh yeah, and I quite like these glassy tendrils, rendered in Cinema 4D. Image (CC) Chaodeath. Now, make that run real-time. Or, erm, imagine those are virtual renderings of artists … collaborating.

For one area in which forward-thinking digital music types are doing innovative work in game and interactive audio, look no further than the Interactive Audio SIG. They’re doing really interesting stuff in looking at how tools can support future interactive music. And if you are going to GDC, this is another one you’ll want to catch. It’s worth noting that the “interactive” in their title really is just that: this is about all forms of interactive music, not just games per se. Given what we’ve seen with generative music apps on desktops and mobiles alike over the past year, that really brings this point home. In fact, unconstrained by the harsh business realities of big-budget game development, individual composers and small teams experimenting with the future of music is really where I expect to see progress.

That doesn’t make the challenge any less for formats like IASIG’s iXMF interactive spec – if game developers are primarily interested in keeping their proprietary engines humming and focus on fairly non-interactive assets, iXMF may not really catch on. But then, I like a good challenge, and anyone who knows the game and interactive space knows that sometimes real innovation takes time.

Watch CDM for more coverage and even some tutorials on these topics all year long – think we’ve got some good stuff coming.

Brad Fuller of IASIG writes: “I didn’t see a mention of the IASIG on your blog. Maybe I missed it.”

Well, Brad, sometimes I just think things and forget to write about them, which admittedly makes it hard to read. So here’s what Brad sends along on the IASIG meeting:

Each year at GDC we have our annual IASIG Town Hall meeting where we gather to discuss progress in our working groups and also allow others to discuss what they would like the IASIG to address in an open mic session.

We also have an annual mixer where we share drinks and a raffle of great audio prizes from sponsors such as: Creative Labs, Garritan, Numark, MixMeister, O’Reilly Media and Wave Arts. IASIG members and those in the audio business are welcome (a business card, or other identification is recommended.)

Here’s a recap of last year’s party and Town hall meeting:

http://iasig.org/gdc/2008gdc.shtml

This year will be no different, a mixer and a town meeting will be held at GDC. Check your bag for a flyer that will indicate the time and location.

Hope to see you there!

More info: http://iasig.org/

The IASIG exists to allow developers of audio software, hardware, and content to freely exchange ideas about improving the performance of interactive applications by influencing hardware, software, and tool design. The IASIG provides resources in the form of standards creation and maintenance, research reports, and recommended practices. Anyone with a commercial interest in audio for interactive entertainment is encouraged to become a member <http://iasig.org/join.shtml> of the IASIG.

Thanks, Brad! I’m working on getting out there myself, so maybe see you there.

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times that, as far as the conference calendar for 2009 goes, some of the most interesting discussions about audio, composition, and technology are happening at a game developer conference.

The terrific GameSetWatch “alt.video game” blog has a nice overview of the goodies at GDC in March for audio lovers:

Previewing GDC 2009: Inside The Audio Track [GameSetWatch]

But even that doesn’t cover all the goodness. Check out the full Audio Track schedule:

Audio Track, GDC @cmpevents.com

I imagine for someone looking to get started or develop in game audio and music, there’s tons of value here, especially if you’re near San Francisco in the spring. Here are some highlights for me – and a general critique of why really experimental, bleeding-edge tech seems to be sidelined.

Challenges for designers and composers:

• Composer Challenge: this yearly challenge gets both established and emerging composers to do a single, 60-second cue, reality TV-style. (Top Composer?) For the sound designers, there’s the similar…
• G.A.N.G. Sound Design Demo Derby, a yearly critique of 60 attendee sound design work. (Game Sound Idol?) From the Game Audio Network Guild, which is also beefing up its community.

Technical discussions:

• Reflections on real-time DSP design from Guy Whitmore of Microsoft Game Studios. (I initially misread this as being about the use of GPU shaders for audio processing, but it’s something equally important: explaining to visual people why real-time audio matters, too!)
• SOCOM Confrontation developers on doing online audio for 32 players (32-player online music collaboration, anyone?)
• High Dynamic Range Audio from Battlefield: Bad Company takes a new approach to mixing with “real-world” sound levels – something that I would expect could be interesting far beyond the realm of game audio design.
• Why going beyond the physics models of the vehicles helped racing game Pure sound good
• Simon Carlile on research into virtual environments and 3D sound design

And on the creative side:

• Legendary game composer Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy, etc.)
• Musical storytelling ideas, with Garry Schyman (Bioshock, which had a great vintage-sounding score). Garry also has a session on keeping orchestration on budget.
• Kenneth Young on sound design in Little Big Planet

Some terrific stuff, but I also can’t help notice what’s missing – not the fault of GDC, but the direction of audio and music in games. There’s a clear bias for big scores, discussions of orchestras and chorus, and linear, non-interactive, Hollywood-style musical narrative. With the explosion in experimental game design, indie games, online game distribution for the PC, PSP, Wii, Xbox360, PS3, and soon the DS, and lots of terrific ideas about new ways of designing game mechanics, where’s music? Indie game music doesn’t make an appearance in the conference at all. (Note that they do appear elsewhere in the conference, which to me is telling.) And generally, the game music scene of late has tended to be either Hollywood-style film scores or retro, 8-bit soundtracks. With the exception of Spore, whose musical engine was a topic at GDC 08, there’s been very little real progress in generative and truly interactive musical scores. That’s sad, given the promise next-gen consoles had for even things like live synthesis.

Directly related to this, I’m equally surprised that mobile music and audio isn’t getting more attention as those consoles evolve. But then, that again requires a shift of compositional paradigm, to assume that you might actually innovate more with a truly interactive score for a mobile device than you might for a lush, orchestral soundtrack on an A-list PS3/Xbox360 title.

Don’t get me wrong: I think some of the orchestral-style scores for games have been quite wonderful. But it seems like part of the potential spectrum is getting left out, and I can’t say that musical innovation has kept pace with everything that’s happening in experimental game design.

My suggestion: get a group of GDC attendees together at a bar, bring some blank napkins, and think about the future there.

(Note that there is an experimental gameplay session call. It’d be great to see some music entries, huh? See also the project site, experimental-gameplay.org)

If you’re going to GDC, do let us know!

http://www.gdconf.com/