I've seen this SO often in the past 5 years it isn't even funny... and I just saw it again today over at moddb.com. An up and coming "composer" who only creates hard techno or electronica music is wanting to break into doing music for mods and/or games. Thats all fine and dandy... but come on man! You've GOT to learn another genre of music! Not EVERY damn game can have BGM consisting of electronica... branch out.. be free... and you WILL score more gigs that way.
Now don't get me w
rong. I do truly enjoy electronic music of all sorts ranging from hard techno to trip hop... but rarely does it have a place in a game or mod score. I don't even know why this agitates me.. but it does... ugh. I once saw a team was making a War of the Worlds mod based on the Spielberg film of the same name... and take a guess what they had on their main page as some of their... *cough* game music. Go on... guess... I command it! Thats right, HARD FREAKING TECHNO. REALLY?!? Yup, (cue sarcasm) that totally says ginormous tripods from space ravaging the countryside to me... um yeah..Case and point:
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrIsgPwlbh4
That makes me want to DANCE... not run for my life from tripods.... well, unless said tripods were dancing to this music as well... then I'd watch that. Hell, I'd pay good money to see that.... but only if the tripod had huge glowsticks attached to each of it's legs and had a huge disco ball dangling underneath.
Lets be honest, for the most part (most... NOT ALL) electronic music these "composers" are making consist of a lone kick drum... and maybe a synth pad mixed with a bassline... a really simple bass line. Some of that stuff has it's place in games... but usually this music degrades into more of a generic techno sound and is not really all that well put together. What I'm getting at can certainly be summed up by strongbad
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwZwkk7q25I
Now I really shouldn't be picking on electronic musicians as I respect what they do... but come on guys... just because you can throw down some decent tunage DOES NOT mean you should score games. Go release an album on cdbaby for the world to hear. If you insist on being a game / mod composer... at least learn how to compose some basic orchestral (read: EPIC) music otherwise you won't have a chance in hell at finding work (for the most part). When I was working as the lone audio guy for a THQ company, I got tons... of demo cds every month... and usually at least two in each batch were from peeps who just did one genre of music... usually hard techno or death metal. What was even funnier to me was that they would take the time to match it up with game footage and send a dvd. Playing God of War with an underlying track of death metal or hard techno definitely doesn't work with that game to my ears. Some may enjoy it... but I sure as hell did not. Fitting the vibe is what you've GOT to do as a composer... which means you have to be versatile when it comes to music so you can tackle whatever genre a producer or game designer throws your way.
So, what did we learn today kids? Thats right...
VERSATILITY IS KEY TO YOUR SURVIVAL!
Ugh... tehcno in games... blah.
The handful of you out there that read this thing... feel free to chime in.
I'd just like to say that your blog is gold for anyone writing music for games (like me) or hoping to break into the industry. You're posts are always helpful and entertaining. Keep up the good work. I know I'll be coming back.
ReplyDeleteOh...and techno...I think sometimes developers get so caught up with other elements of the game that the music gets the back burner. Thus you get silly examples like War of the Worlds.
Jonathan Lewis
Yeah, I get a little riled up about some electronic musicians who write Techno-ish music and want to implement it into games. I agree with Jonathan that a lot of times the music is tacked on near the end of the project (especially with mods) and the music isn't integrated as well as it could be.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work, Rich! I always look forward to your next blog entry.
Greg McCoach
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI feel there's the time and place even for techno in games but yes I too have noticed how the beginners think their dance tracks are just as good game / film music as any. Basically it's just that these people are way too inexperienced and know only how to make straightbeat dancy material. I too in my early days started out with dance music as it was the easiest choise to start learning.
ReplyDeleteWell anyways only time and experience will teach, sadly it just seems that the amateur game project leaders are sometimes also so young and naive that they too feel techno is always cool for a soundtrack. This doesn't really help the situation.
Agreed. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Diversifying is good advice in any area.
ReplyDelete