Zora, AIAC

I had nothing but final projects my last semester at Cornell, and my composition class was no exception. I had a tough time deciding what exactly to write, but I finally settled on using a song from Majora's Mask as part of my theme and worked from there. Specifically, I took the first 10 or so notes from the melody of this song and stretched them out over a longer timespan



We had our pieces performed by (mostly) faculty of the department in a quasi-concert. Below is the part of my piece that they were best able to play (which is also the main melody taken from MM):

Zora excerpt by esbie

There were a number of issues with the piece that prevented the players from performing better, chief among them the fact that the piece is in G# minor. Other problems included hard-to-read enharmonic spellings and rest rhythms. Also towards the end, the piano part becomes virtually impossible to play. You can check out the score to see what I mean (pdf).

If it were going to be performed again, these issues would be pretty easily remedied by rewriting the piece in a different key. Luckily midi doesn't have some of the problems human performers do, so I put a midi representation of the score if you're interested in hearing the piece in its entirety.

Zora, AIADC by esbie

Adventures in Processing

Finally, Chelsea's and my game is done! It's called Universe, and you can read more about it and download it from the Universe website. Once the source code is cleaner, I'll tell you more about the game itself. I did however, want to mention a few surprising things about Processing 1.0 that I learned.

I'd say the most annoying part of this project was the camera. It made much more sense from a game implementation perspective to rotate the camera instead of rotating each individual celestial body. But in order to rotate and translate the camera, Processing has to be in 3D opengl mode... which means the resulting shapes/images can't be antialiased (at least this is what Chelsea tells me). Huh.

Also to my surprise (though in retrospective it makes perfect sense), Processing is NOT meant for audio. Here I thought Processing was very geared towards audio/visual combinations and it is, as long as the combination is mostly visual. While I adore the audio library minim, and it's come a long way, I still couldn't find simple things...like a pitch shifter.

Some of my complaints stem from the fact that processing is still Java, and Java is far from ideal for game making. Lesson learned. Another things I don't like about processing is its IDE, which is fairly limited when compared with my Java IDE of choice, Eclipse. The good folks at Create Digital Music pointed out that there is an eclipse plugin, but I haven't checked it out yet, so maybe that's easier to use.

Now that I better understand what processing is capable of, I'd probably use again for either a) very simple/visual java applets (just for fun) or b) for the visual end of an audio project built in another program. Specifically I'm thinking a Max/MSP or PD patch with communication to processing via Open Sound Control could work wonders.

Procrastinating

Uncorking this bottle sounded too good to not record. The sample's not as clean as I would have liked, but the sound itself is still really cool. And works well pitch shifted along Reason's NNXT Sampler. Results below.

Petron by esbie

And now I'm back to writing real music (for my composition final project)

Could be Interesting

Hi folks,

As you may know, I'm not the only one who received an IGDA scholarship to GDC 09, and the 25 of us have banded together to start a blog of our own. Game Developers Blog is basically just a sounding board for a variety of video game topics. As it stands, we scholars still have a lot to learn about games and the games industry... but I'm hoping in a few years it'll mature into something worthwhile. After all, these scholars are pretty talented in their respective areas of expertise.

My contributions to the blog will largely be related to audio, since I was the only music/audio scholar this year. Check it out if you're interested.

-Sarah

Imogen Heap Remix

I just barely finished my remix in time to submit it to Twestival. You can see other user submissions on the website, and a lot of people simply put piano chords under Imogen's voice (which is legit; the vocals lend themselves well to that kind of treatment). Instead, I went for using only Imogen's voice, similar to Dialect. Toward the end I got a little lazy and didn't have time to turn her consonants into drum beats. I also added a sawtooth wave to the low drone for some extra heft, although the drone is in fact still Heap's voice.

While making the remix I realized that the vocal material was very rhythmic, and it was hard to edit that persistent 95bpm out of the samples. As a result, the piece is less ambient/cloud-like than I originally envisioned.

The Song That Never Was (Imogen Heap Remix) by esbie

In other news, our 3rd major work was due in my composition class today. Unfortunately I didn't really like mine this time around, so I'm forgoing the usual SoundCloud post. Better luck next time.

Composing for video in 90 minutes

That's exactly what I did today in the studio. I found out that Ableton Live version 6 and higher has video capabilities. Since I only have Live 5 I had to do the assignment (which has been overdue for a while) in the studios at school. Sorry for the crappy video quality, I blame Live :)

As Steven Stucky has said in class, a composer is really only ever faced with 2 problems: coming up with musical material, and then finding a way to use that material for longer than 30 seconds. If you want to make a piece quickly, you're going to need to optimize both of these steps.

One way of generating material is algorithmically and that's exactly what I did for the opening. I chose one of Live's midi arpeggiator and a marimba because let's face it, when anyone thinks of mars there's marimba. Unless you're Gustav Holst, then you think of lots and lots of brass. Which is what I put in next. I also threw crazy space reverb on top since that (for once) seemed appropriate. This piece might be the most cliche thing I've ever written :)

There's no actual melody to this piece, so it might sound a little empty. But it's the background music to the action anyway, so I think it does just fine. Also I didn't plan this but the intensity of the piece comes once the rover has already deployed its chute. Gives the video sort of a different interpretation (since normally I'd associate entering the atmosphere as the height of intensity).

GDC 09 lecture overview

(The Moscone North Ballroom right before Iwata's keynote)

Here's a list of all the GDC lectures I went to, along with a 2 sentence commentary. What a great experience! More of my thoughts in later posts...

Discovering New Development Opportunities, Satoru Iwata
Tried to give 3rd party developers ideas and incentives to develop for Nintendo hardware. I wasn't aware that there are almost as many wii balance boards in homes as there are ps3's. I got a free DS game out of it, "Rhythm Heaven". Haven't played it yet.

From Bungie to Bootstrapping: Starting an Independent Developer Studio, Max Hoberman
Gave some tips on how to bootstrap using the work-for-hire model. Basically enumerated sound business practices... no surprises.

The Art of Braid, David Hellman
Put heavy emphasis on integrating the meaning of Braid into its art assets. Showed several iterations that the art went through to get to the final stage (apparently they worked on art for 2 whole years?!?). Artwork cut into various shapes and sizes was placed on top of collision tiles. They also made extensive use of particle effects.

Procedural Speech Generation, Paul Taylor
Excellent presentation on speech synthesis using voice morphing, text-to-speech, and everything inbetween. I really believe that procedurally generating speech allows for more dynamic and immersive gameplay.

Using Musical Styles to Enhance Storytelling, Lennie Moore and Garry Schyman
Advised that when asked to write music in a particular style, the best thing you can do is listen to as much of that style as possible.

Experiences and Rare Insights into the Video Game Music Industry, Hitoshi Sakimoto
Sakimoto reminises about what it was like to program game music back in the day, and encourages composers to write from the heart. Most people seemed to agree the talk was poorly translated.

10 Great Things Game Designers Exhibit, Gordon Walton

1. clear communication
2. positive mental attitude
3. teamwork
4. continuous learning
5. player empathy
6. KISS
7. Flexibility
8. Problem Solving/Analytical Skills
9. Broad Knowledge
10. A Passion for games

As one attendee at the talk noted, these are pretty much the basis for a great employee in any industry... and these traits are really just icing for the larger cake of raw skill.

iPhone Development: Exploring The New Frontier, Noel Llopis
Stressed that although the barrier of entry to make games on the iPhone is low, making a profit is difficult because there are just so many applications already on the platform.

What's Real About Virtual Reality Audio, Simon Carlile
A presentation on the basics of Head Related Transfer Functions and how to implement 3D audio in a virtual reality environment.

Using 5 Elements of Failure Design to Enhance Player Experiences, Jesper Juul

1. failure count - # of times failed
   
2. failure awareness - when the player realizes failure is possible, but may not actually fail
   
3. failure communication - how designer communicates failure to the player
   
4. failure setback - how much time a player wastes by failing
   
5. failure repetition - how many times a player fails in exactly the same way

By Balancing these 5 ideas, failure can be used or communicated in nontraditional ways.


Talking to the Player with Barks, Patrick Redding
Talked about the dialogue engine for Far Cry 2, and how to make realistic AI dialogue for NPCs in the game. Thier process included evaluating game state, player state, threat level, and more to determine what an NPC says during the game.

Shaping Ones Musical Identity, Troels Foelmann
Foelmann's approach seems to be searching for unique, nonstandard instruments and morphing them with the appropriate software tools to emerge with a personal identity. He also suggested stacking many different sounds from different sound libraries on top of one another (and often beefing up the bass of an orchestral score with low frequency synths)

Recording and Mixing Music for Games, John Rodd
Surprising to at least me, there were no secret trade tips at this talk, only the mantra of good recording/mixing practices.