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The audience technique of music composition is widely used in video game design.

Regardless of the game genre, as composers we will be asked to create tracks that serve as an audience to the actions of the player, although the degree to which we may apply the technique may range from subtle to blunt. Simply put, when we write music that serves as an audience, we are attempting to create the impression that the music is essentially watching the gameplay and commenting periodically on the successes or failures of the player.

A modest application of this approach would be the use of a few music cues that are triggered when a player successfully completes a level/quest/objective, fails to complete the level/quest/objective, or dies. The music would either be congratulating the player on the successful completion of a task or admonishing the player for his or her failure/death.

This use of the audience technique is nearly as old as the video game industry itself, was employed in nearly all of the earliest games, and is readily found in a large percentage of modern video game scores. One of the most amusing uses of this approach was in the 1995 video game Total Distortion from Pop Rocket Inc., in which Kent Carmical and Joe Sparks created a full-blown rock song entitled “You Are Dead!” that would greet the player’s demise.

As the application of this musical approach becomes more sophisticated, we may be asked to create full-length tracks that reflect the overall status of gameplay, whether

successful or not. For SimAnimals, I was asked to approach this technique quite literally.

The game includes a status bar at the top of the screen which shows how “happy” the game world is at any given moment, and when that status bar reaches specific levels of happiness or misery, a full-length piece of music is triggered. This track serves as an audience for the player’s progress because it expresses either joy or despair (in varying levels of intensity) depending directly on how the player is doing.

Taking this method to an even higher level of sophistication, we may be asked to create dynamic/interactive tracks that are constructed of interlocking segments having positive and negative audience reactions built into the format, allowing the game engine or the player actions to directly influence how the music is commenting at any given time. We’ll be discussing interactive music in chapters 11 and 12, so we won’t go into detail here. As of this writing, interactive techniques constitute the most complex realization of the music-as-audience approach.

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that when we are creating music that comments on the player’s successes and failures, we can expect game developers and publishers to be especially invested in the outcome of our work and likely to remain as closely involved in our creative process as possible. These tracks are high stakes because they constitute a powerfully direct method of communicating with the player. In fact, this is one of the only game music types that steps directly into the matrix of the game’s core mechanics, providing essential feedback during play.

The music-as-audience method can be used to deliver feedback very gently or it can hit the player over the head with an outrageously exaggerated reaction. In some games, the music may mock the player (as in Total Distortion’s “You Are Dead!”). In others, it may offer sad commiseration. Just because this technique dates back to the earliest games does not mean it can’t be highly effective in a modern-day game. We should rely on our own sense of musicality to determine how subtly (or blatantly) we use this method.

While we’re discussing the concept of music as audience, I’d like to mention a technique that, while not technically falling into this category, nevertheless shares enough in common to be described here. When writing full-length tracks for exploration or combat, it is possible to create the generalized impression that the music is sensitive to the actions of the player and commenting on his or her progress at any given moment.

This can be accomplished whether the music is interactive or not but is an especially difficult technique to pull off with a linear, non-interactive track. Essentially, the composer writes a track that alternates between moments of relative success and relative peril, creating a non-interactive musical audience that is continually saying, “You’re okay so far … oh no, watch out! Whew, that was a close one, now you’re fine … oh wait, no you’re not!” A track like this either works beautifully or fails spectacularly, so we should take care when composing it. Construction revolves around phrases that rise out of each other or fall into each other, expressing alternating moments of tension and release.

Ideally, when triggered in the game, the track seems as though it is continuously reacting to the player’s progress. The effect is an illusion, but can be a very powerful one. In my experience, a track like this is especially pleasing during combat, which naturally features lots of high and low moments during the course of a typical battle.

A great deal of help in understanding this composition method can be found by studying the recordings of film composers, especially their scores for action sequences.

Typically, a movie action sequence features lots of close scrapes and fleeting triumphs.

The musical score underlines these events with rhythms and melodies that accentuate the emotion of each moment as it passes. This technique is demonstrated particularly well in the action sequences of the Indiana Jones films.

While film composers have the luxury of relying on a set sequence of events to determine the pacing of their musical transitions, we as game composers can never predict the ways in which actions will occur within the course of a game. We can, however, attempt to simulate the same musical effect employed by film composers. I have used this technique in many of my projects. For example, when composing music for The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole video game from Warner Bros.

Interactive Entertainment, I created tracks of this type for some of the aerial action. The game features warrior owls involved in large-scale battles and frantic chases, so there were plenty of opportunities to put this composition method to use. I placed particular emphasis on this effect during a late-stage chase sequence. Because the stakes were very high at this point of the game’s storyline, I wanted the music to feel especially reactive to the action.

Figure 6.2

Piano reduction excerpt of “Attack at Dawn,” an orchestral track from the Legend of the Guardians video game score.

As another example, Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack to the Supreme Commander strategy game from THQ makes periodic use of this music composition technique during dramatic battle sequences and in its cataclysmic final mission. With global warfare creating an inferno of carnage on the field of combat, the music creates tension by swinging back and forth between triumph and anxiety, helping to propel gameplay forward.