How To Create Music For Your New Computer Games
August 9, 2008
Hi, this is Dmytro Byelay. Ive just published a new computer game called Smiley COMMANDOS and would like to share some musical moments with you.
First, let me confess, I do have some musical background, like a music school about 15 years ago, which I almost quit a few times, cause I hated scales and sound of a classical music at the time. I also learn to play jazz piano with my friends in a local band called DI-Jazz these days.
So, a month ago I was finishing a cute small PC game with original gameplay I called Smiley COMMANDOS. This was a team of one person game, but it turned out to be a pretty cool strategy with an original gameplay and high replay value, so Im proud of it : )
As a game programmer and designer, I mostly concentrated on the programming, AI, overall game design, gameplay balancing and nice graphics. When the time of publishing was close I knew I didnt have any music or sound fx, but hoping that my musical experience would let me quickly pass the stage of inventing sounds and a background tune in one sitting the night before shipping a game to the market.
Man, was I wrong!
First I thought Id play some jazz improvisation on my professional digital piano, which would sound reasonably good, transfer it to my PC, and use it for the background tune. Yamaha keyboards also have some nice sound fx at different pitches, I could use built-in reverb or other post process fx on top of them, and that would cover my needs for the user interface (UI) sounds, like button clicks, button over sounds, etc.
I went through all sound fx on my Clavinova, and recorded a few. Making a brand-new jazz tune somehow didnt wanna fit in the game, so after a day of trying to become a game music composer, I ran away from the piano with no soundtrack and several clumsy fx for my game - Smiley COMMANDOS.
Finally, I asked my friend Michael, whos in game development, and he advised me to dig up my old music software CD I gave him few years ago, and look for a piece of a software called Sonic Foundry ACID Pro. Michael sent me a few songs he made in like 10 minutes each and I was totally charmed with the hot sounds and rhythms!
I downloaded bunch of free ACID loops and started to play with my ACID Pro. I must say that it was a very pleasant addition to my experience of creating new computer games.
It seems that ACID would embed the power of a professional quality sequencer, mixer, recorder and a knowledgeable sound engineer as well!!!
Thing is that ACID works with these samples called loops, all of them are pieces of music recorded professionally and containing some acidizing data, which let ACID to make different loops in different keys glue together without you even knowing it!
You click through the loops of drums or a base and pick patterns, which please your ear the most. Then, choose these loops by double clicking on them in a preview window, so they would appear on a main mixer screen. Next, you move your mouse over a time line for a given track and actually DRAW THE MUSIC dragging your mouse from start to end of the song or its part, when you get a hand on this.
Hit SPACE and the mix instantly plays, thats all! See if you like what you hear, add volume or effect, vary loops to your taste, go to different instruments and fx loops to throw them in, each time previewing when you actually got. You dont have to know a thing about the music, tempo, musical notation or how to make 2 different instruments play in the same key. You simply and fairly DRAW YOU MUSIC!
Thats all, folks! You wanna check out what sound track my new computer game Smiley COMMANDOS has, so youll hear and see what Im talking about! Youd be hearing the sound track I made in less than an hour, plus youd get yourself one of the coolest and popular new computer games Smiley COMMANDOS, where 2 teams of cute Smileys play to outsmart each other. The game is shareware and you can try it for free! No spyware, virus-free, guaranteed.
Good luck with your new musical projects and definitely try ACID, or something similar to see the exciting results!
Check out my New Computer Games. You can download and play them for free. Dmytro Byelay is the admin of Movie New Releases, New Computer Games, Motorola Pagers online mega store. He is also the admin of website, containing a Motorola Scn2500a Unlock Code.
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