Technical Audio Portfolio
Below are two of my proudest technical audio projects. Both use existing Unity games as a base, where I composed and implemented dynamic music.
Adaptive Solar System Music
Project Summary
I wanted to do a project that challenged me to learn about composing for non-linear media, using software and programming to facilitate interactivity, and discovering the power of sound for immersion.
I used Sebastian Lague’s Solar System project as a foundation to work on, modifying and adding code to communicate with audio middleware FMod. In the game, there are a number of different planets which each have their own themes that evolve based on distance and relative velocity.
Distance - Horizontal Re-sequencing/Modularity
I used the distance from the selected planet to determine the section of music to play. In this case, this results in a rise of energy as the player gets closer to the planet, and a sparser arrangement when the player is far away, drifting around in space.
Speed - Vertical Re-layering
The relative velocity from the player to the selected planet determines how many and which layers (instruments) are playing. For this project, it generally follows a pattern of synths audible all the time, with a lead arpeggiated synth, bass, piano, drums and additional details introduced at higher speeds.
I aimed to converge musical affect, literacy and interaction (van Elferen, 2016) to maximise the immersion for the player. My choice of musical modes gives each theme an associated emotional connotation, combined with rhythmic choices, like the dominating power of the Sun which is in Lydian 5/4. This is reinforced with timbral decisions, like using ‘harsh’ square waves for the Sun, and ‘pure’ sine waves for the Humble Abode (Earth). The player comes to understand that as and how they play, the music reflects the game environment: the intensity rising as they approach their destination; the sounds of the planet once they have landed. This rewards and incentivises the player to explore more, especially if they want to discover the instrumentation used for each themes’ ‘Land’ module. Interaction, as mentioned, is a core element of the games’ music, with direct changes between game and musical parameters. In this way, the music adds to the game experience, by providing identity to each destination, and reflecting the journey the player makes to explore the solar system. On the other side of the coin, the game adds to the musical experience, creating a dynamic experience with a combination of predictable and unpredictable moments, with agency to control the music through the gameplay.
When the player hasn’t selected a planet, the space theme plays. It has two energy levels that play depending on if the player is travelling towards an object that they are looking towards.
Sebastian’s YouTube series on the original project: here
I had the pleasure of performing Adaptive Solar System Music in concert at City University’s From the City Studios in 2022, where I played the game in real time, diffused through speakers all around the space.
Variance
Project Summary
Imagine you’re playing an adventure game, running around an exciting world, listening to the sounds and taking in the views. You get to a town, and you want to look at all the houses and speak with all the townspeople. This is great. After a while though, you might realise that the music is just looping, and you’ve heard this already. After a bit longer, you may actually get annoyed with the music, and maybe want to leave the town, turn off the music, or, in the worst case, quit the game completely. This is not great.
My project on variance is considering how you could prevent this kind of problem. On top of the typical dynamic music techniques that makes the gaming experience so engaging, how can you avoid identical repetitions of musical material? Well, if you can vary the melody lines, the harmony and the rhythmic patterns within the music, and make it so that each variation can effectively combine with other parts, then you can build a musical experience that is kind of short, but also kind of long. If you extend the duration of a loop exponentially by adding even a few different combinations of material, then maybe the player won’t notice that the music is repeating at all.
I’m having to think very much in terms of user experience for this project. I’m trying to catch that ‘invisible design’ space where the player isn’t distracted by or forced to listen to the music, but also where the music is interesting enough that it adds to the game. I want players to think, yeah the music was pretty cool, but not necessarily have it stuck in their heads.
Over the summer of 2022, after graduating with my BSc, I figured I should learn Wwise, having gotten comfortable with FMOD for my last major project. I went through the Wwise 101, 201, and 301 courses, which wound me up at the Wwise Adventure Game (or WAG). The WAG was made as a tutorial resource for Wwise, and is a typical indie-style adventure game where you go around fighting the baddies for the wizard so you can save the world. While there is already some music in the game, I decided it was a great resource and that I would use it as a vessel to create my own music with these more complex ideas of variance and subtlety. Also important for me is that the majority of the music is played by recorded instruments, which I chose not to do for the last project.
You can download the game with my music from the button above :)
Polyphonic Variance
Polyphonic variance, a term I found in a conference proceeding (Berndt, Dachselt & Groh, 2012), is the idea of composing and combining different variations of music, creating variations in polyphony. For this project, in general, for each theme, I composed 4 different melodies, harmonies and rhythms that could all be selected from and combined randomly with the others. This meant that just one 4-bar phrase within a theme has 64 ways to be played.
Sequential Variance
Sequential variance (also Berndt, etc), is the idea of playing sequences (subsections, phrases) in varying orders to create even more variation in the connection of your music. In general I made 4 4-bar phrases with polyphonic variance that are then selected at random, following a rule that the same phrase or subsection can’t be played twice in a row.
