Welcome to part two of our ongoing exploration of some interesting possibilities created by the motion tracking capabilities of VR, and how this might alter our creative process as video game composers.
In part one we discussed how motion tracking lets us be awesome air guitarists and drummers inside the virtual space. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at how the same technology will allow us to make interesting music using more serious tools that are incorporated directly inside the VR environment – musical instruments that exist entirely within the VR ‘machine.’
Our discussion to follow will concentrate on three software applications: Soundscape, Carillon, and Lyra. Later, in the third article of this ongoing series, we’ll take a look at applications that allow our VR user interfaces to harness the power of MIDI to control some of the top music devices and software that we use in our external production studios. But first, let’s look at the ways that VR apps can function as fully-featured musical instruments, all on their own!
Soundscape
Let’s start with something simple – a step sequencer with a sound bank and signal processing tools, built for the mobile virtual reality experience of the Samsung Gear VR.
I got a chance to demo the Samsung Gear VR during the Audio Engineering Society Convention in NYC last year, and while it doesn’t offer the best or most mind-blowing experience in VR (such as what we can experience from products like the famous Oculus Rift), it does achieve a satisfying level of immersion. Plus, it’s great fun! The Soundscape VR app was built for Samsung Gear VR by developer Sander Sneek of the Netherlands. It’s a simple app designed to enable users to create dance loops using three instruments from a built-in electro sound library, a pentatonic step sequencer that enables the user to create rhythm and tone patterns within the loops, and a collection of audio signal processing effects that let the user warp and mold the sounds as the loops progress, adding variety to the performance.
Since I’ve been working recently on music for a Virtual Reality project (more info in the coming months), I’ve been thinking a lot about VR technology and its effect on the creative process. Certainly, VR is going to be a great environment in which to be creative and perform tasks and skills with enhanced focus, 
Simple VR technologies like the popular Google Cardboard headset can be a lot of fun – 
In Part One we explored how popular narrative genres such as horror benefit from a tense musical score, and we studied effective techniques for horror music composition as a model for musical tension-building in any narrative genre. We learned about some techniques from the world of sound design that can add intensity and emotional pressure to our music. We listened to a couple of musical examples that I composed as a member of the music team for 
During these blogs, we’ll be consulting with lots of top experts on the subject, and I’ll be sharing my experiences in regards to the tension-filled music that I composed as a member of the music team of 
Thoreau not only saw the connection between music and tension, but also made a good point about the stresses and strains in our lives – we all possess our own inner emotional pressure. The more fervently we pursue our goals and struggles, the higher the tension grows. Taken to the extreme, it can feel as though our insides are wound up as taut as clockworks. As game composers, our job has always been to induce players to care about what’s happening in the game, and that includes inciting and escalating the nervous anxiety associated with an awesome investment of emotion and empathy. So let’s explore the best ways we can make players feel the tension!
As a speaker in the audio track of the 
I’ll also be sharing some of my experiences applying comedic sound design techniques during music composition for the video game The Maw – an award-winning and very funny game that was developed by Twisted Pixel Games. To the left, you can see that I’m working hard to give The Maw its proper dose of comedic wackiness… but more on that later.
Last week, it was my honor and pleasure to give a presentation at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. My talk was entitled 
This week I thought we’d check in with some of the top orchestral video game music concert tours currently underway. We’ll take a look at some reviews of 2015 performances from the respective tours, and we’ll also take a look at video from some of the most recent concert performances.
Originating as a simple four-minute overture performed at a Nintendo press event in 2011, Symphony of the Goddesses kicked off as a full-fledged concert tour in January 2012 and 
In this blog, I thought we might take a quick look at the development of the three dimensional audio technologies that promise to be a vital part of music and sound for a virtual reality video game experience. Starting from its earliest incarnations, we’ll follow 3D audio through the fits and starts that it endured through its tumultuous history. We’ll trace its development to the current state of affairs, and we’ll even try to imagine what may be coming in the future! But first, let’s start at the beginning:
In the 1930s, English engineer and inventor Alan Blumlein invented a process of audio recording that involved a pair of microphones that were coincident (i.e. placed closely together to capture a sound source). Blumlein’s intent was to accurately reflect the directional position of the sounds being recorded, thus attaining a result that conveyed spatial relationships in a more faithful way. In reality, Blumlein had invented what we now call stereo, but the inventor himself referred to his technique as “binaural sound.” As we know, stereo has been an extremely successful format, but the fully realized concept of “binaural sound” would not come to fruition until much later.
Recently I bought my first VR headset, and since then I have been adventuring in the world of virtual reality courtesy of Google Cardboard. For something as high tech and impressive as the VR experience, Google Cardboard makes the whole process easy, low-cost and accessible. While Google provides instructions for users who’d like to make their own headsets from scratch using simple craft materials, I opted to purchase a version made by the good folks at IMCardboard.com. Pictured to the right, you see me wearing