By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow
Hey, everybody! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and I’m happy to welcome you back to the last installment of our four-part discussion of “scoring-to-picture” techniques within video games. In these articles we’ve considered how cutscenes, trailers, and cinematics can benefit from specific musical strategies. As game composers, our jobs involve lots of complex music systems requiring expert knowledge of dynamic composition techniques. However, we can still benefit from an examination of the goals that music can achieve during linear presentations within a game. Such goals may include:
- Characterization
- Information
- Identity
- Narrative
Earlier in this series of articles, we’ve discussed the ways in which music can support believable and moving characterization. We considered the ability of a musical score to emphasize details and enhance comprehension of information. We’ve also considered how a game’s intrinsic identity can be reinforced using thoughtful choices of musical style, particularly in the case of custom music for game trailers. So now let’s move on to the last item on our list, and the one most closely associated with linear music composition:
VR games currently focus on binaural audio to immerse players in the awesome soundscapes of their virtual worlds. As we know, binaural recording techniques use two microphones, often embedded in the artificial ears of a dummy head (pictured right). By virtual of the popular binaural recording technique and/or binaural encoding technologies, game audio teams can plunge VR players into convincing aural worlds where sounds are spatially localized in a way that conforms with real world expectations. The technology of binaural sound continually improves, and recently the expert developers of the Oculus Rift VR headset have refined the quality of their VR sound with two significant upgrades.