disolitude said:
Pretty interesting stuff...could work well but it may take away from the game too. Like if the computer suddenly decides its best to play a different tune in your favourite part. Like if the battletoads music on the car level suddenly changed, I'd go ape shit... :) |
Let me explain further. I'm not sure how musically inclined you are, so forgive me if I take it too basic. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence =)
Melodies are written in sequence, sometimes a bar (4 beats for example) of music, sometimes 2, 4 6 or 8 bars. A sequence that is repeated is called a theme. For example, we all (should) know the main theme from the Legend of Zelda. A variation is the theme with something changed to it - enough of the original theme to recognize it, but with a curveball thrown in.
So lets say I have a level in a FPS game, it takes place on a spacestation. I'm going to have 4 to 5 situations, no enemies around, a few enemies around, a ton of enemies around, low health and death sequence. I'm going to create a theme for the space station for when there's no enemies around. Its kind of mellow, some slow synth lines, an ambient drum track with a bit of reverb. If I just had this play over and over, it'd get boring. So I make some variations - maybe I'll take a few instruments out, or add some more in, change a few notes around, something to make it unique but similar. I'll create maybe 3 of these variations. So now we have a theme and 3 variations on that theme. By the end of the composition, I'll have a total of 20 pieces of music , 5 themes with an additional 3 variations each (for a total of 15 variations + 5 original themes). Of course, to keep the music all sounding like the space sation scenario, the musical lines will all have something in common, even across themes. The cheap way out is to compose at a higher speed and cut the speed in half for slower, ambient sections, then high combat situations you'd have the music at the faster tempo.
You would end up with a variation sequence that was something like : Space_quiet1, Space_quiet2, Space_quiet_3, Space Quiet_4, Space_Few_Enemies1, Space_Few_Enemies2, Space_Few_Enemies3, Space_Few_Enemies4, Space_Active1, Space_Active2, Space_Active3, and Space_Active4.
So lets go back to your point on Battletoads - the music wouldn't change, it'd just have subtle variations on the music.
The beauty of composing this way is that you only have to create a 4 or 8 bar piece of music and then improvise on it.
Now, this MIDI situation with the computer would allow for an even further diversity in the music. The composer would provide individual instrument lines per each theme and variation. Lets say we have Drums, Bass, guitar, synth for example. We have 1 theme and 3 variations. Each one has some combination of the 4 instruments. So the theme could have all 4 instruments, and variation 1 will have drums and bass, variation 2 will have guitars and bass, theme 3 will have synth and drums, etc. As you could see, there are now roughly something like 20 different options PER theme and variation. So for the Space_Slow, we could have 80 different ways of hearing it. Multiply that by the amount of themes there are for the level (5), we now have 400 different songs all based on those composed themes and variations. Pretty crazy, huh?
