Audio

In audio, the main department of audio design for games and movies would consist of foley, which defines the use of any object to create a particular sound effect. For example, tearing apart an apple, pumpkin or melon close to the microphone can mimic the sound of a person being ripped apart by a monster. Another role, would include voice acting, composer and music editor. Despite the roles and departments, sound designers work closely with the designers and writers, where their specifications should be accorded for the sound designers. The music could, perhaps, be scored, and then recorded by live musicians, or created with software. Then the sound designers may continue with producing scripts for the audio assets for Unity or other game-making software.

The desirable skills that game industries usually look for in sound designers would be:

Own, and deliver to quality, areas of the project’s audio experience
Create and integrate narrative-enhancing, immersive sound design
Work closely with the Audio Director and Lead Audio Designer to understand and implement the audio direction for the game

And

Good knowledge of DAWs and sample editors
Experience with SFX and Ambient Sound Design
Good recording skills for SFX and Foley in studio and external environments

- Indeed | Supermassive Games (2008).

Roles & Responsibilities:

Reference:

Indeed | Supermassive Games (2008) Audio Designer [Online]. Available from: https://www.indeed.co.uk/jobs?q=sound%20designer&l=England&vjk=ad70fc6690fc8488 [Accessed 11 November 2019].

MasterClass (2019) Film 101: Understanding Foley Sound and Why Foley Sound Is Important [Online]. Available from: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/film-101-understanding-foley-sound-and-why-foley-sound-is-important#the-origins-of-foley-art [Accessed 11 November 2019].

ASD (2019) WHAT IS A SOUND DESIGNER FOR THEATRE? [Online]. Available from: https://www.associationofsounddesigners.com/whatis [Accessed 11 November 2019].

IMGyear2 (2019) The Sound Department [Online]. Available from: https://www.imgyear2.com/audio [Accessed 11 November 2019].

Over the years of video game making, video game music is now an industry of its own. Today, internationally renowned orchestras perform entire concerts of music composed specifically for games, and game soundtracks usually feature techno, hip-hop, rock, and punk bands, as well as traditional orchestras.
Sound design today usually makes the players not consciously notice the music or sound at all. Instead, it goes to work on them subconsciously - heightening tension, manipulating the mood, and drawing them into the game world. For example, the ominous ambient sounds of survival horror titles like Resident Evil 7 (Capcom, 2017), playing it without sound obviously indicates how critical sound can be, merely because Resident Evil 7 is not Resident Evil 7 without sound.

Arcade games in the early years of video games, tended to use the analogue technology of using a magnetic field of springs to ring a bell, strike a metal plate to create a gunshot sound. Until developers moved to sound synthesis, where they used no physical tools within the machine.
Until in the 1980s, developers started using audio production programs on their computers to begin creating music and sound effects and then importing it to their games. This was the beginning of creating sound and music for games in an audio program in a computer, for example, creating a certain sound effect when Mario eats a mushroom and grows.
Game developers then had the idea of creating surrounding music around speakers or headphones. This was perfect when detecting where enemies were or other interactive object. This was taken further as now, there is music in gameplay and dynamic sound effects in certain environments of the game world.

For example, the game The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo, 1986), the music is recognised as pixelated and retro, and simply old. But then at the time, technology to create music and sound effects for games were not as advanced in comparison to the technology we have today.
In comparison to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017), the use of foley was used for dynamic sound effects. And when Link enters into the opening from the cave, it’s clear that the developers had an orchestra of composers and musicians of traditional instruments to create an immersive flow of magical music of the fantastical world.

History:

Reference:

Gamespot (1996) A History of Video Game Music [Online]. Available from: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a-history-of-video-game-music/1100-6092391/ [Accessed 25 November 2019].

Matthew Hoose (2016) ‘The History of Audio in Video Games’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUEcmKOa60s [Accessed 25 November 2019].

LoL Esports (2017) ‘League Festival at Worlds - Music of League of Legends Live’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn1ZxQFPJXI [Accessed 25 November 2019].

RetroGame.Stream (2014) ‘The Legend of Zelda 1986 Nes No Commentary’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0RmGNrNhHE [Accessed 25 November 2019].

MKIceAndFire (2017) ‘THE LEGEND OF ZELDA Breath Of The Wild Gameplay Walkthrough Part 1 [1080p HD] - No Commentary’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE8PS7r3IGM [Accessed 25 November 2019].

The pieces of music from florence, consists of traditional instrumentation and some software, with the sounds of traditional instruments to express the sense of a simple, everyday life of Yeoh and Krish. With the traditional instruments, Kevin Penkin, the composer, and other musicians created harmony, assembled by Penkin with the individual instruments to create harmony, and the high, subtle piano to resemble the notes about love and life of Yeoh.
However, in a particular scene of the game, in the chapter called first dates, the music starts with simple, soft and short tones of the cello or viola harmonised with the piano. This is where Yeoh appears shy, and the player is completing a puzzle of around ten pieces to complete Yeoh’s conversation. This scene is slow, and with the music it implies to the players that Yeoh and Krish are talking about themselves, which normally takes time as we all have our own unique experiences in life. Therefore the music tunes the sounds of the emotions of patience and general conversation - getting to know Krish.

Then Yeoh and Krish meet with each other for their second/multiple date, and as the player scrolls down to continue, the melody of the piano is partnered with a new tone - a higher pitch, harmonised with the cello/viola singing with more strings. Altogether, the music is louder and more cheerful, which implies the growing relationship between Yeoh and Krish, as well as enjoying themselves. In addition to this, the puzzle activity of Yeoh’s speech becomes a maximum of four pieces - decreasing to three - which reveals Yeoh is becoming comfortable with Krish.

Then once the players completed the character’s second date, the players scroll down to their third date, where the music remains the same, however, the cello becomes louder, becoming the melody of the tune, as well as the piano playing more keys to create more of a harmonised tune. In this scene, the puzzles decrease to three pieces, then quickly to two, and then lastly to a singular piece to resemble the growing affection between Yeoh and Krish. By how the cello is structured, it consists the tone of intensity, to express to the players the sense of tension of the characters becoming closer and closer to each other. Until they finally kiss, with the instruments harmonising loudly, and then fading away, as the cello becomes the last to fade, as a tune of completion that Yeoh is now in a relationship with Krish. Krish is a character who’s motivated to become a cello musician - hence the sounds of the cello within the soundtrack - and even though Yeoh does not play any instruments, she has the appearance and personality of piano tunes. Therefore, in this chapter, the piano and cello harmonise with each other to connote the sense of the two developing a relationship together. In addition to the intensified tome of the cello, as well as the other instruments increasing at a faster pace, it can also define the upcoming journey ahead of the couple as they’re drawing closer to each other, which also foreshadows the upcoming journey of the couple to the players.

Case study: Florence (Mountains, 2018)

The music for this chapter is designed to make the player feel just as shy is Yeoh on her first date with Krish, as explained above. The tune is subtly bouncy, but it’s a track of patience and growth, as well as the conversations by the couple. The music grows with Yeoh, therefore the player should grow with the music as Yeoh, as she grows the comfort being with Krish after some dates.
But as a whole of the game - or perhaps the main soundtrack, called Florence, the introduction of the song is a melody of piano keys of the middle and the right end, to connote the beginning of Yeoh, until the cello harmonises with the piano, perhaps the entrance of Krish, or the beginning of a new experience - a different life, because of Krish. However, the music also communicates simplicity to the audience, by how the instruments are tuned, they convey a universal everyday life and love through Yeoh. In addition to this, the instrumentation used were physical, tradition instruments, as they also reveal the sense of simple life, and they can be easily harmonised to create traditional tunes, as well as easily communicate to the audience what the game is trying to express in certain scenes, for example, anger, the music becomes sharper and short tuned. Or when Yeoh becomes recognised for her newly achieved career of a painter, the music is broad with the tones of happiness and success for Yeoh, as well accepting the loss of Krish after they broke up.
The soundtracks composed for the game perfectly work with the product, because it’s how the characters speak to each other, think to themselves, or narrate their lives. Music narrates the story to the audience, and the audience understand the happenings and event‍s with the tunes, along with the visuals.
Therefore, I don’t think that the audio could be improved, as it was composed distinctly to communicate to the audience.

In addition to this, all of the soundtracks consist of melodies, harmonies, and tones to express certain emotions in certain scenes. But they don’t consist of the other key musical terms, because the developers wanted to maintain within the story of simplicity of life and love by using traditional instruments, as well as exploring the story with flow - hence the missing use of rhythm.

Reference:

Annapurna Interactive (2018) Florence, version 1.0.1 [Mobile app]. Available from: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/florence/id1297430468 [Downloaded 2 March 2018].

Annapurna Interactive (2018) ‘The Making of Florence | Episode 3’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6w0Oj2sL2w [Accessed 25 November 2019].

Annapurna Interactive (2018) ‘FLORENCE | Launch Trailer’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPUwFEhgvVA [Accessed 25 November 2019].

Khozy Gaming (2018) ‘Florence: iOS iPhone iPad FULL GAMEPLAY & Walkthrough’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U9IVBdII54 [Accessed 25 November 2019].

This game presents a great example of the use of dynamic sound effects. The game begins with the character Chloe lighting a cigarette, then inhaling and exhaling the smoke. The players can immediately interpret the object and Chloe’s sound effects. However, by the character’s surroundings, it’s night time - in a forest, therefore the audio designers applied the sound of crickets to express to the players the natural environment Chloe is in. In addition to this, as the character is smoking, the sound of an incoming train gradually fades in. Therefore, Chloe is standing on its tracks. With these pieces of audio, the audience can immediately gather simple knowledge of the character’s surroundings.
Progressing through the start, Chloe proceeds to travel across the forest after a risky, edgy teenage reckless activity of nearly getting hit by a train. The sound of the crickets continues to chirp to maintain the environment of a forest. However, the sound of rock music fades in a muffled tone. This interprets to the players Chloe’s destination. But also, Chloe starts speaking - but in her head - because the voice is slightly echoed to imply Chloe’s thinking. As the player travels further into the forest, the murrelet music becomes louder - as the player is edging nearer to the location, the mill.
Chloe arrives at the mill, now with an objective to find a way inside to rave with the music. In this location, there is a large fireplace in the middle, a guard outside the main entrance, and two young men arguing next to a caravan. In reality, we would hear the two fighting, but in terms of gameplay, the game is supposed to catch our curiosity and approach them to hear what they say when we interact. As well as the fire, similar to the music, when approaching berated to it, the crackling becomes louder, and vice versa when moving away from it.
Similarly, when the player finds another door to the inside - except they cannot enter because it appears locked or “so close and yet, so far”, the player is given an option to listen intently to the music. With the is option, Chloe presses her ear against the door, making the music through the gameplay become louder specifically through the right side of the ear/headphone/speaker for immersive and dynamic sound design.

Case study: Life Is Strange: Before the Storm (Deck Nine, 2017)

In terms of music, from an hour and twenty minutes, when Chloe and Rachel become alone together in a room, the music fades in with instruments of acoustic guitar and some singing. The music feels warm, serene and peacefully joyful. And with Chloe’s thinking as Rachel rushes to the changing room, asking Chloe to give her belt from her bag. Altogether the player feels the expression of Chloe’s fluster but in a positive way. The music also implies that the two are alone together, which therefore means the[at the game is expressing to the players the couple’s strong bond with each other.

When Chloe passes the belt to Rachel, the music stops, because of Rachel getting changed. So with the silence, the players can feel the awkwardness just as much Chloe is. But as Rachel finishes and they start talking about last night’s hectic party, Rachel offers Chloe to put on makeup to cover up a bruise under her eye. The player chooses to accept and the music fades in again with the sound of marching drums, some piano and singing. The drums imply to the players that the two are strengthening their bonds with each other - considering how physically close they are as Rachel patches on some makeup on Chloe’s bruise. In addition to this, the music defines the sense of the two preparing themselves for their field trip they planned together.

Overall the music in both these scenes give a sense of warmth and joy between Chloe and Rachel, including Chloe’s flustered moment of beginning to like Rachel.

In the interview with Daughter, a band, they explain how they were inspired by Chloe’s personality and her background and she became an influence to Daughter’s soundtracks for the game. The reason behind Daughter’s use of instruments is because of Chloe’s loss and grief of her father, and so they worked together and communicated over how they can make the music give a sense of feeling and emotions, and they synced themselves with Chloe to create the music we hear in the game.

Reference:

MKIceAndFire (2017) ‘LIFE IS STRANGE BEFORE THE STORM Episode 1 Gameplay Walkthrough Part 1 FULL GAME - No Commentary’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6uCVUC7XCE [Accessed 25 November 2019].

Square Enix France (2017) ‘Daughter x Life is Strange’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0fyfE4eMtM [Accessed 25 November 2019].

What difference does the sound make on your enjoyment of the trailer?

At first, the advert presented itself as if it was one of the John Lewis adverts, a happy, yet emotional tale to tell while the child was singing gently in the middle of the bustling crowd. But as the camera slowly panned around the child, the atmosphere became darker, the city was ruined, and three armed, terrifying soldiers that wielded flamethrowers and blasting a car next to them. The story continues about the city and society in shambles, yet still alive with combat and war. But because I watched the video without sound, the scenes with guns and combat, admittedly, it was an abrupt switch from innocence to suddenly fighting each other to death. But even without sound, I didn’t feel what type of emotions the trailer was expressing. Was it epic? Sad? Or heroic?
Until I finally watched the video again with sound. Again, even with the child singing Silent Night, I was thinking of a story-telling advert made by wealthy, successful and higher class companies. John Lewis for example. But as the camera panned to the dark soldiers, the tone of the music became slower, darker and deeper. Which matches with the slow panning to the three armed soldiers, and then continuing with scenes of further fighting and stealth between ruined objects.
But in terms of enjoyment, I didn’t particularly enjoy the trailer, as much as I watched it without sound. But since the game is about fighting with modern weaponry, and the atmosphere is dystopian and violent, the game cannot exactly be advertised as hyperactive and fun, since guns and violence with a team and defence by warfare is similar to reality’s history of war, otherwise it could be taken as offence. However, if I was a player who enjoys similar games such as this, since the trailer has a serious atmosphere, I would still be excited to play the game. Emotions of inspiration, courage, bravery and patriotism, especially by how the child stares into the camera as the other three soldiers protect him. Staring into the camera with a sense of silent anger, desire for vengeance, and maybe sadness, as he finishes his last line of the song.

Overall, as I watched the trailer without sound, I did not quite enjoy it as much as I watched it with sound after. However, the trailer did convey distinct scenes of what the full game will reveal to the players.

Research post: The Division (Massive Entertainment, Red Storm Entertainment, Ubisoft Reflections, Ubisoft Annecy, Wargaming, FreeStyle Games, 2016)

What impact does the sound have on your understanding of the trailer?

However, without sound, even if I understood what was physically happening, I still thought that suddenly, soldiers came to invade the peaceful area of Christmas shopping. Whereas when I watched it with sound, I understood that the child was surviving for a long time against warfare.
As I explained about how innocence is suddenly switched to violence. Not only does the trailer do that visually, but also through audio. From when the child sings the original first structure of the song is unmodified, until the camera pans and the sound of dark ambience is added whilst the audience’s remained presence of calmness by Silent Night, as well as the song’s sudden change in emotion when the child finally sings

“All is dark”

it allows the audience to understand that the trailer is presenting a game of a dystopian and violent environment. As the slogan of the game gives: “when society falls we rise”, and the title “Division”, which, along with the music and sounds of the trailer, it, indeed, implies to us that society is ruined and divided and corrupted.

By the end of the trailer, the young boy is still singing, yet with an angered and solemn expression, which also implies to us the sense of division that the child wants to end - seek vengeance.

What difference does the sound make on the emotional effect of the trailer

As explained, the trailer starts off by a gentle, soft and innocent introduction, with the boy looking happy and well. Until it transitions to a darker scene and atmosphere, which makes us sense that the boy was surviving through constant violence and warfare, and the division between society.
In addition to this, the song Silent Night has its lyrics changed for the trailer. For example,

“Mum and dad died in a blast”
And
“Everything on earth fell apart”

Since the song Silent Night is a gentle, soft tune, yet emits a sense of darkness, the modified lines manipulates the gentle happiness of the original song, yet the edit matches with the theme and content of the game. Therefore this would get players to become excited for the game, because the modified song of Silent Night, makes the trailer seem new - resulting to also make the game appear new.

Reference:

Ubisoft (2015) ‘Tom Clancy’s The Division - Official Live Action Trailer "Silent Night"’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MGrnvx8NiE [Accessed 14 November 2019].

A week after out first day back, we were introduced to Cameron, a previous student of this course, introduced us to the essential features of audio. Such as:

Melody - a tone that outstands than the other pieces of audio. Keys, phrases and note lengths.
Rhythm - a sound effect of beats per minute, time signatures and percussion. This is where the majority of music follow beats to rhythm, which is why they so enjoyable for certain types of people that like their particular genre. For example, I really like electronic, dubstep and dance & EDM music, but they all have electronic sound effects with satisfying, hyped bass.
Harmony - when two notes are played together or are related to each other. Usually, music and sound normally follow harmony, because it’s also what makes the audience enjoy what they are listening to. However, harmony doesn’t have to be notes that mix and dance together perfectly, harmony can even be off-beat and still be considered as harmony.
Instrumentation - software, hardware, and self-explanatory - instruments and tools.
Tone/texture - feelings, emotions and dynamics.
Structure - the verse/chorus structure, repetition, personal flair.

After Cameron introduced us to the essential features of audio and presenting examples of music for games, we were set off to explore and begin a tutorial to learn an audio and sound production program Ableton 10 (Ableton, 2001). But as the classroom had only around six computers that had this program, six students were randomly picked to give Ableton a try. Luckily I was the first six. As Cameron finished giving out pointers of the tools, tabs and categories, we were set off into the wild into the thick jungle made of different sounds and audio to make our beginner’s masterpiece. Except I wasn’t confident with audio production because of the intense exploration of sounds in files to go through, but also because I’m not particularly good at audio production. To reflect on my past experiences, around 2015, I was inspired by electronic music artists, and wanted to try music like them on GarageBand - which was possible, because GarageBand (Apple, 2004) already included a pre-made dubstep song of their own. So that gave me a kickstart to making music. At the time I thought I was really good, until I looked back on it some time after and I became cringed and displeased. It was a time when I still had my drawing hobbies, and that was what I preferred in the end, than music, which is something I would much rather listen to and enjoy.
So as I scrolled through the intense selection of sounds, I became afraid of what sound would suit with what. I only managed to find a pre-made 80’s beats mix, and I found another mix of shallow bells clinging with the beats mix. It was only two audio pieces, of which were already made by the developers of the software, but I was satisfied with what I put together. But personally, I prefer drawing and art, which are definitely my forté.

Production diary: Week 1

Reference:

Ableton (2001) Maya [Computer program]. Available from: https://www.ableton.com/en/ [Downloaded by the college].

We learnt further about audio designing with Tom, and this time, how to create sound effects. He first introduced us to listen to a soundtrack from Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks, 2011) by closing our eyes and imagine the environment from Skyrim. I thought of a forest, since I heard a flow of a river, birds chirping, and leaves in the wind. He also then introduced us to the term ‘dynamic sounds’, which simply means what the sound is coming from in certain environment, for example, footsteps in a stony dungeon, would define that the footsteps would be clanging against the stone by the metal armour, and echoing across the halls. Tom showed us two examples of dynamic sounds. The first one was from Dark Souls 3 (Bandai Namco Entertainment & JP: FromSoftware, 2016). The video consisted of the player defeating a boss, but the materials around the player was metal and flesh, from the boss, and stone and marble from the large room. Therefore, the player’s metal from their armour against the boss’ attacks, obviously, made clanking noises, and when the boss/player attacked each other, the sound of flesh with metal echoed in the room. And the wind of the weapons swishing in the air. The second video presented a fighter game. One of the players was played as a large, muscular, menacing robot, but each punch they made created a beat to the background music, to increase hype and empowerment to the player. So dynamic sounds are sound effects that are made depending on the materials around them.

Week 3:

We were then set off into groups to describe and make our own list of assets and features to create an environment for other groups go to guess at the end of the activity. Harry came up with a submarine, and I was slightly weary about it, until I thought of the game Man of Medan (Bandai Namco Entertainment, 2019), about a story of a group of young adults on a small boat at sea, diving into the deep to find a ruined plane. Until pirates intrude to kidnap them and claim everything as theirs. They take them to a large abandoned world war vessel to help them find the treasure within. However, this game gave many ideas for the description of the submarine. We smoothly came up short descriptive features for the environment, for example, compressed gas escaping, metallic footsteps, doors and sounds. White noise and radio chattering, engine chugging, and other assets shown in the list. We amazingly finished early, as all of us were satisfied with the dynamic sounds we came up with, including Tom. We waited and waited, until some of us decided to research about some underwater and submarine sounds - which didn't exactly add anything to our list, since we practicality came up with a large majority of a submarine’s sound effects.
Then the end of the activity came, and we achieved what we wanted, as we described our environment, a group immediately called out submarine.

After finishing with the first activity, we moved to our next activity where Tom asked for a volunteer, and Todd immediately overtook Maya’s offer. The introduction was how to use Audacity (The Audacity Team, 1999), a free audio production program. Todd spoke into the microphone, and Tom showed us how to modify the audio. It was fascinating how Tom absolutely executed the audio into a distinct sound of an orc in a cave system - considering how basic and cheap Audacity is. Not only that, but Tom informed that even industries use Audacity for their audio design.
Nevertheless, after the demonstration, we were set off again to record our own voices. Except I forgot what Tom did to make the recording orc/chipmunk-like in a cave system, so I left with what I recorded.

Finally, Tom assigned us to the last activity, which was to create an audio for the environment we chose in the first activity.
I was rather weary about this one, since creating the audio would be quite difficult because we couldn’t find any metallic features to create our desired assets, even though we were able to download sound effects from YouTube and then convert them to an mp3 and modify it in Audacity. Until I started gently scratching the computer to create a sound. Then it suddenly grew in me, like in the Final Major Project at the end of the first year. Simply foley, I scratched, tapped, patted and clicked the computer. Suddenly, I recognised a sound when patting it, the sound of the malleable metal slowly and steadily shrinking by the cold, dense, deep and high water pressure of the ocean. I then approached the table that had a box full of miscellaneous objects: small boxes of nails and knuts, metal plate of dry leaves and pasta - and the rest I forgot… but I chose the box of nails, opened it and picked out two small nails and gently grounded them against each other. I desperately tried to find where the sound would come from within the submarine. Finally, I thought of the sound of clicking from the periscope when changing the lenses by twisting it.
While I was exploring the mini foley studio - the classroom - Harry made a deep croaky noise with his voice to implement the sound of a shark. Personally I thought it would have been suitable for an alligator… but we settled with it.
I wanted to explore more of the noises I can create from the computer, but I thought it’d be best if I experimented it on the unused computers on the floor. Which was perfect since I was able to twist and turn for me to get every angle of it to explore the sounds. There was a standby button at the bottom, and started switching - a distinct sound of the control room and radio device switching with buttons, Aiden and I agreed with my discovery and we recorded it. In the end, Aiden modified it to the sound of footsteps but it was suitable.
During the entirety of the activity, I was mainly running around the classroom and sitting on the floor with the unused computer with the face of concentration, including many other objects around the classroom, the window, metal stands on the chair, even the door knob. It was rather amusing how Dee, the teaching assistant for our lessons, watched me with the expression of confusion and fascination. I simply answered “foley.” with a smug yet embarrassed face. The lesson suddenly ended, and my crazy foley phase simmered down.

Reading this, appears as if I enjoyed it - and I did. Foley is fun because it’s merely anything to make anything you want with sound. I would maybe consider audio design, but I preferably enjoy art and writing, because of the feeling of emotions towards the character and developing with them. As well as painting the picture from my imagination onto the canvas.

Reference:

The Audacity Team (1999) Audacity [Computer program]. Available from: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/ [Downloaded by the college].