What is Music Direction?
Music direction is picking which songs the game needs. How long they are, how they’re used in the game, and what style/mood they will have. The goal is to set up the soundtrack to influence the mood of the game.
For example, in Escape Goat, I wanted the game to have a serious tone to counterbalance the game’s title, so I picked a lot of darker stuff as reference songs.
If you don’t know where to start, try this:
The Fake Playlist Method
- Brainstorm and make a list of a dozen songs that might work well with your game. Pick a variety of tempos, moods and genres.
- Collect mp3’s of these songs (if you can find them on YouTube, you can get the mp3… Google it)
- Make a playlist in iTunes or Windows Media Player
- Play your game while the playlist is playing. Skip around from song to song, and notice how each song affects each scene.
That’s it! You’ll have a short list of tracks that work well, and you can probably describe in a few words what makes them work.
Here’s a video that demonstrates this process:
I’ve used this technique dozens of times when scoring games. When it comes to tracking music production, I love spreadsheets. All you need are these columns: Cue name, Target Length, Actual Length, Reference, Notes (for reworks–which should be minimized with this practice).
Have fun!