In several discussions and talks with multimedia audio specialists, game composers, music technologists and the like… one of the startling conclusions that many have come to is that “game audio” is over. (!) Not to say that it no longer exists, or that all there is to listen to has been written; the general consensus was that we cannot develop it any further than it has become. We have CD quality or better, we have DSP on demand, we have plenty of storage and throughput on all the leading entertainment platforms; we even have “interactive” music engines for changing one’s tune based on user-directed game play. And of course there are the various flavors of “3D” interactive audio, 5.1 surround systems and so-called “synthesized space” that makes us believe we are really in the game. But guess what? All of that sound is still coming from the same two sources: the left speaker and the right speaker. (Or the same 5.1 speakers if you are lucky enough!) It's still pretty much a stereo world.
A classic music playback module of a day gone by...
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In fact all sounds electronic, digital, or otherwise amplified are coming from just the same old pair of vibrating diaphragms we call speakers. We don’t hear the strings plucking, the horns tooting or the drums banging. We hear the speakers vibrating, and replicating all of these instrument sounds. Sure, it sounds realistic but the universe doesn’t emanate from a couple of speakers with a left-right mix. The sound of nature is millions of tiny sound sources contributing to this mass of noise that we are capable of sorting through with our ears. Each source is a vibrating entity, spread out in a natural field of space, each of it’s own material, each uniquely placed with it’s own volume.
Electro-mechanical guitar tower "If 6 Were 9" |
So let's go back a century or so to the early days of automated music and so called audio technology. Mechanical devices such as player pianos, band organs and calliopes were primitive and tempermental beasts; not to mention expensive and hard to move around. But these playback systems had several if not hundreds of sound sources; a different one for each note!
A present-day composer, Trimpin, has made a career of building computer driven instruments in the same vein. Mechanical, orchestra instruments, (or parts of) that are driven by MIDI. The complex power of the computer married to live mechanical sounds. His most popular piece however, betrays the idea of multiple sound sources. "IF 6 WERE 9" is a pile of automated electric guitars, but the guitar outputs are all mixed down into a pair of headphones!! All that plucking squeezed into a stereo signal. Back to square one...
The Nintendo Wii supporting "4.2" sound! |
By far, my favorite innovation in game audio is the Nintendo Wii. There are just too many cool things about it to love. The sound system seems to be a typical wave playback but the user interface is more fun than a laser pointer! Gesture based game controllers will probably be the savior of the game industry. But what was that I heard? A whoosh of the golf club... a smack of the tennis racket. Not only are the wireless controllers being waved wildly around the room, but each one has a speaker in it! Ok, so we're back up to 6 sound sources (as opposed to 5.1) coming from 4 controllers and a stereo TV. But the big difference is that the sound sources are constantly moving around as the games are played. This is actual dynamic surround sound; gesture based localization! And it really sounds cool.... If the next clever game composer could use this array of musical sound placement, I would be the first in line to buy it. Hell, I'd like to write my own tunes for this thing!
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Audio
Comments (3)
Read More Entries by David Javelosa.
Where are the red and green remotes available? (I'm guessing NOT the United States?)
Thanks for the chime in from the academic front! (my secret vocation!) The concrete and mechanical musics of the likes of Varese are partially responsible for me getting into game music. It was the real-world application for the automatic composition. That said, composers have actually been writing for spatialization since the advent of the cathedral!
Actually composer have been writing music with moving electronic sound for years, the first being Edgard Varese in 1958 with his "Poeme Electronique" at the Worlds Fair in Bruseels. Since then composers of electronic music, particularly at universities (mostly in the UK) have been experimenting with spreading music over 40-70 speaker arrays. The most well known of these is the Birmingham Electro-acoustic Studio Theater (BEAST). If you'd like to know more feel free to contact me (pauloehlers@comcast.net)