Chance Thomas - Composing Music for Games: The Art, Technology and Business of Video Game Scoring

COMPOSING MUSIC FOR GAMES

The worlds most authoritative and comprehensive guide for launching and maintaining a successful career as a video game composer.

Composing Music for Games is a guidebook for all those who aspire to have a successful career as a video game composer. It offers a pragmatic approach to learning, intensified through challenging project assignments and simulations. The principles and practices presented here have been tested and proven both in the classroom and in the professional world of game development. Through research, interviews and personal experience, author Chance Thomas begins with the foundation of scoring principles applicable to all media, and then progresses serially through core methodologies specific to video game music.

In-depth exploration of music scoring for video games

Powerful blend of aesthetic, technique, technology and businessall necessary components for a successful career as a video game composer

Colorful case studies, tutorials and challenging tasks to keep you engaged from start to finish

A companion website: www.focalpress.com/cw/Thomas that contains audio samples and video tutorials to demonstrate principles and techniques from the book, plus resources for classroom assignments, PowerPoint slides, and more!

CHANCE THOMAS is a composer, educator and entrepreneur. His music has underscored blockbuster commercial success and critical acclaim, including an Oscar, an Emmy and billions of dollars in video game and film sales worldwide. Game credits include DOTA 2, Lord of the Rings Online, James Camerons Avatar, Heroes of Might and Magic, Peter Jacksons King Kong and many more. As an educator, Chance works with universities, colleges and conferences to help students and professionals navigate the intersection of music scoring, technology and business. He has served on advisory boards for Full Sail University, Brigham Young University, the Game Developers Conference and the Game Audio Network Guild. His business interests range across studios, publishing and audio services, successfully supporting a music career spanning more than thirty years (www.ChanceThomas.com).

COMPOSING MUSIC FOR GAMES

THE ART, TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS OF VIDEO GAME SCORING

CHANCE THOMAS

CONTENTS

CRC Press

Taylor & Francis Group

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2016 Taylor & Francis

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ISBN: 978-1-138-02141-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-77774-0 (ebk)

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Additional materials are available on the companion website at www.focalpress.com/cw/Thomas

This book is dedicated to my dearest and most treasured mentors in music:

PATRICIA ANN THOMAS

The first and finest musical influence in my life

DORIS VAUGHN

My devoted, tough and exacting piano teacher

MANTA AND CANYON

Rowdy, high school-era rock band mates

JIM ANGLESEY

The most inspiring college professor Ive known

This book is further dedicated to all those engaged in mentoring todays aspiring score composers. Your influence will resonate for generations untold

Its all about the ones and zeroes.

M ost video game programs start at address zero and increment up. is to establish a perspective, a vantage point. It offers the reader a subjectively focused lens through which the remainder of the book may be best understood.

This is indicative of the didactic strategy employed throughout the text. Early chapters will establish a foundation of universal principles. Later chapters will teach specific methodologies and techniques based on those principles.

Aspiring video game composers who digest the underlying principles and philosophical framework in the early part of the text will find greater success in learning the applied techniques given later in the text. Such a grounded approach is calculated to give diligent readers a much needed competitive edge. Music scoring for games is a crowded profession. Thousands of hopefuls wash out. Thus, understanding the why of music scoring will more fully empower the educated composer to make superior selections of what and how when opportunity knocks. Getting those decisions right will make all the difference.

Given the importance of getting those decisions right, how can a student, professional or professor feel confident that this book will steer aspirants in the right direction? A word about the authors qualifications will be reassuring. Many textbook authors are brilliant academics but have limited experience applying their methods in the professional world. By contrast, this textbook is authored by a composer/educator who has personally researched, invented, tested, observed, absorbed, refined and applied these concepts in a dizzying array of commercial video game scores since 1996, from shoestring-budget indies to high-stakes blockbusters. Readers may be familiar with some of these scores: DOTA 2, Lord of the Rings Online, James Camerons Avatar, Monopoly Streets, Heroes of Might and Magic, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Champions Online, Littlest Pet Shop, Peter Jacksons King Kong, Disneys Ghosts of Mistwood, Dinosaurs 3D, Earth and Beyond, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, War of the Ring, Left Behind, Unreal II, X-Men: The Official Game, Quest for Glory V and many more.

Thus, the principles and practices offered here have been tested and proven, not only in the classroom, but in the furnace of crunch-time game development and the marketplace of competitive commerce. The depth, diversity and useful application of theory and practice brought to bear in this book is second to none in the world.