Design and implement video game sound from beginning to end with this hands-on course in game audio. Music and sound effects speak to players on a deep level, and this book will show you how to design and implement powerful, interactive sound that measurably improves gameplay. If you are a sound designer or composer and want to do more than just create audio elements and hand them over to someone else for insertion into the game, this book is for you. You'll understand the game development process and implement vital audio experiences-not just create music loops or one-off sound effects. The Game Audio Tutorial isn't just a book-you also get a powerful website (www.thegameaudiotutorial.com)
An examination of the player's experience of sound in video games and the many ways that players interact with the sonic elements in games. In Playing with Sound, Karen Collins examines video game sound from the player's perspective. She explores the many ways that players interact with a game's sonic aspects—which include not only music but also sound effects, ambient sound, dialogue, and interface sounds—both within and outside of the game. She investigates the ways that meaning is found, embodied, created, evoked, hacked, remixed, negotiated, and renegotiated by players in the space of interactive sound in games. Drawing on disciplines that range from film studies and philosophy to psychology and computer science, Collins develops a theory of interactive sound experience that distinguishes between interacting with sound and simply listening without interacting. Her conceptual approach combines practice theory (which focuses on productive and consumptive practices around media) and embodied cognition (which holds that our understanding of the world is shaped by our physical interaction with it). Collins investigates the multimodal experience of sound, image, and touch in games; the role of interactive sound in creating an emotional experience through immersion and identification with the game character; the ways in which sound acts as a mediator for a variety of performative activities; and embodied interactions with sound beyond the game, including machinima, chip-tunes, circuit bending, and other practices that use elements from games in sonic performances.
Interactive music refers to a composition or improvisation in which software interprets live performances to produce music generated or modified by computers. In Composing Interactive Music, Todd Winkler presents both the technical and aesthetic possibilities of this increasingly popular area of computer music. His own numerous compositions have been the laboratory for the research and development that resulted in this book. The author's examples use a graphical programming language called Max. Each example in the text is accompanied by a picture of how it appears on the computer screen. The same examples are included as software on the accompanying CD-ROM, playable on a Macintosh computer with a MIDI keyboard. Although the book is aimed at those interested in writing music and software using Max, the casual reader can learn the basic concepts of interactive composition by just reading the text, without running any software. The book concludes with a discussion of recent multimedia work incorporating projected images and video playback with sound for concert performances and art installations.
TOOT! PLINK! BANG! Learn all about music with this noisy, fact-filled book. With 10 musical instrument sounds and easy-to-use shaped tabs, this book is the perfect introduction to music.
This text shows how the game programmer can create a software system which enables the audio content provider to keep direct control over the composition and presentation of an interactive game soundtrack. This system is described with case studies, all source codes for which are provided on the CD-ROM.
What does it mean to interact with sound? How does interactivity alter our experience as creators and listeners? What does the future hold for interactive musical and sonic experiences? This book answers these questions with newly-commissioned chapters that explore the full range of interactive audio in games, performance, design, and practice.
Interactive Sound and Music: Beyond Pressing Play provides an accessible exploration into the aesthetics of interactive audio, using examples from video games, experimental music, and participatory theatre and sound installations. Offering a practitioner’s perspective, the book places interactive sound and music within a broader aesthetic context relating to key texts and discussion within musicology and wider art practices. Each chapter takes the reader through a key debate surrounding interactive sound and music, such as: Is it actually interactive and does it actually matter? How do audience expectations change in an interactive space? How do you compose for multiple possibilities? Is interactive sound and music ever finished? Where now for interactive sound and music? Supported by a series of questions at the end of each chapter that can be used as a focus for seminar or reading group activities, this is an ideal textbook for students on audio engineering, music technology, and game audio courses, as well as an essential guide for anyone interested in interactive sound and music.
This timely new book provides an excellent foundation in the techniques of sound design production for the interactive arts. Coverage ranges from basic acoustics and digital audio theory to creating, mixing, and implementing sound and music in such interactive spaces as Web sites, games, and virtual worlds. Readers are introduced to the essentials of recording and reproduction, the key strategies for successful sound design, and the musical and psychological aspects of sound. The practical and theoretical knowledge presented in this book facilitates the important transition from the techniques of linear sound design used in film and video to the non-linear sound design techniques associated with adaptive audio spaces.
This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to foundational topics in sound design for interactive media, such as gaming and virtual reality; compositional techniques; new interfaces; sound spatialization; sonic cues and semiotics; performance and installations; music on the web; augmented reality applications; and sound producing software design. The reader will gain a broad understanding of the key concepts and practices that define sound design for its use in computational media and design. The chapters are written by international authors from diverse backgrounds who provide multidisciplinary perspectives on sound in its interactive forms. The volume is designed as a textbook for students and teachers, as a handbook for researchers in sound, design and media, and as a survey of key trends and ideas for practitioners interested in exploring the boundaries of their profession.
