Music is My Collin in Life

Collins continues onto dynamic music composition in chapter 8 of her book, Game Sound.  She describes the four advantages of dynamic music as: 1.) the ability to create music that changes with each play-through (which therefore increases audience interest by mitigating listener fatigue) 2.) the ability to create a multicolored production by transforming themes in the same composition (increases the cohesion of the musical soundscape of a production while also allowing the composer to utilize Wagnerian concepts of leitmotifs), 3.) the ability to add new surprises and increase gameplay enjoyment (dynamic music is modular and variable; hearkens back to point #1)  and 4.) the ability to add musical elements as gameplay features.

She continues on to discuss how games are non-linear and what the unique challenges for music are  within the medium.

The most important part of this chapter is Collins' breakdown of the manipulatable factors within music.   She covers ten separate aspects of music that can be manipulated.  In order to do this, she breaks apart the fundamentals of our perception of music.  This allows us to analyze what we can change while maintaining musical cohesion, which is important because games need to be interactive and maintain user interest.

Curiously enough,  I also met Guy Whitmore, another one of Collin's references, while I was in San Francisco.  My former employer, Ric Viers of BlastwaveFX, got me into a private party at Pyramind Studios--and, looking back on it, I was actually meeting some rather big names while I was there... Still can't believe it happened.