Bonus Feature: ‘Game Audio Theory: Ducking’

‘Ducking’, or lowering the audioscape volume, can create greater engagement for listeners — Day 1 Studios’ Zachary Quarles explains how it’s done in this fascinating game audio feature.

The “ducking” effect is an important technique that audio professionals oftentimes employ to discreetly lower the volume of all elements of the audioscape with the exception of the dialogue track, that way, players won’t miss important information during a particular moment due to the soundtrack’s complexity.

To understand the validity of a process such as ducking, certain elements must be taken into account beforehand, such as pacing:

“Game pacing is a basic game design practice. It is essentially the approach of creating a gameplay experience that has multiple peaks and valleys in the action so the player does not become fatigued and disinterested in the product.

Audio plays a key role in effective game pacing. The reason is simple; the vast majority of elements in a game have an aural representation, and if the gameplay action and visual portion of a product is relentless for too long, the audio spectrum will lose dynamics and quickly become a wall of noise.

When this happens, the player will more than likely turn down or mute the audio — thereby destroying the atmosphere and the pacing that the developers were trying to achieve.”

Fortunately, there are a number of ways in which a development team can avoid this problem. In an ideal scenario, the audio team would be involved with all level layout meetings and planning discussions to help with audio pacing through the game:

“Much like a great piece of music, a game has a “rhythm.” It has establishing motifs and themes, it has gradual builds and rising action, it has massive climaxes, it has denouements, and it has resolves. If it’s a constant climax, the player will get exhausted and probably pretty frustrated after awhile.

In addition, as a project gets closer and closer to final lock-down, the more important it becomes that the audio department is aware of any changes that occur at the design level. For example, if a new battle encounter is added to a section of the game where there wasn’t one before, the “rhythm” of the level has now changed.

The audio department needs to be able to go through the levels and do a final mix of the entire game from top to bottom after design has completed any major reworks to make sure that the aural integrity remains intact throughout the shipping process.”

You can read the full feature, which also discusses priorities and bus hierarchies, ad shares practice examples for Ducking (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).

So You Want to Break into Game Audio?

Before we get started, let me clarify one thing: Breaking into the game audio industry is difficult. That’s game audio, not game music, game effects, or anything else you’d like to call it.

Still with me? Excellent, because that’s something that you may have to wrap your head around. Whether you’re into music or abstract soundscapes, ADR or foley, mixing or field recording, you’re going to be touching all components of audio production early and often as you make your way into the game industry.

Don’t worry if there are things in the audio world that you haven’t touched. Very few people come out of school or wherever they were knowing everything there is to know about every facet of audio in the games world. All that means, though, is that you should be willing to tackle anything and everything that a development team can throw at you.

And they will throw everything, because more likely than not, you will be the only person thinking about anything audio related in the game. But we’ll get back to that in a bit. First we need to make sure that you’ve done the preparations to get that first gig …

Presence for Everyone

So you have a website, right? If you said no, I suggest you go get one right now. A domain name, webspace, and bandwidth can be had for less than the cost of a fast food lunch these days. Besides having a catchy domain name to replace your old @yahoo.com or @school.edu address with some professional flair, you’ll need a place where people can easily see what you have to offer. Resume, CV, and a demo reel should all be easily accessible.

I can’t tell you exactly what to put on that demo reel; however, it should be reflective of not only your ability, but also your passions. While a diverse showing in your demo reel is a good thing, don’t simply add something for the sake of plugging into a perceived hole. If dilapidated space ships and B-movie robots are not your cup of tea, you shouldn’t feel compelled to add some more soundscapes of creaking metal and old servos to your reel. Far better to concentrate on something you want to work on and communicate what it is you’re passionate about. If the right person hears it, maybe the resultant gig will also be something you can be passionate about.

But how to get that gig? In the vast majority of video game development companies out there, audio positions are few and far between, vastly outnumbered by the art and programming masses that make up the majority of the development team. Which is not to say that it’s impossible to grab an entry level position or internship in audio at a big company like Electronic Arts or Activision. The demand and turnover isn’t as high as in other positions, but openings do happen.

If the planets aren’t aligned, however, there’s always something outside of BigGameCompany’s Next-Gen Killer App that needs the aural touch. Maybe it’s an acquaintance’s vanity project, or the RPG that a group of friends are finally sitting down to make. Of course, searching locally and within immediate network branches aren’t the only options. Just as the halls of film schools around the country are littered with ads for composers searching for student films to score, so too are forums and websites like garagegames.com, gamedev.net, and even craigslist.org. True, you likely won’t be working on a AAA title for the WiiStation 360.

It does however lead to some other perks.

Hello Mr. Director

Being part of a small development team as an audio developer typically means that you are the only audio developer on the team. I suppose you lose the fun of potentially having someone to boss around (or being bossed around, on the flip side), but being the director of audio is a big responsibility on even the smallest of teams.

What does this mean? Let’s take a quick gander at the large development team paradigm. There, being an audio lead often means that you are constantly interfacing with the other team leads, making sure that assets are not only delivered, but also integrated properly…

Ah ha! Integration! “But I’m not a programmer!” you might say. That’s okay; it’s all right to not know how to integrate your assets into the game; that’s why you’re audio director on this game and not the coming popular franchise next-gen iteration. So, never mind the fact that you don’t actually have any programming knowledge and try to explain to your lead programmer how you’d like your dynamic music cue system implemented. Really. It can be done without needing to be a crazy C++ whiz!

And if you are a crazy C++ whiz? Go and work your way through FMOD or some other middleware sound API and show that programming lead you can hold your own in the audio domain! No, you don’t have to do everything yourself, but part of being a lead is communicating your wants and needs with the rest of the team. Knowing basic programming and knowing the capabilities of the system helps significantly, while knowing the inner-workings of the API helps even more.

Another thing being the sole audio director means is that you are likely the sole advocate for the audio life of the game. While audio has become increasingly important to game designers in recent years, it’s all too easy for it to be forgotten thanks to the sheer numbers of the rest of the development team. You should be ready to stand up and be heard for the needs of audio. And I don’t just mean memory allocation or polyphony requirements. If artists are proposing changes to assets that you think have a significant impact on the audio assets you are delivering, the rest of the development team needs to know about it.

Small Fish, Big Pond

Obviously being skilled in the audio domain is a requirement in this business. I trust you don’t have a problem on that end. There are, however, quite a few other people out there vying for the exact same opportunities. A poke at Gamasutra’s website for contractors yields an audio contractor list that’s nearly as long as the list of visual arts companies and slightly longer than the list of programming contractors. It’s extremely difficult for your voice to be heard in such a crowded space.

And this is in conjunction with the whole chicken-and-egg problem that is felt by everyone looking to make it into the games industry: you can’t get work without experience, and you can’t get experience without work. Nowadays that’s less of a problem, with small development teams being formed out of thin air… or at least out of copper and fiber, as project members can be connected to each other from across the globe.

The quality of that experience, however, can vary quite drastically. On some of these young and small teams, you might just be the guy who e-mails a handful of sound effects in reply to the lead designer’s latest design doc change. While that’s not a bad thing per se, if you feel you can be more involved in the creative process, you should propose that relationship to the rest of the team.

Moving On

And if you think that relationship can’t continue as you make the move from student and amateur developers to professional independents and console game developers, think again. While team sizes will go up as you go to bigger and better projects, audio team sizes don’t change quite so quickly. The experience that you had being an audio director with lots of responsibilities (music, sound effects, ambience, ADR direction and recording, integration) on that small project will come in handy as you find yourself acting as an audio director on a next-gen console project. Even if you’re just the small fry contractor they go to 50 percent of the way through production because someone realized library sounds aren’t good enough, you should be able to assert yourself, your ideas, and your leadership. You might not be leading people, but you do have to act as a director, bearing the responsibility of a significant portion of the game that the artists and programmers aren’t thinking about.

Sure, your title won’t say audio director, but when you’re the only person thinking about audio day-in and day-out on a team of two dozen … yeah, I’d say that counts.

Vincent Diamante, MFA student at USC’s Interactive Media Division, is a freelance game audio designer and senior editor at games website insertcredit.com and has previously worked for XM Radio.

- Interview: The Story Of The Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack

Following the release of Capcom’s retro-styled, digital download exclusive franchise update Mega Man 9, the Inti Creates sound team developed an arranged music album composed of remixed songs from the NES-style platformer.

Produced by Ippo Yamada, who gave a Siliconera interview last month on the subject of the original soundtrack, the new album includes the participation of composers from Capcom’s 8-bit era and other musical guests.

Yamada was joined in his work by Inti Creates composer Ryo Kawakami and guest arranger Akari Kaida, whose songs can be heard on the Breath of Fire III and Luminous Arc soundtracks, among others.

Yamada, Kawakami and Kaida here discuss their work on the Mega Man 9 arrange soundtrack to provide a fascinating look at how videogame composers consider the context of their music and the process of adapting in-game tunes to other genres, including classical, hard rock, fusion and jazz.

Thunder Tornado, Mega Man 9 Original Soundtrack [.MP3 sample]

See the translated track list. Hear other samples at Inti Creates.

Interview by Jeriaska. Translation by Ryojiro Sato. This text is also available in Japanese on Game Design Current and in Portuguese on Bem Vindo a WarpZona!

Thank you for joining us for this discussion of the music of Mega Man 9, original and arranged. Could you tell us a little about your background in writing music for the Mega Man series?

RK: I’m Ryo Kawakami. I started working for Inti Creates in November of last year. I’ve written songs for a few games previous to joining, including Mega Man ZX and Mega Man ZX Advent. Recently I composed songs for Mega Man 9.

Which songs that you have been responsible for composing for the Mega Man series stand out in your memory?

RK: Previously I have written quite a few songs, but maybe the best known is the Prometheus and Pandora Battle Theme “Trap Factory” from Mega Man ZX and “Trap Phantasm” from ZX Advent. For Mega Man 9, I wrote the opening, the title song, the themes for Magma Man, Plug Man, Wily Stage 1 and the Special Stage.

Were any of the songs you just mentioned composed in collaboration with other musicians?

RK: Those songs I wrote independently, though I received a lot of good advice.

Which of your songs for Mega Man 9 are you particularly proud of?

RK: I’m really pleased with how the atmosphere of Wily Stage 1 turned out. The sun is setting, thunder is echoing… it’s got something of the feel of Mega Man 2’s Wily Stage 1. For Plug Man, I wanted there to be something of an electrical static to the song, kind of like the high-frequency sound in Quick Man’s stage from Mega Man 2. I thought it turned out pretty well.

Which songs were you involved in reinterpreting for the second soundtrack?

RK: For the arranged album, I remixed three songs total. The opening and ending themes have received piano arrangements. How might you describe the Plug Man remix? It’s kind of an electronic, progressive rock song with keyboards at the forefront and live drums.



Akari Kaida: I’m Akari Kaida. I joined Capcom in 1994 and have written for a variety of projects, but as far as Mega Man is concerned, I wrote songs for Mega Man and Bass, Mega Man ZX Advent, and Mega Man Battle Network 1 & 5. I went freelance in 2005, and joined the arrange soundtrack for Mega Man 9 this year.

You are often credited as Akari Kaida Groves. Is this your formal name?

AK: Yes, my husband is Australian, so I compose music under the Western surname of Groves.

Mega Man & Bass is one of the few early Mega Man titles not to be localized for English-language territories, only receiving a release years later for the Game Boy Advance. There were various musicians who contributed to the soundtrack. Which songs were yours?

AK: Let’s see, I think they were Cloud Man, Ground Man… and Tengu Man, I’d say. There may have been others, but it’s hard to remember.

What was your contribution to the arrange soundtrack?

AK: For the arranged album, Yamada-san suggested I write something stylish and easygoing… a kind of European, French-style scat vocal. The state I was looking to capture was laid back and untroubled. Because quite a few of the other arrangements involved electronic instruments, I was going for a more acoustic sound by comparison. There’s an acoustic guitar in there if you listen closely. It was fun to write.



Ippo Yamada: I’m Ippo Yamada, sound producer and sound director for Inti Creates. I did not focus so much on composing this time, writing two tracks total — Tornado Man and the Staff Roll theme. I really would have liked to compose more, but my hands were full serving as the producer. In addition to working on the game itself, I produced the original soundtrack album along with the arrange soundtrack.

We wanted to do something different in terms of style of music, while retaining the quality of the original tunes, or perhaps preserve the quintessential images from each of the stages and robots. The Magma Man arrangement is interesting. Magma Man resides inside a volcano, so the track features a passionate Spanish style sound with a furious rhythm. I asked Uchiyama-san, who worked on Mega Man 8, to write a dance tune that retains both Tornado Man’s characteristics and the melody line itself. It was asking a lot of him, but he sure did a great job.

AK: That one is very cool.

IY: Weren’t you surprised? It sounded really fresh to my ear when I first listened to it. The entire idea behind this arrange album was to enjoy the music in a different light.

Magma Burning, Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack [.MP3 sample]



See the translated track list. Hear other samples at Inti Creates.

What can you tell us about Inti Creates’… well, creation?

IY: Inti Creates started off with eleven employees. Everyone chipped in on the work programming, designing characters, planning the scenario… it felt less like a company than a small team. In fact, it was a company founded on teamwork. We were young and skipped meals, working twenty-four hours making games.

While I had gathered some experience while working for Capcom, here I was involved in every area of the creation process. It was a learning experience. We ensured the highest quality possible and got a lot of pleasure out of investing as much substance to the game as we could.

Does the arrange soundtrack for Mega Man 9 differ from previous music albums made by the company?

IY: Past Inti Creates albums have been developed along different lines than Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack. Previously, the original soundtrack was not published, so to remind listeners of the original, we stuck close to the source material in the instruments that we used. This time, however, an original soundtrack has been released, so the remixes ought to be something new and different. For this reason we hope people will find it interesting to compare these two versions.

Manami Matsumae of Mega Man 1 & 2 (also known as CHANCHACORIN MANAMI) has arranged Shimoda-san’s Wily Stage 2. In addition to this track, BUN BUN of Mega Man 3 [Yasuaki Fujita] remixed Kawakami-san’s Special Stage theme. You might think of it as a kind of Breath of Fire-style orchestral track. It has a symphonic sound, and a fighting spirit to it. Then there is Makoto Tomozawa, who I worked with on Resident Evil and Mega Man 7. He arranged the Wily Machine song.

After that, there is Luna Umegaki, a composer on Mega Man Zero. She provides a soothing arrangement of Splash Woman’s theme. We were also joined by a musician that has no prior experience with the Mega Man series. Guitarist Toshiki Horizawa arranges Wily Stage 1 in the form of a Jeff Beck-style power ballad featuring a suitably dramatic performance. In that sense, a number of artists have contributed a variety of styles to the album.

When did you first start becoming interested in video games?

AK: It’s hard for me to recall the game titles, but I often played when I was in elementary school around 10 or 11 years of age.

IY: NES?

AK: That’s right. The 8-bit era. It’s probably the same for everyone, but I started out with Super Mario. To tell you the truth, I never dreamed of making video game music. I often played games, and especially enjoyed trying them out on my PC. It was only after entering music school that it even occurred to me that this could be a job.

IY: That’s a common story, though. For myself, I had the vague notion that I wanted to create music, but it was not as if I had this insistent notion that my destiny was to write game music.

AK: It wasn’t sought out.



IY: Game music, that’s something you think of as fun. Games are all about the interplay of action and reaction. That dramatic component of the experience needs to be reflected in the music. That might be what attracted me to this field in the first place.

AK: That sounds about right. You are given a certain theme to work with, and discover how to endow the scene with that feeling. I like that challenge.

IY: You are also working with data. If you lose sight of that, the consequences can be devastating. Back then, it wasn’t like now where you can make music using a Mac or PC—you really needed to know how to program. You had to know about compiling and decoding data and be able to discern what was going on within your program. Making video game music would be very difficult if you did not have much practical knowledge on those subjects.

AK: There were also size limitations, forcing you to think about how much information you could include before running out of space.

RK: The music this time around was designed so that even if some of the sound gets cut off due to the emulated limitations of the 8-bit hardware, it would not interrupt the musical flow. The music still sounds good, even if one or two instruments are interrupted by sound effects every once in a while.

IY: You know, I recently was listening to CD recordings of Dragon Quest and Bomberman. It was shocking -— Bomberman only uses a single line for the music!

RK: Complicating the melody sometimes distracts from the gameplay.

IY The trick is to write a strong melody line that drives the music forward regardless of sound loss in other portions of the song. NES music is very particular in that sense.

AK This title intended to imitate the NES, so the sound effects do cut off certain part of the music. If there were the chance in the future, I would want to further explore that aspect of composition.



From left to right: Inti Creates designer Yukimasa Tamura with musicians Ryo Kawakami, Akari Kaida & Ippo Yamada.

[Images courtesy of Capcom and Inti Creates. Photos by Jeriaska. Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack is available for import through VGM World and Amazon.co.jp.]