I gave a five minute micro-talk as part of the 'Indie Soapbox Rant', at the GDC 2013 Independent Games Summit.
Transcript
For most of human history, our experience of music has mirrored the fleeting nature of life. Each performance was unique and unpredictable, heard once, and then gone forever. This impermanence, which you can still hear if you go to a live show, has great potential to create meaning. If you're lucky, the events you are witnessing might even feel important.
The invention of recording technology has done a lot to change our relationship to music, and to introduce the possibility of repeating music in an effectively identical way. Many of us have become accustomed to listening to recordings, and in games we have become accustomed to listening to loops. Video game music is generally made up of permanent elements (ie. assets). How can we bring the sum of those elements together to mimic the impermanence of live music?
Imagine a really great game that takes maybe fifteen minutes to play. Every time you play, the interactions feel fresh, and you could play it over and over and not grow tired of it. Now imagine that same game also has a one minute piece of music that loops. If you play the game 100 times, the gameplay may be varied enough to keep your interest, but you're hearing the same one minute piece of music 1500 times...
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Why would you do this to your player? Why would you even bother having music at all if you're going to invite them to hear something so much that it's rendered meaningless? And yet, repeated music has some strengths. It can do a strong job of communicating an idea to a player. When you hear the underground music in Mario, you know you're underground and have to look out for a different set of obstacles. Also, repeatable music has the benefit of allowing creators to finely tailor the intended listening experience. The musical outcome is known - it's predictable, which can be good sometimes. So how can we embrace the strengths of repeatable music while softening its ugly edges in a way that pays tribute to our long tradition of live performed music?
Here are some examples that I think are doing this successfully:
Kentucky Route Zero uses ambience first and foremost, triggering music sparsely and tastefully to underline important moments. In the first scene of the first act, after the protagonist returns from the basement of a gas station, an ambient piece of music communicates progression in the story. You only hear this piece once, and instead of looping it withers away. This approach gives the sense of passing time, and is present throughout the game.
As you move around the audiovisual environment of Proteus, the music reacts in a way that simultaneously feels rational and yet unpredictable, and in this way has a strong similarity to live music. You rarely feel like you are hearing the exactness of prerecorded music.
Instead of using structured, linear recordings of music, #January is made up of small assets representing single musical notes. They are continually rearranged in musical sequences that never sound quite the same. The intended effect is to be similar to the act of a musician improvising, in terms of which notes to play, how and when.
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Silence can give the player room to breathe, or evoke a particular emotion such as the eeriness of the film No Country for Old Men.
Quotes
"Music is the space between the notes" - Claude Debussy
"Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by. Some music is just imagined. What you don't play can be more important than what you do." - Thelonious Monk
The fact that we all pass away gives meaning to our lives. If we can honor the tradition of letting music pass too, and other things in games, then maybe we can create more meaningful experiences.