AES Scotland Christmas Lecture – Game Music Bit-by-Bit, Dr Kenny McAlpine

Anyone who has ever played a video game will know just how important an atmospheric soundtrack is to the experience. Done well, a video game soundtrack delivers just as much emotional impact as a movie score, all the while responding and adapting to the player’s input to create a unique musical experience that is synchronised tightly to the gameplay. Game Music, Bit-by-Bit explains how interactive game soundtracks work. Beginning with the sound chip music of early video game consoles like Pong and home computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, we’ll look at how video game sound evolved from synthesised bleeps and bloops to today’s high-quality production tracks and deconstruct the techniques that composers use to turn pre-recorded music into something that is interactive, and that can be rearranged and recomposed in real-time.

But if the technology of gaming has taught us one thing over the last 40 years, it’s that it never stands still. The recent introduction of mainstream VR gaming headsets like the HTC Vive has opened up new dimensions for gaming and for game audio in particular. We’ll round off by looking at some of the challenges that VR poses sound designers and composers, but also some of the opportunities that it opens up. What will the next generation of VR game soundtracks be like?

This event will be live streamed.  Registration through this Eventbrite page.