AUDIO STUDIES - CREATIVE PROJECT

Program Note
Emu Challenge
Dorothy Pawlowski
03:14

EMU CHALLENGE MIXDOWN MP3 - CLICK HERE

Whenever I think of video game music, I think of the music of the Commodore 64 and (later) the Super Nintendo gaming consoles of the 1980’s. By today’s standards, these machines were capable of producing only low resolution audio, often played back through a small speaker. The result was usually brittle, noisy and trashy.

When writing this, my own hypothetical video game music ”Emu Challenge”, I deliberately attempted to emulate the sound of early digital audio by including “noisy” percussion samples and copying the vibrato-heavy, string-like synthesizer sounds which were typically used for melody instruments at the time.

Emu Challenge

The hero of this video game is an emu who faces challenges within three main gaming zones namely, The Adventure Zone, The Spooky Zone and The Fun Zone. All of the sequencing for the final work was carried out in Pro Tools LE (session bit depth 24 and sample rate 48kHz).

The percussion samples for the work were obtained either from the Garage Band library or manufactured using the ES1 and FM synthesizers in Logic Pro). I obtained sound effects from the web as well as recording voice tags which I felt would emphasise the “game” flavour of the music, editing and normalising some of the samples in Peak LE as necessary. The melodic components were composed in Logic Pro using the matrix editor and ES1 synthesizer, which I found most appropriate to the style of music. I exported the melodies as 24 bit wav audio files from Logic and imported them into the Pro Tools region list, converting the sample rate to match the Pro Tools session sample rate. The Spooky Zone melodies utilised the “swing” function of Logic, as I wished this section to have a less rigid feel to the meter.

After manufacturing, recording and collecting all of this source material, I arranged it accordingly in Pro Tools, mostly using grid mode, and performed mixing, panning, automation and organisational operations as well as applying plug-ins. Although normalised, there were still problems with varying levels between the vocal effects tags and there were no tracks left over to allocate each tag a track of its own (as I had already used all of the tracks available in Pro Tools LE at this sample rate and bit depth), so volume automation was particularly necessary on the two “FX” tracks.

The Adventure Zone

Meter: 4/4
Tempo: 160 bpm
Key: C minor

(In this section I have departed from my original idea (as per proposal) of using C major as the key because I found when I began writing the melody that the feeling of a strictly major key was not “dangerous” enough.)

The Spooky Zone

Meter: 4/4
Tempo: 160 bpm
Key: G minor

The Fun Zone

Meter: 6/8
Tempo: 180 bpm
Key: C major

Production Credits

Voice Tags: Captain I (appears by permission of Sleazy Studios)