This post was inspired by a recent search engine entry (yes, I can view what you are searching for to get to my site).
Well, video game music starts with a beep, and then a boop, and the some more beeps, and then another boop.
No, unfortunately, making video game music is not that easy.
Anyways, I’ll start from the beginning. Back in the day, as in, the 1980’s, video game composers were very limited in what they could do with music. First of all, up until the 6th Generation of Consoles, video games music was, for the most part, midi based. What is midi? Well, try to think of a midi as real-time music. That is, midi does not contain raw sound wave data like .wav or .mp3 files do. Instead it contains information so that the computer or console can play the music. Think of it like a music box — The swindle on a music box does not play the music, it only contains the information so that the music box itself can play the tune.
The reason sound was midi-based was because it took up far less memory, which was a big issue back in 80’s and early 90s. Regular sound files would have taken up so much memory that there would not be any room for graphics! So you would have great music, but nothing to look at! Especially for RPGs. Nowadays, CDs contain tons of memory, so we don’t need to use midis. So basically, midi-based sound systems in games used a series of sound channels. These sound channels not only produced music, but sound FX as well (I wish I could tell you how the Sound FX part works, but I don’t know myself…lol). Have you ever played an old NES game and noticed that sometimes the music would become…”less” when a sound effect played? That’s because each sound channel could only play one sound at a time, so one of the music generators — that’s anything that makes sound — had to mute itself temporarily so the sound effect could play.
The 8-bit Era still used the traditional way of midis and sound channels as its predecessors had. Music in the 8-bit Era was pretty limited for the most part. The NES is most well-known console of this time, so let’s use it as the example. The NES contains only 4 channels of sound. As I said earlier, no two sounds can play over the same channel, so this meant you could only have four different instruments playing at once! Even worse, you couldn’t even decide what instruments they were…if you wanted to even call them instruments. So sound channels 1 and 2 were Square wave channels. A square wave, is literally, a sound wave that looks like a square when viewed under an O-scope. The square wave is what started the whole “retro sound” scene in the first place. These channels served as the harmony and melody. The third channel is a triangle wave. Triangle waves tend to make a very deep sound, so it served as the bass sound. The fourth channel offered percussion…in the form of white noise. White noise is the static you hear on your TV when it can’t pick up a signal. This sound was used to make very meager drums. (If you want to even call them that)
By the 16 Bit Era, video game music had evolved much. I will use the Super NES as an example, but of course, it doesn’t really matter whom I choose since it was very similar to the Genesis. The SNES now had 8 channels instead of four like the NES, and you could actually choose what instruments you wanted for each channel; for example, if you wanted a timpani roll in channel 7, you would get your Goddamn timpani roll. So now, not only could you play 8 different sounds at once, but you weren’t limited to pulse waveforms anymore. Woot. Early games were still developing midi banks to use for this, so the sounds were still very synth-like, such as in Super Mario World, but by the time games like Chrono Trigger had come out, sound was very realistic…for its time, heh. What is a midi bank you ask? A midi bank is basically where you store all your instruments you will be using (well, their virtual data at least). I’m not sure how much instrument data you could store on the cartridge, but it was a lot. Sound FX were also played on these channels as well. I’m not to sure how that works though… Anyways, in addition to all this, you could also add 1 FX filter over all the channels; so now, you could give your sound reverb, delay, and other cool effects. Definably a big help.
The N64 and PS1 were two very different systems in terms of music, so let’s start with the N64 first, shall we? The N64 still used cartridges, which meant that it was still very much limited in the music you could compose for it. However, it was far more accessible than the SNES. In fact, it was pretty much just as good as the PC midi system. Many games actually used PC midi’s as well. I remember Pokémon snap did… Later though, special banks were made to ensure the best quality for the N64. The N64 also had enough memory to support pre-recorded sound effects! This means that sound effects were stored as recorded, low quality, sound files; they weren’t midi based like before.
The PS1 used CDs. This was a huge advancement, because CD’s allowed far more memory. This meant that you could now store music as a compressed file format and not a midi anymore! From here, music was now made a completely different way — the computer. In fact, this style continues on to today in video game music (mostly). Programs like FL Studio (hint, hint) are now used to make awesome digital video game music. Many soundtracks were even orchestrated, such as Halo and Super Mario Galaxy! These days, taking up too much memory isn’t a big deal for sound anymore, now that discs have so much space.
If you’re interested in making video game music, you should start by getting FL Studio, as I guarantee it will get you the closest to video game sound you could get. You can download the demo free at their site. Anyways, you should look at the demo projects to learn more if you have no idea what you are doing. I’ll be posting tutorials and tips about using FL Studio later, so stick around.
–DmNt
PS: Sorry if this just discussed video game music history and not actually making it, but making it is really just like making any other music from a digital perspective.
