The future of background music - what are your thoughts?

Hi Everyone!

I've posted this in "Audio", but it's perhaps more appropriate under "work in progress" since it is... well... work in progress! ;-)
As you may know, it's been a while now that I have been developing interactive and randomly generated background music.

I'm trying to take it to even further, the "ultimate" level, but I want to get your feedback first...

I'm finalizing an Asset as we speak.

This one is based on random and interactive soundtrack generation as well.

It randomly selects loops from a pool of samples and stitches them together according to a predefined order.

It also smoothly transitions between different intensity levels to adapt to the level of action.
Click here to test the "beta" version in the Unity Web Player

Or you can watch the demo video here:

Do you think that randomly generated soundtracks combined with interactivity is the right way forward?

Some of the limitations I see is that:

- While the variety of combinations you can get is immense, the soundtrack cannot sound the same as a fully fledged pre-composed piece since the instruments are not composed to specifically "fit" together perfectly.

- The resources needed to generate and run the different samples can be an obstacle especially when using it on low end devices.

- Ultimately, the soundtrack is still limited by certain things such as tempo, time signature and key.

- The complexity of the randomness makes it difficult to make "clean" transitions to other soundtracks to completely switch moods (like going from battle to discovery, mystery...)

There is another alternative that I have also already explored: the random playback of fully precomposed loops (meaning, longer loops with musical phrases, that can be played in any order). The advantage of such a system, is that it is much less "power" hungry as there don't have to be a great number of audiosources playing at the same time. Also, it is much simpler to organize a transition to other moods even change tempo, time signature and key, since there are only a limited number of samples and loops to manage. However, the possibilities for variety are much more restrictive than in a fully "randomized" script.

Check the demo of my "Authentic Sacred Church Music" which uses such a system:

What are your thoughts?

 

Looking good. What's the main difference between this and psai?

 

Randomness..
Psai is also quite powerful but to my knowledge, it works like a giant playlist that triggers select samples when you hit a certain trigger.

 

That's great.

I will be watching this and see how it turns out.

 

I've updated the "beta" version in the Web Player! Now it features two different song structures and uses 8 new loops!

Click here to test the "beta" version in the Unity Web Player

 

Just to let you guys know, you can test the "full" interactive and random soundtrack generation I was talking about (option 2 in the poll) for FREE here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/50390
The PRO version is available here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/50360

PS: please don't beat me up over the "typo" in the art! I'll get it fixed ASAP!

 

Hi Marma,

actually you can define the degree of randomness when creating a psai soundtrack. It goes from total random to keeping strict segment order and all possible degrees in between.

psai also takes into account the suitability of segments (how well do they fit), the intensity (how well does a single segment's intensity fit the triggered intensity level) and the playcount (how often has a single segment been played). All together this results in a pretty complex musical behaviour which can be balanced in the psai Editor application.

When working on the early concepts of psai, we stumbled upon many different aspects we needed to factor in: Variety/Avoidance of repetition, smoothness of transitions, responsiveness, fit of the music's intensity/mood, ease-of-use (also important!) and some more. At first we found ourselves featuring one over the other like saying "it's most important the musical transitions sound natural" or "it's most important the soundtrack provides variety", but doing so automatically restricts you in other fields, because they are sometimes contrary, like smooth musical transitions do not go well with responsiveness, extreme randomness/variety rules out a "catchy" maintheme melody etc.

In the end we had to incooperate all these aspects into psai and had to make them "tunable" in order to fit the various needs of interactive videogame music.

Cheers,
Jan



In case you are interested to learn more about psai's choice of segments, start the psai Player loaded with our Demo Soundtrack or any other music package in the Asset Store (two examples below), switch to "list" in the tech info at the bottom. There you can follow the segment choice sequence. If you choose a "Basic Mood" (that's our theme type for background music), trigger some intensities (or click "hold" to keep a medium intensity), you will experience psai playing endlessly, choosing random segments, resting, starting again, etc


http://www.homeofpsai.com/webplayer/psaiplayerdemo/psaiplayerdemo.html
http://www.homeofpsai.com/webplayer/ruinsofthepast/ruinsofthepast.html

 

Hi Jan!
I see! Very interesting! So in essence, PSAI would quality under the third option in my poll: "longer precomposed loops that can be played in any order".

What I've tried to do, is to break down music into the smallest parts (percussion loops, bass loops, melody, accompaniement...), compose 8 or more variations for each, and make it possible via script to play them in any combination. I believe PSAI works with loops where most of the elements are already blended together, right?

Also, my script works with several "pre-composed" song structures so that the song does not sound weird (random, unsuitable combination of samples, like only minimalistic accompaniement and stingers...) but nevertheless random (since there are several song structures to choose from).

At any point at the end of a musical phrase, the script can transition to other "moods".

One extra added value, is that until you hit the "reset" button, the soundtrack sounds like a "regular" loop, keeping the logic of a "fully pre-composed" soundtrack to keep a certain amount of "coherence" for the soundtrack.

I've considered using PSAI as an audio engine for my Assets, but I've learned enough scripting to code my own audio script using Unity's native engine...
I would also enjoy a tutorial that shows how to compose for PSAI as for me, it's easier to compose when I have full control over the script too...

 

I am interested in the "full random" as I make my own loops with variations....

Interested in learning more about how you structure the songs....

 

Well, it works like a sequencer basically, where clips are triggered in a predetermined order based on time.