R3 'Game' theory?

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes indeed - often done in theatre (audiences voting as to who they'd like to be the murderer et al.) but very rarely in opera. Though not such a stretch for Pousseur perhaps, who was merely carrying his aleatoric techniques a little further! Alas I've never heard the work.

How well I remember being utterly stunned by this version, which Pousseur extracted, broadcast on Radio 3 in 1968, and which I taped. It was my awakening to the tongue-in-cheek fun that could in fact be had working in the post-serial methods and technology of that wonderful era, which all of a sudden started making sense to me, and I played it over and over again. Pousseur was ahead of the pack - this was chronologically before Stockhausen's Hymnen and Berio's Sinfonia; only Zimmermann had been working in this area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf32fOWuLD8

Years later I heard Pousseur talking on the radio in his very broken Belgian-French English about the politics of that time and its underpinning ideas, which, I have to say, still make complete sense to me.

[Bryn]

How well I remember being utterly stunned by this version, which Pousseur extracted, broadcast on Radio 3 in 1968, and which I taped. It was my awakening to the tongue-in-cheek fun that could in fact be had working in the post-serial methods and technology of that wonderful era, which all of a sudden started making sense to me, and I played it over and over again. Pousseur was ahead of the pack - this was chronologically before Stockhausen's Hymnen and Berio's Sinfonia; only Zimmermann had been working in this area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf32fOWuLD8

Years later I heard Pousseur talking on the radio in his very broken Belgian-French English about the politics of that time and its underpinning ideas, which, I have to say, still make complete sense to me.

I have not checked whether the audio is if highr definition or not, but https://www.mixcloud.com/artistsuppo...ust-1966-1967/ might be worth checking ouit, too.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have not checked whether the audio is if highr definition or not, but https://www.mixcloud.com/artistsuppo...ust-1966-1967/ might be worth checking ouit, too.

I would say about the same quality, Bryn.

It's ironic the word "Jeu" being included in Pousseur's title, fortuitously in line as it is with our thread title, as I've just noticed!

[Bryn]

I would say about the same quality, Bryn.

For what it's worth, the YouTube offering is available in 128kbps aac.

[Master Jacques]

... It sounds like a 'modern' variant on a post modern fictional device from 50 years ago. John Fowles's French Lieutenant's Woman created a narrative and characters which envisaged and allowed for alternative endings, which he subsequently provided. How far is video games music an illusion that players somehow create their own musical narrative by their chosen actions? Is that narrative not limited to the outcomes that the composer provided for in the first place - just as Fowles prepared for alternatives in his novel - both merely providing a limited set of variants which are the creators' own?

I think Fowles's device is a technical achievement rather than an artistic one, and I would see the requirements of video games music in the same light. Artistry there may be, but I'm not convinced that it lies in this supposed 'dependency' on the decisions of the gamer.

I agree that this is a technical achievement, indeed an artistic washing of hands: and Fowles of course was only slightly extending Charlotte Bronte's "alternative endings" (tragic or romantic) offered by the last pages of Villette. But computer games go far beyond merely offering alternative paths to possibly alternative endings. It's more like a B.S.Johnson novel, where the reader is encouraged to read the book in any order she or he likes - but even more complicated than that, the player can miss bits (and other characters) out if they choose.

Without droning on too much about "sword and sorcery" RPGs, these involve the player-character having a choice of races, gender and talent sets (warriors, rogues, hunters, mages etc.) often from a large menu. And that's just for starters (character creation). As the game progresses the player-character may also choose to add companions, who usually have their own "quest lines" to follow, in addition to the "main quest" and the vitally important "side quests" (which may or may not arise, according to player choices) which are there to raise skills and promote "levelling up".

In the more complex games this can lead to scores of possible endings and permutations. The space fantasy Mass Effect 3, for example, had to take into account the player-character's gender/background/sexuality/companion relations (those that were still alive or not after the first two instalments!) as well as their endgame decisions at the end of the previous game in the series. This resulted in hundreds of possible beginnings to the game - rather to its detriment, in my opinion - let alone endings.

That's why I am so full of admiration for the composers who help bring such playing experiences together by creating the complex, atmospheric musical tapestries they have to weave to make the games gel.

[Master Jacques]

For what it's worth, the YouTube offering is available in 128kbps aac.

Thank you both for the links - fascinating and entertaining material indeed.

[Richard Tarleton]

Extract from relative's reply re game music, which I hope contributors to the thread find informative....

...I see Keith Stuart (who really knows his stuff, by the way) has mentioned a few examples.


I think the key line from that article is "Unlike film and TV scores, which are linear and require specific sequences for specific moments, game soundtracks are more open and afford greater compositional space." While a lot of the pieces that get played at concerts - and may well be played on Radio 3 - are recognisable themes that are compositionally similar to film scores, a lot of the music used during gameplay is looser in structure, because the composer and director don't know exactly what the player will be doing when the music plays, since the player is in control. While film directors can precisely choose when a piece will play in relation to the action on screen, game designers cannot, for the most part. They can know roughly what the player will be doing (fighting, exploring, climbing, driving, for example), but trying to get musical beats to align with emotional moments on screen usually isn't possible. This is especially true of earlier games, which required pieces of music that could be looped around and listened to indefinitely as players worked their way through a long and difficult level.


The other thing to bear in mind is that in the early days, video game graphics weren't great, and music had to carry a lot of weight in terms of setting the tone.


My favourite examples of this early-ish video game music are the Donkey Kong soundtracks, which are compositionally very impressive given the extremely limited toolset the composer David Wise had to work with. Here's a good article about the composition, and how difficult it was to a) make things sound good given the hardware and b) get the information to actually fit on the tiny amount of storage allocated for music.


There are some examples of the music linked in that article; I have no idea what you'll make of it. My favourite Donkey Kong pieces are actually the Game Boy soundtracks (1995-8), which are significant because the handheld Game Boy hardware was even more limited than the hardware mentioned in that article. Here's one of my favourite tracks - I still think it's a real feat to get a tune like that out of the chipset. The level it's from is impossibly hard, so players would have to listen to the track over and over again. In the 90s, that's just how game design worked - games were aimed at children, who tend to have great reflexes, and lots of time.


The first Tomb Raider came out in 1996. Unlike a lot of preceding games, it did have a distinctive theme similar to a film theme. The composer deliberately wrote something delicate and mysterious in order to differentiate the game from a) all the other games at the time with hulking male protagonists and b) Indiana Jones. It gave the game a haunting, lonely atmosphere which really set it apart from its competitors. One way that game music used to be very different from film is that it carried so much more weight in terms of atmospherics/tone/setting, because the primitive graphics weren't up to the task. No-one at the time was allocating game budgets for live musicians (they would by the end of the 90s), but back then, it was standard procedure to synthesise everything. The original, synthesised soundtrack is here. A couple of years ago, the composer rearranged the soundtracks for the first three games for an orchestra. There's a recording by the London Philharmonic called "The Tomb Raider Suite" - the full two hours are on Spotify, if you're interested.


A few years later, it became standard to record game soundtracks with instruments... and there was also a move to games with a heavier focus on narrative and art design. Two of my favourite examples from this time are:
Beyond Good and Evil (2003), a lovely game about uncovering government corruption on an idyllic world. The soundtrack is an eclectic mix of styles borrowed magpie-style from around the world (the composer, game director and studio are all French). This reflects the richness and diversity of the world you're trying to save, though current discourse would accuse it of cultural appropriation. Highlights are Home Sweet Home, The Hillyan Suite, Ancient Chinese Secrets, Fun & Mini Games and, er, Slaughterhouse Scramble (this is a pretty excellent vocal, in my opinion).
Shadow of the Colossus (2005), an almost wordless, impressionistic game about grief. A young man rides a horse across a lonely world, seeking 16 colossi to destroy in the hope of bringing his beloved back to life. It's a quiet, desolate game with no conflict or combat except for those 16 epic fights. The music is mostly melancholy, with bursts of drama and triumph ("Swift Horse" is wonderful).
...that's pretty much where we are today, though budgets have inflated. Here are some recent examples:
The Last of Us - Gustavo Santaolalla. This is a cinematic game is about the last survivors of a zombie apocalypse. It takes the form of a road trip across America interspersed with - like The Last of Us - moments of bleak horror. There are moments of great warmth and beauty in the soundtrack, but a lot of abrasive strings and harsh percussion. It's bluesy Americana, torn to rusting shreds.
Super Hexagon - Chipzel. This game is a throwback to the 90s in terms of how brutally difficult it is, and the soundtrack - though it sounds like it was made with something similar to Donkey Kong's - utilises more modern technology. A great track to go running to!
Pyre - The soundtrack is a mix of folk, rock, and gentle electronica. It's about a group of outcasts making their way across a hostile fantasy world to perform rituals to see which of them will be forgiven. My favourite tracks are Strange Voyage, In the Flame, Knights of the Sea. You spend a lot of time gathered round a campfire and talking to your fellow travellers in this game, and the soundtrack reflects that.....

[MrGongGong]

Extract from relative's reply re game music, which I hope contributors to the thread find informative....

Thanks for this
some interesting things to follow up

[doversoul1]

I can’t remember the name of the author but back in 1980s, there was a series of books for children very much in a way of (I guess) dungeons and dragons; the reader was to choose which way the story would go throughout the book. The series was very popular amongst teachers because it encouraged ‘reluctant readers’ to get into reading books.

This seems to be the principle idea of modern role playing game. If it is, no matter how complex and sophisticated the game may be and whilst the choice and combinations seem infinitive, the player is merely choosing from what is prepared by the manufacturer/author. To me, this is the difference between painting/drawing and jigsaw puzzle.

Jigsaw and Lego can be intellectually highly stimulating yet to me, they and gaming belong to a different place from creative art. There is nothing at all wrong with not being a creative art as long as it does not pretend or insist that it is. You could say that 'creating' a game is a creative art unless it is 'crafted' to fit the purpose.*
*I've just read Richard's post.

I imagine the music needs to be highly crafted to ‘do the job’ and it can be an interesting subject on Radio 3. More the pity the current programme is so inane.

[Judith Robbyns]

"More the pity the current programme is so inane. "


Yes, however complicated and intricate the creation of the music in relation to the game, a radio programme which plays a piece of 'linear' music, detached from the game, and offers (so far) little information as to how the music and game work together, seems to exclude whatever point there is to be made - and if the listener doesn't know the game it conjures up no images or ideas.

This discussion, after all, is about the Radio Three programme and its content, not gaming.

[MrGongGong]

This seems to be the principle idea of modern role playing game. If it is, no matter how complex and sophisticated the game may be and whilst the choice and combinations seem infinitive, the player is merely choosing from what is prepared by the manufacturer/author. To me, this is the difference between painting/drawing and jigsaw puzzle.
.

I don't think that maths seems to be your strong point (nor is it mine)
When I suggested to someone I know who creates Algorithmic compositions that it was a bit like chess, a simple to solve problem of probabilities. He pointed out that the number of possible permutations could be more than the number of atoms in the universe. The number of possible "solutions" to a game of chess is rather large as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number

so I don't really think your analogy holds at all.

Furthermore, you have admitted to never having played any games yet hold very strong opinions about them and the music.
How come ?

[Master Jacques]

I can’t remember the name of the author but back in 1980s, there was a series of books for children very much in a way of (I guess) dungeons and dragons; the reader was to choose which way the story would go throughout the book. The series was very popular amongst teachers because it encouraged ‘reluctant readers’ to get into reading books.

Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone - great titles (multiple choice at every step) such as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I was far from a child in 1982, when Puffin Books started issuing them, but I read/played them with pleasure just the same!

[Master Jacques]

This seems to be the principle idea of modern role playing game. If it is, no matter how complex and sophisticated the game may be and whilst the choice and combinations seem infinitive, the player is merely choosing from what is prepared by the manufacturer/author. To me, this is the difference between painting/drawing and jigsaw puzzle.

Would you therefore exclude Lutoslawski's minutely determined use of aleatoric cells (where everyone likewise ends up just where the composer wants them) from high art?

And there is a salient feature of these games, over and above the multitudinous pathways through the narrative: combat! This is always different, and absolutely player-dependent. The authors, graphic artists and programmers (I don't like the word "manufacturer" here, honestly) can set up lots of random encounters, and cannot dictate the player's "play-style" in this area. Every game is going to be differently played out, not pre-determined.

Nevertheless, there is something in what you say about the pleasure of "solving puzzles", whether in jigsaw or computerised form, and many games foster that human pleasure too. I personally think Agatha Christie's best novels are high art, too, despite our snobbish attitude to her work - not shared abroad, by the way - but doubtless few here would agree with me on that front, either!

But the point is, that the Puzzle is a perfectly respectable branch of literature, painting, cinema and even perhaps music, as well as games.

[doversoul1]

I don't think that maths seems to be your strong point (nor is it mine)
When I suggested to someone I know who creates Algorithmic compositions that it was a bit like chess, a simple to solve problem of probabilities. He pointed out that the number of possible permutations could be more than the number of atoms in the universe. The number of possible "solutions" to a game of chess is rather large as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number

so I don't really think your analogy holds at all.

Furthermore, you have admitted to never having played any games yet hold very strong opinions about them and the music.
How come ?

I don’t see what chess has got to do with gaming apart from it being a game. But don’t bother to explain, as Judith says, this is a thread about the game music programme on Radio 3 and not about games.

I can’t remember declaring never having played games. My ‘strong opinions’ about games are in reference to the article about the addiction amongst children. As for the music, the 20 minutes I spent listening to the programme told me enough. However, as I mentioned in my previous post, the problem is probably not in the music but the programme itself.


Master Jacques
Thank you!! I was helping the village school library at the time. The books were very popular with boys who didn’t usually come into the library. Girls thought they had better things to read. I wonder if all those boys are as keen gamers as you are now and remembering the books.

As to your last post, I think I shall retire from this discussion on the basis that any craft or sport for that matter can reach the height of ART. Clearly the level of gaming you are at is, hopefully , little to do with the serious issues of addiction amongst children.

[Richard Tarleton]

If it is, no matter how complex and sophisticated the game may be and whilst the choice and combinations seem infinitive, the player is merely choosing from what is prepared by the manufacturer/author. To me, this is the difference between painting/drawing and jigsaw puzzle.

Dovers - it could be argued that in reading a novel, you are merely (passively) watching the characters therein make a series of choices, often binary ones, prepared by the author (Anna Karenina - have an affair/not have an affair ) and watching the consequences play out. The only difference between this and a computer game is that you become one of the characters, and play a part in determining the outcome. This seems to me a perfectly defensible and worthwhile intellectual activity.

Chess, too, is choosing between a range of options determined by the rules of the game - huge, but finite, and worthy of some of the best brains on thre planet....

PS Dovers just realised I may be too late - but would love to hear your thoughts.....