In light of the newest generation of consoles being fully(ish) available, it marks a good point to start talking about how audio will change over this generation. From the talks with Mark Cerny, to Epic unveiling their new engine, the future of game audio is almost palpable. Some of the biggest changes will be in audio processing or transforming of audio signals, otherwise known as DSP.
It has been a staple of music composition, be it in your favorite video game, DJ setlist, movie score, or pop artist; MIDI can be found everywhere electronic music is. It might not be a surprise that Koreographer Pro leans on MIDI for its most professional, expedited workflow. As we’ve covered before, Koreographer uses embedded musical data to stream information back to game systems in time with the music. If Koreographer isn’t a tool for music composition, then why use MIDI?
Music games are a dime a dozen in app stores and go all the way back to the first Parappa or Beatmania. There have been dozens of iterations on how to do the genre justice with gem smashers in Rock Band to obstacle courses in Vib Ribbon to omnidirectional commands in Guitaroo Man. They all have something in common; the method to get those punchy note placements to land right on beat. What you might not know is the process to make that happen.
How much have graphics advanced over the 9 generations of consoles? Now ask yourself the same question about audio. Why haven’t audio advancements kept pace with graphic advancements? this article takes a look at what technological developments happened in each generation and what we can do, as an industry, to bring game audio up to levels of fidelity graphics have achieved.
Games that become well known for how they leverage music tend to be, well, music/rhythm games like Guitar Hero, Crypt of the NecroDancer, or Beat Saber. These games make music a fundamental part of the game: pull the music out and the gameplay falls apart. It might be what comes to mind when we talk about "music in gameplay". However, a small set of game developers have been exploring new ways of using music in games - ways where music is tightly connected to the gameplay without being a core part of the gameplay itself.
The gap between game action and cinematic scoring prevents games from achieving the feeling of emotional fullness that cinema is capable of. This hasn't stopped game developers from trying, however. In this blog entry, we talk about the importance of music in games, and where it can go in the future.
Music can really amp up the cinematic feeling in video games, especially if game events line up with well-timed events in the music.
In this tutorial video, we’ll show you how to use AudioKinetic’s Wwise and Koreographer to tether music playback to actions in your game. We’ll cover how to set up the scripts needed to glue the programs together, and cover the process to get your music playback to drive object variables.
New consoles arrive every four to seven years. If you compare a console's games to its last, you will see a spectrum of innovations. Rendering techniques become more efficient and realistic; designers find new ways to explore interaction and storytelling; game developers push the state of the art forward a little at a time. We at Sonic Bloom would like to take a moment to reflect on the outgoing 8th generation to highlight the games we think most exemplified important changes to the medium.
New consoles arrive every four to seven years. If you compare a console's games to its last, you will see a spectrum of innovations. Rendering techniques become more efficient and realistic; designers find new ways to explore interaction and storytelling; game developers push the state of the art forward a little at a time. We at Sonic Bloom would like to take a moment to reflect on the outgoing 8th generation to highlight the games we think most exemplified important changes to the medium.
Learn how to create music rhythm-based animations for your game. In this tutorial, we go over how to use Unity 3D’s Bolt to script easy animations that “dance” along to music.
Want to build a music game with Playmaker? This video tutorial will walk you through how to animate game objects along to music in a simple and easy to understand way.
Have you ever wanted to get your game animations to animate to the music? Have you ever wanted really close synchronization that makes it look like your game objects are reacting to or dancing with the music? It’s not an easy problem. With a couple of assets from the Unity Asset Store, you can get some pretty great animation effects with little effort.
In this tutorial, you’ll see how Unity 3D and Koreorapher can work together to get a simple, but really effective animation. It won’t take much, but it will make your game way more “juicy.”
Assets used are:
Last week we talked about music Performance Royalties, and how you, as a media creator, might have to deal with it. In short, if an artist is from a big music label, they can command specific contracts that grant them the right to royalties. However, most artists get residual royalties through something called a PRO, or Performance Rights Organization. This has little impact on you, or your creations, as they only take revenues generated by the organizations who benefit from the audience hearing the music. In most cases, it only requires you to fill out a cue sheet to the PRO.
You might see the term PRO, or Performance Rights Organization when shopping for music on Bard, Pond5, or any number of music licensing sites. What is this and how does it affect how I buy a song for my video production? The “Performance Rights Organization” label added to certain artists might sound like a bit of legal wrangling that most video editors and creators don't want to deal with, especially considering royalties are something most video creators might want to avoid. Fret not. It’s actually way less complicated than it might seem at face value.
By now some of you might be wondering “What is Bard?” That’s a totally fair question. The music licensing landscape is filled to the brim with music libraries. In fact, there are thousands of them. From the well established music libraries to the solo indie composer, there is no shortage of places to find music. And this is exactly why Bard exists: to make it easier to find music from across all of those libraries from a single place! Let’s dig into this a little bit.
Sonic Bloom is a music technology company founded by two lifelong friends: Eric Robinson and myself, Justin Stanizzi. Our friendship was founded on a shared awkward, geeky love of movies and video games. Learn a bit about our story and why we are compelled to help our fellow media artists make the most of music.
Bard™ is drastically simplifying the way media creators find production music on the internet. Instead of searching hundreds of different sites for music, Bard searches them for you.
With a single search, you can see content from Pond 5, Audio Jungle, and Jamendo, with more coming soon. That way you can spend a lot less time searching, and a lot more time finding the best song for your project.
Digital creators (and especially YouTube creators) face a particularly difficult challenge when acquiring music for their productions. The biggest threat is getting nabbed by YouTube’s Content ID system or, worse, getting a DMCA strike. It doesn’t help that music licensing is a particularly muddy topic.
Las Vegas, NV - April 9, 2018 - Sonic Bloom is attending NAB (National Association of Broadcaster) convention with Bard's open alpha program. We're welcoming video editors, producers, and music supervisors to try out Bard at our booth N2633SUL-B in the Las Vegas Convention Center's North Hall.
Bard makes discovering and licensing royalty free music easier and faster for the millions of talented Video Editors and Media Creators that occupies our screen time. Bard aggregates over 1.5 millions songs from the top libraries across the internet – including Pond5, Jamendo, and AudioJungle – and provides results to preview and buy right in your media editor. Best of all, it costs nothing to use. Think of it as a Kayak.com for royalty free music licenses.
Try out the Bard alpha today, and be a part of a growing platform. It's rapidly evolving to support your workflows, with new features being added monthly, and new song libraries being added soon.
If you're an Adobe Premiere user, you can download a free copy of Bard here (http://www.bardmusic.io). If you aren't a Premiere user, then please signup here to be the first to try out Bard when it expands to new platforms.
About Sonic Bloom - Sonic Bloom was founded in 2014 by two high school friends who shared a similar interest in games, music, and film. They combined their collective experience in technology companies to start building tools for creators. Sonic Bloom is squarely taking aim at the music licensing industry, with new ways of searching music, and providing both video creators, and the music libraries tools to help get the perfect music to the right people.
Austin, TX - March 12, 2018 - Sonic Bloom is launching the Bard open alpha program at this year's SXSW (South By SouthWest). Bard makes discovering and licensing royalty free music easier and faster for the millions of talented Video Editors and Media Creators that have taken over our screen time. Bard aggregates over 1.5 millions songs from the top libraries across the internet – including Pond5, Jamendo, and AudioJungle – and provides results to preview and buy right in your media editor. Best of all, it costs nothing to use. Think of it as a Kayak.com for royalty free music licenses.
Bard is Sonic Bloom's second product. Their first product, Koreographer, allows Unity game developers to utilize music to make more impactful game experiences. Koreographer simplifies the implementation of beat matching, karaoke, and rhythm games and allows normal games to weave music into their experiences to create more dynamic music-scapes.
About Sonic Bloom - Sonic Bloom was founded in 2014 by two high school friends who shared a similar interest in games, music, and film. They combined their collective experience in technology companies to start building tools for creators. Coincidentally, the launch of Bard's alpha program also marks the founders shared birthday.
If you're an Adobe Premiere user, you can download a free copy of Bard here (http://www.bardmusic.io). If you aren't a Premiere user, then please signup here to be the first to try out Bard when it expands to new platforms.
For Unity users eager to try out Koreographer, you can purchase a license at the Unity Asset Store here.