Red Mage Style: Music Direction

What is Music Direction?

Music direction is picking which songs the game needs. How long they are, how they’re used in the game, and what style/mood they will have. The goal is to set up the soundtrack to influence the mood of the game.

For example, in Escape Goat, I wanted the game to have a serious tone to counterbalance the game’s title, so I picked a lot of darker stuff as reference songs.

If you don’t know where to start, try this:

The Fake Playlist Method

  1. Brainstorm and make a list of a dozen songs that might work well with your game. Pick a variety of tempos, moods and genres.
  2. Collect mp3’s of these songs (if you can find them on YouTube, you can get the mp3… Google it)
  3. Make a playlist in iTunes or Windows Media Player
  4. Play your game while the playlist is playing. Skip around from song to song, and notice how each song affects each scene.

That’s it! You’ll have a short list of tracks that work well, and you can probably describe in a few words what makes them work.

Here’s a video that demonstrates this process:

I’ve used this technique dozens of times when scoring games. When it comes to tracking music production, I love spreadsheets. All you need are these columns: Cue name, Target Length, Actual Length, Reference, Notes (for reworks–which should be minimized with this practice).

Have fun!