>> David Plylar: Good
evening everybody. My name is David Plylar,
I'm with the Music Division at the Library of Congress. And, I'm really excited
to have you here for this exciting series of
events that we're going to have. And, by that I mean both the
events tonight and the events that continue tomorrow. It's my privilege to
introduce the two members of Pixelated Audio who
have an amazing podcast that you should check out,
Bryan Mosley and Gene Dreyband. They're here to give us a talk
about kind of a brief history. They're going to hit every
single game ever made. That's what I. >> Bryan Mosley: In 30 minutes. >> David Plyalar: Yeah. That's what I've been told. So that's our expectation,
you know, contractually. But no. But, we're really
pleased to have them here. And, they're going to be
joining us later in the even that we're having
in the Coolidge. So you'll get to hear more
from them at that time. So please welcome
Pixelated Audio. [ Applause ] >> Bryan Mosely: All right. I am Bryan and this is
Gene of Pixelated Audio. >> Gene Dreyband: Hello. >> Bryan Mosely: We are from
the San Francisco Bay area. And, we're here to talk about
the evolution of game audio over the last 50 years or so. Because of time, we are not
going to do a comprehensive look at game audio history. But, we've put together
a few points to illustrate the progression of game audio focusing
more on the milestones. And, really, until recently, a lot of people considered
game audio, especially outside of context, nerdy or kind
of strange to listen to. But, over the last 25 years, 25
years or so, the appreciation and support for game audio and game music have
been rapidly growing. And, seeing that happen in front of us is something
pretty incredible. So what is Pixelated Audio? It's a video game music
podcast with a historical and preservation focus. We focus on discovering and highlighting game
music throughout history, past and present. And, it's kind of like
a platform for composers and game designers, developers
to share their stories and share specific memories
from development or something that happened during
that specific time, so. >> Gene Dreyband: So, you're
wondering why a podcast about video game music? Well for one, games
are a lot of fun. And, great games with great
music are even better. There's so many amazing
games with great music coming out today and a rich
history of games that have already come out. And, there's more
coming out every day. And, as Bryan mentioned, we
get to be part of a large and growing community
of people that love and share the love
of video game music. Fun fact, Bryan and I
actually met because of MAGFest which some of you
might be familiar with. It's an organization
that puts on music, video game music events
throughout the entire U.S. And, they're actually
based in Baltimore. >> Bryan Mosley: So. Yep. All right. So what makes games and
their music so special? Well, games are distinct from
a lot of other popular media. Right? So and that,
and that really boils down to the interactivity,
interactivity and the experience while
you're playing the game. The interactive elements are
distinct and they're engaging. They provide some kind
of experience that's hard to recreate in other
forms of media. Another thing here is that many
of the biggest developments in game history happened
within recent history. So just, I mean some of you may
remember a time before games even existed. Right? And, some of you might
remember things when, you know, I don't know, Minecraft
was the new thing. So you know, it's
a diverse crowd and it's fairly recent history. But, just like any
form of media, games and their music developed
due to changes in technology. But, only few of those
are intrinsically linked to the evolution of
computers as games which probably couldn't
exist otherwise. >> Gene Dreyband: So
we're at a point in time where games are extremely
expressive. They can range from really small
to these huge expansive worlds. But, like we said, it
wasn't that long ago when games were pretty basic. And, to illustrate just how
amazing all this progress has been within our lifetimes,
we're actually going to go back to an earlier example of film
which dates back to the 1870s. So in 1878, we had the
photography experiment where Edward Muybridge
was asked to see if a horse every lifts all of its feet off the
ground at the same time. He sat up a line of cameras
set off by trip wires and we basically have the
first ever motion photography. Oh you skipped, I
think you skipped. >> Bryan Mosley: No. >> Gene Dreyband: Okay. >> Bryan Mosley: Can
you see the give there? >> Yeah. >> Gene Dreyband: Okay. >> Bryan Mosley: It worked. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. Awesome. We're not seeing
the same thing over there. So that's really the beginning. In 1888, we have the
Roundhay Garden Scene which is the first surviving
film actually shot on camera. And, that's this right here. In, in 18, sorry, in 1895, Edison and William Dixon
recorded their experimental sound film which was
their opportunity to try to synchronize audio with video. The synchronization
wasn't that accurate, but it was hugely forward. Again in 1895 we
have a silent film. But, this is Baby's Lunch which was the first time
the public actually got to see a film in the world. They actually paid
for the privilege to see this at around $15 today. >> Bryan Mosley: This is my
favorite slide, $15 and it's like a minute watching
a baby eat food. It's like a trailer. It's, that's 15 bucks. >> Gene Dreyband: So in 1902,
we have a trip to the moon. Some of you might
recognize this scene which is the rocket sticking
out of the moon's eye. Very recently, there was a
restored version of this film that looked like this, in color. But, this isn't actually
really a color film because they hand painted
all of the frames one by one. Beautiful, amazing,
but not scalable. In 1908 we have a
Visit to the Seaside which uses alternating
red and green colors to produce this color effect. Still not quite there. 1917, we're still using red
and green but the film shot at the same time, we're starting
to get a little bit closer. Finally ten years later, in
1927, we have the Jazz Singer which is black and white, but you can see the film
quality's improved quite a bit. Not only that, full movie, synchronized sound,
90 minutes long. So pretty close to what we
recognize as modern film today. And, then here we are, in
1932, Flowers and Trees. It's a Disney animated short,
it's about 8 minutes long, but we have sound, color,
everything's together finally. So if we look back at that, the
entire time it took us 54 years to get from motion photography to full color sound
synchronized, everything together. So why is all of that important? Why do we bring this up? Well a lot of that early
film history's been lost or taken for granted. They're, these kinds of opportunities do not
come around very often. And, we're at a point in time where games are still
within recent memory. And, we've developed to a point
where we can actually start to capture some of that history. And, many of the people
that were involved in this process are
still alive today. >> Bryan Mosley: Right. >> Gene Dreyband:
And, that's why we at Pixelated Audio
love what we do. >> Bryan Mosley: Yep. All right. With that, let's
start with this slide. We wanted to start with this
slide because we get questions and statements like this a lot. And I'm sure, if you like
game audio and you, you know, tell your friends, they
might ask you some of these. First of all game
audio, no it didn't start with Super Mario Brothers. Certainly a breakthrough, but that happened
much later in time. It also still isn't
just bleeps and bloops. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. You still have some
nostalgic soundtracks today. But, game music has
definitely gone way, way beyond that at this point. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. And another one here is
game music isn't really a music genre. Although a lot of early
soundtracks were limited by sound hardware and
technical limitations, the music could range
so widely in style between that the only thing
they had in common was that they were in games. So we'd like to kind of maybe
say that it's more close to a category of music and
something like film music. >> Gene Dreyband: And finally, game music is absolutely
real music. It may have started
out very, very simple. But, as time has gone on, and
as you'll hear later tonight, we have some really talented
composers that have joined, some that write for film. It has become an
artwork in and of itself. And, some of the best game music
can stand on its own outside of the context of games. >> Bryan Mosley: So just
like the early days of film that Gene was talking about
earlier, there was a period of games where they didn't
have any sound at all. We do want to bring
those up just quickly. >> Gene Dreyband: So
we go back to 1947, we have what's considered
the first electronic game, the Cathode-Ray Tube
Amusement Device. Very catchy name. It was never sold commercially. But, it was, you were able to control a laser
beam on a screen. You have Tennis for Two which
was played on an oscilloscope with paddle controllers. And we move on to 1972,
the Magnavox Odyssey, the first video game console,
but it didn't have any sound. So all of these are huge
milestones in game history. But, we're here to
talk about audio. And, it takes a bit of a
different piece of hardware in the 1970s to get there. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. So we want to kind of
start in the arcades where everything started
blossoming and the scene and video games were just
starting to come alive and people could get
their hands on them. So starting with the early 70s. >> Gene Dreyband: : Yeah. So the early 1970s is
an interesting time for digital technology. Pocket calculators were
starting to become a thing. You could buy one for
the price of a used car. And not a cheap one necessarily. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. So many things were happening,
you know, really close together. And, it's hard to pinpoint exact
dates for some of this stuff, wasn't recorded very well or the
documentation just isn't there. So behind the scenes, we
really didn't get a good look or a good recorded history
of what actually happened. So based on that, most of these
things that we're bringing up in milestones are generally
acceptable ideas based on word of mouth or what
has been documented. And, the first one dates back
to the arcades, being Pong. >> Gene Dreyband: So Atari's
previous game, Computer Space, in 1971 was actually the
first game with sound. But, it was Pong that
really changed the direction of the game industry. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah,
if it's not obvious, Pong the name comes
from the sound, pong. So, I mean that, they were
thinking about how to kind of incorporate audio into
the name and drop people into this interactive
experience. The initial version
actually didn't have sound. But, the designer was thinking
like okay how do I, how do we go about adding some
more elements to this to make it more interactive? And, what he did was he got an
amplified speaker, connected one of the ground wires to the
board and another to another pin that gave him the
best audio possible. And, that was kind of the
birth of audio in games, that small little innovation. >> Gene Dreyband: So let's
listen to how that sounded. [ Game playing ] >> Bryan Mosley: Exciting stuff. >> Gene Dreyband: Very
primitive but great. >> Bryan Mosley: So
we skip ahead to 1975, Taito releases Gun
Fight in the arcades. We get sound effects
and a short melody from Chopin's Funeral March. This one's incredible. [ Game playing ] >> Gene Dreyband: So the next
year, Atari comes back in 1976 in arcades with Breakout which is basically a
single player Pong. It featured rhythmic
tones creating one of the first times a
game was synchronized between sound and music. So it's part of the game play. [ Game playing ] This game might look
familiar to some people. [ Game playing ] >> Bryan Mosley: That could go
on for like three more minutes. I'll spare you. All right. So 1977 was a big
year for the industry. Atari released the
VCS or the Atari 2600 which sold really, really well. Unlike the Magnavox Odyssey,
the 2600 was the first system to offer interchangeable
game cartridges and dedicated sound hardware, which meant you could have
a wider range of games. And, developers could
experiment with new ways of engaging the player. The 2600 wasn't that
impressive with the audio and the audio department
with only one pulse channel and one noise channel. But, it allowed game
developers to create basic sound with their games and
create music that was at least engaging enough for
people to enjoy the experience. We have a clip here from
Combat which was one of the Atari 2600
release titles. And, take a listen. [ Game playing ] That was a lot louder
than I expected. We recorded all these
videos beforehand. And, we weren't sure how
the audio would sound. So hopefully we didn't
blow out your ear. >> Gene Dreyband: Well
hey it's got two sounds at the same time,
that's pretty good. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah
it's pretty awesome. And, that first shot
was very lucky. So the Atari 2600 uses this
pitch tones for bullets and the noise for the
engine rumbling around, basic [inaudible]
but pretty cool. >> Gene Dreyband: All right. So in 1978, we're
back in the arcades. Taito releases Space Invaders. It's pretty simple sound design and has a basic four
note pattern for the background music. But, here's where
things get interesting. There was a programming bug. And, as you defeated more
enemies, the intensity ramps up and the music gets faster. Go ahead. [ Game playing ] >> Bryan Mosley: It's
making me more nervous. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah it's like that very panic inducing
heartbeat right there. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. >> Gene Dreyband: So in
1978, we already have a game with adaptive difficulty,
it gets faster as you play and interactive music, even if
it was a bit of an accident. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. There's a lot going on here. A lot more going on than
just the simple tones. Because, from here on out, we
can start seeing how things like tempo and key changes and progressions start creating
atmosphere in games and become, allow the player to be kind
of, become a part of it. And, it was a very
similar concept used in Asteroids a year later. 1980 was the year for
arcades with NAMCO's Pac-Man. Almost everybody knows
the Pac-Man like, and the iconic bullet
chomping sounds. It's almost, you get this
sense of satisfaction running through the maze and chomping. It's almost like you can't stop. But, that's how important
the audio is in the game and what makes Pac-Man the
experience that it was. Rally-X was completely
overshadowed by Pac-Man and Defender when it came out. But, it's actually
the first game to have continuous background
music during game play. We don't have a clip here
but it's something else, it's pretty impressive. 1981 was another big
year for the arcades. Frogger switches out background
music as you complete levels. Donkey Kong has these kind
of cinematic experiences where it goes through this
whole progression of, you know, Donkey Kong was swiping the
princess and climbing up, and this really nice experience
with different jingles. Galaga did the same kind of
thing, really great jingles and startup times and
bonus level and stuff like that sound effects. >> Gene Dreyband: It
really doesn't take long for the influence of games to
go beyond just the arcades. Now we go back a few years, and
in 1978 we have the band YMO or Yellow Magic Orchestra
from Japan, they sampled early
arcades and consoles in their song Computer Games. Now YMO was a huge
innovator in pop and electronic music in Japan. And, they influenced
the sound of many, many early Japanese
video game composers. Go back and listen to their
albums and listen to their music and you'll hear their
influence immediately. Now on the other
side, in the U.S., we have the song Pac-Man Fever. >> Bryan Mosley: Unfortunately. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. Well, you listen to it
now, it's not so great. But, in 1981, it sold
1.2 million copies just for the single, enough that they
put it on a compilation album with a bunch of other
songs about arcade games. It was a cheap cash in. But, hey, you don't
sell 1.2 million copies if games aren't a big deal. Right? >> Bryan Mosley: So
back on the game side. In 1981 TOSE released
Vanguard in the arcades. And, this is a significant one. It was one of the first
games to use digital voice, it was just really like, voice. But, at the time,
it was impressive and you could actually make
out some of those sounds. It was also one of the first
games to use licensed music. And, so this is, this
is actually really cool. Let's take a listen
to this clip. [ Game playing ] So yeah, if you, if you
recognize some of those tunes, the first one on there is
Star Trek the motion picture. It's the theme of Star Trek. And, then the next one's
Flash Gordon, the bonus. And this was really
early examples of licensed music in games. Journey Escape was released
on the 2600 in 1982. And this was interesting because
it was the first time a high profile band, Journey,
was squeezed into the video game space. It includes music from
some of their hits. And, we're going to spare
you from playing a clip because it's pretty awful. And, the game is really bad. But, it's important to, to
kind of note in history. >> Gene Dreyband: We
have one more stop in the early arcades here. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. So finally in the early
arcades, we want to bring up Gyruss released
by Konami in 1983. By this point, arcades were
huge and companies were trying to think of ways to cash in
on gamers, you know, money. And, so they were trying to
think like what can we do? We need better graphics,
better sound, better game play. Gyruss had all three. It was revolutionary,
literally punt intended, moving around in a circle. And, Konami threw in
five sound chips for this and an extra processor just to
give it this really big sound. And with that we get this
dance electronic version of Bach's Toccata
and Fugue in D minor. [ Game playing ] We can just keep
playing that all day. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah
every time I watch that clip it's so cool. So, you know, they say, okay. The 70s and early 80s was
a period of rapid growth in arcades and home consoles. But, games have been around
for about ten years now. And, people wanted more. They didn't just want
bigger and better arcades, they wanted to bring
that experience home. And, with that, a new wave
of hardware was coming that would push the boundaries
of graphics and sound. Just kidding. If you had a PC in the early
80s you got, nothing basically. It was a business machine. It had really, really
primitive sound hardware. You got a single
square wave channel, on off, no volume control. That's it. You mostly heard this when
you started up your computer when there were errors, which
was a lot in those days. And, of course, some composers
were really clever even with some really limited
hardware restrictions. So we have an example from
1984 with the game Alley Cat. [ Game playing ] >> Bryan Mosley:
Look at his tail. [ Game playing ] >> That was, that was
published by IBM too. That's crazy. Okay. So moving back
a few years in 1979, the game industry was graced
with a dedicated sound chip. And, this was the AY-3-8910,
the same chip used in Gyruss. It was a programmable
sound generator or PSG. And this chip and variants of
it were ubiquitous to games and pretty much everything
in the mid 80s. It was in the, in
television, the Atari ST, Sega Master System,
MSX, arcades, pin balls, it was just used everywhere. And, one of the reasons
why it was so popular, there's two main points, one is
that the sound was pretty good and the second is
that it was cheap. And, everybody likes cheap
stuff and especially companies that has to mass
produce these things. So the chip itself
had three square waves and three different
voices for square waves and one noise channel. And, this doesn't
seem like a lot. But, the chip was both
flexible and versatile which made a very strong option
for developers at the time. We have two examples
here using the same chip but on two different system. The earlier example comes from
Snafu on the Intellivision in 1981, which is
basically like Snake. [ Game playing ] It's pretty good. >> Gene Dreyband:
Short lived, it's nice. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. And, in, so five
years later in 1986, we got Penguin Adventure
by Konami on the MSX. And, it's a much better game. But, it's still using,
basically, the same sound hardware. And, one thing we love about this is just seeing
how far composers go with the same chip,
how much they learn and that experience grows over
time to what they can produce. [ Game playing ] Pretty much up until the 90s,
all games were just adorable. So some of you might
recognize this machine. After the PSG chip, we
have the Commodore 64 which had the SID chip in it
or the Sound Interface device. While the PC and Macintosh
were huge in the U.S., the Commodore 64 was the home
computer in most of Europe. It's still very fondly
remembered. Released in 82 and
sold until 94, it was one of the best selling
computer models of all time. And, the C 64 introduce many
young musicians and programmers to music and sound and
computing actually. >> Gene Dreyband: The SID chip,
designed by Robert Yannes, is still considered
one of the best, one of the best sound
chips of the era. And, unlike the PSG, that
we heard just a minute ago, this chip was a full
synthesizer. It was very capable. It had programmable analog
filters, multiple wave forms, more than just the square waves,
and had pulse width modulation. Long story short, this
was a very capable chip. And, a lot of people were
able to do some really, really cool stuff with it. >> Bryan Mosley: So we're
going to play two examples. First Commando, which is a
part of the earlier arcade game which uses the theme of
the original but turns it into a totally new song. [ Game playing ] We also have a sample from Myth. And, this was 1989. And, by this time
composers had started to learn the sound
hardware and the techniques and what you could do with it. And, it doesn't stop there. It goes even to, you know, 2019
they're still playing with it. But here's an example that we
want to show that uses a lot of new filtering and stuff that
was learned around this time. Is it going to play? Nope. [ Game playing ] >> Gene Dreyband: Okay. Now there's no way that we can
talk about video game audio without bringing up the
Nintendo Entertainment System. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. Released in Japan in 1983,
and the U.S. in 1985, the U.S. was inescapable
in both countries. It wasn't just successful, it was a phenomenon,
cultural phenomenon. And, it sold 60 million units and really made the game
industry pay attention. >> Gene Dreyband: So it had some
pretty modest sound hardware but more voices than
the last one. You have two pulse
waves, which is kind of like those square waves
that you heard earlier, a little bit more
capable, a triangle channel which people typically used
for bass, a noise channel which we used for sound, like
sound effects and percussion and a sample channel so you
can record small little short samples and then
play those in a game. >> Bryan Mosley: And, if
you look at all these, all five of these channels,
you'll notice one thing, it is kind of organized
like a band. Right? They, Nintendo's
cautious about this decision. They're thinking like okay
how can we add each role and make it easier for
programmers and developers to get like a real
band sound out of it? And that was by giving
it assigned roles. And so in this next example
here, we were talking earlier, you know game audio
didn't start with Mario. But, it did change the way
that we, it did set the bar and change the way
that we perceive a lot of game audio today. And, a lot of things were built on the shoulders
of the soundtrack. So let's start with
a track from Mario. And, this is underwater. [ Game playing ] So Koji Kondo, the composer
of Mario, he had to think about so many different things to make the player really
engaged and really feel like they're part of the
experience as it progresses, as you progress as a player. And, it paints a
picture for the industry on how game audio
should start curving. And, you know, it's something
that's really integral to the experience. And, turning it off is
like turning off a sense. If you try to play
Mario without the audio, I guarantee you it's not as
fun and you'll probably not do so well at it, if you're an
old school gamer like us. So this next clip here, though, we just heard a track
from Mario. This next one is
Journey to Silius which came out five years later. And, the same sound harward,
but the composer, Kodaka, he uses the sound hardware
a little bit different than we just heard. >> Gene Dreyband: So
game sound's been getting progressively better. Right? So what is coming
around the corner here? The next thing that's coming
around is FM synthesis or frequency modulation. So maybe you never heard of
FM synthesis, maybe you have. But, the technology powering
it owes its success a lot to this next piece of hardware. And, it's not a game;
the DX 7 Keyboard. >> Bryan Mosley: This
is the coolest ad ever. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah we
got it from Retro Synth Ads. So back in the early 80s,
when this thing came out, every big artist in
the 80s wanted it. It's synonymous with
the 80s synth sound. Turn on the radio station to a classic station,
you will hear it. >> Bryan Mosley:
Within the first minute. >> Gene Dreyband: Pretty much. So Danger Zone by Kenny
Loggins, What's Love Got to Do With It by Whitney Houston. Pretty much everywhere. The technology's been
around since the mid 70s but it took a while for it
to take off commercially. And, but one of the
best things is that frequency modulation can
make some pretty cool sounds. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah
the theory is that, with the right algorithms, you
can approximate any instrument. This didn't, this
wasn't always the case. And, a lot of people
tried really hard to make similar instrument
and it ended up sounding fake. But, the theory is you can
just make anything you wanted. >> Gene Dreyband: So after
the success of the DX7, Yamaha started to make lower
cost versions of these FM chips. Again, like the PSG, they
put them in everything. Cheap kid's pianos, maybe
you had one, I did, arcades, game systems like
the Sega Genesis, computer sound cards,
basically you. >> Bryan Mosley:
Everywhere and anywhere. >> Gene Dreyband:
Anywhere and everywhere. Yeah. So we have two examples
here both using the same chip, the YM 2151. This first example is
from Marvel Madness, the first game to
use FM syntesis. [ Game playing ] All right. And, the second example's
just a few years later from Sega in 1986, Outrun. Some of you might
recognize this game. It was a huge, huge
game in arcades. You actually sat down at the
steering wheel and, you know, got to select your music and [inaudible] area,
really awesome. Here's that same chip making
a lot more different sounds. [ Game playing ] >> Bryan Mosley: So
we don't have time to have other FM examples. We really want to,
but low on time. So the Sega Genesis, Japanese
home computers like the PC 98, PC 88, all that stuff. We talk about so
much on our podcast. That if you want to
learn more and you want to hear more, we're big fans. A lot of, I see a few guys
are also big fans, in the, yeah I know, big fans of, in
FM synthesis and game audio. So you can check us out there
if you want to hear a bit more. FM is great. And, it holds a special
place in all of our hearts from that 90s era. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. Now after that we get
to the era of sampling. So if you're not familiar, a
sampler is basically a device that allows you to record
music from anything, you know, a musical instrument,
speaking, whatever, and then play it back
in a musical fashion. So this opened up huge
possibilities for creative uses of sound in music
and it's a hallmark of hip hop and rap to this day. Now, dedicated samplers in
the mid 80s were really, really expensive, we're talking
many of thousands of dollars in, you know, those days like,
so it's now like $7,000. So as you've seen already, this
existing technology was sort of miniaturized or
made simple and used in game consoles
it was a simpler and more cost effective
way for game composers to explore new ways
of making music. Enter the Commodore
Amiga in 1985, follow up to the C64,
the Commodore 64. The Amiga was a very popular
early multimedia computer and was used in media
production environments for quite a few years. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. The Amiga is essentially
a four channels sampler. It was flexible, powerful,
and it was little bit strange. You had two channels that were
hard panned to the left and two that were hard panned
to the right. But, there was so much
the composers could do and also just independent
amateur artists that wanted to experiment and
play with new sound. >> Gene Dreyband: So the Amiga
was also the birth of a new type of music composition
program called a tracker. The first trackers
didn't sell very well. But, hackers figured out
how to make low cost clones. And, this kind of
thing took off. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. This image might not
make a lot of sense. But, programs like this
were really, really popular and cost effective
solutions for amateurs that didn't have all
the money to pay these, or for these high end, you
know, audio workstations and, like professional studios had. And, they recorded to a
variety of systems making music, making music composition
for games, in the late 80s early
90s a lot more easy and a lot more accessible. Each, if you look
at the image here, each of the four blue
columns is essentially a set of instructions. And, each sample channel
has its own instruction for what instruments you
played and for how long. And, since most of these most
are just reiterated samples, the same set over and over, the
music could be compact enough to fit on a diskette and maintain a decent
level of fidelity. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. So this is not really an audio
recording the way you'd think of like a wave or an MP3,
it's like a digital file that basically says play this. >> Bryan Mosley: Play this here. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. Now we get to the Super
Nintendo a few years later, which was another sample based
system similar to the Amiga. But it came out a
few years later so it had better
audio capabilities. By this point, sampling
was pretty well understood and Nintendo also
shipped development kits with sample libraries
so people could jump into composing pretty quickly. Now SNES had 8 sample channels
compared to the Amiga's 4, but it still only had 64
kilobytes of audio ram, meaning samples had
to be really short. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah
just like the NES, the Super Nintendo
sold really well and the Nintendo's technical
influence can't be understated. The catalog of high quality
games on, with great soundtracks on both the NES and
the Super NES are some of the most well loved examples and most remembered
examples from early history. So it's something that we have
to really embrace and kind of preserve as we move
forward in game time. >> Gene Dreyband: So we
have two examples here. One from the Amiga and one
from the Super Nintendo. And, they're about five
years apart which is about the interval
we've been doing >> Bryan Mosley: Right. This is Shadow of the
Beast on the Amiga from 89. [ Game playing ] This next one here is from Final
Fantasy 3, which was released on the Super Nintendo in 94. Square was putting out gold
as far as audio was concerned. And, everything that they put out is really well
remembered today. This one is a really great track and I think it demonstrates a
good selection of audio samples on the Super Nintendo. [ Game playing ] >> Gene Dreyband: So we
did have some recording of the battle there afterwards. But, by the late 80s we have all of these different
competing ways to make music. And, it wasn't really all that
easy to make games if you had to have three different
audio hardware configuration. So industry was looking for
ways to make, well you know, reduce the cost that
you had to deal with. You needed to know sampling and FM syntheses and,
you know, old chips. So we start to see. >> Bryan Mosley: This
standardization of media, Yeah. >> Gene Dreyband: So enter sound
cards and MIDI on home PC's in the late 80s and early 90s. Maybe you've heard of MIDI. For some of you it means
really cheap sounding music. But really, MIDI is actually
just a set of instructions just like those you saw on
those Amiga trackers. And, by the mid 90s most
PCs supported MIDI natively. Even the Sony Play Station
shipped with MIDI capabilities. And even though MIDI was
standardized in 83, it continues to be used to control
music interfaces and all those sorts
of things today. So I took this screenshot
of the same file opened up in two different
pieces of software. One in Doss from 1990
and the other one from an application that's
from, you know, 2019. Same file, you can load it up
in both places and play it back. >> Bryan Mosley: You
might notice that the name of this file's canyon.mid. If you're a big Windows. What is it Windows 5 though? >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. >> Bryan Mosley:
It's got all your. >> Gene Dreyband: Super
nerds will know this one. >> Bryan Mosley: All right. So Doom defined first
person shooters and probably the most
influential game of all time. In terms of audio, we
have two examples here to demonstrate just how
different the different sound capabilities were and
what they were doing and what they were starting
to lean towards at the time. So this first one, this
first sample here is from the FM version or the
ad lib version of doom. [ Game playing ] And this second example
is using the state of the art MIDI module. This is a rolling version so
let's take a listen to that. [ Game playing ] So of course, MIDI had its
limitations and there was a lot of other ways that game
developers were wanting to introduce new ways
to get better audio and better quality
in their games. >> Gene Dreyband: So hopefully, everybody here knows
what a CD is. Otherwise we're going
to feel really old. >> Bryan Mosley: We're
going to feel really old. >> Gene Dreyband: So most of us have probably
ditched our collections. But, CD technology
was a huge revelation for games at the time. So as we mentioned, we talked about that early games
had to be very small. They had to fit on a, you know,
a floppy disk or a cartridge, you know maybe a few
megabytes at most. Now consoles started
adding CD RAM drives which gave you all this extra
data that you could play with. You had a lot more space. So you weren't just limited by
the small storage and you had, once you had the game, yo
pretty much had the rest to do what you wanted
with for the audio. And, the music was
a huge leap forward. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. >> Gene Dreyband: So
here's some early examples that have some pretty
great music. On the console side from 1989 we
have a game called Ys released by Falcom. And here we go. [ Game playing ] You'll notice that the
graphics are still pretty basic but the music sounds
a bit different. >> Bryan Mosley: It's that weird
teenage era of audio history where you couldn't quite figure out the audio versus
the graphics. [ Game playing ] >> Gene Dreyband:
Now, you'll notice that other screenshot
here on the right. So on the PC, Myst was one
of the best selling PC games for almost a decade, if
you can believe that. It ushered in a new
era of CD games that appealed to
a wider audience. And the music played
a big part in that. [ Game playing ] So we've certainly
come a long way. Haven't we? Now, what is all this
building towards? Dynamic music in video games. Think back to that example
of Space Invaders in 1978, developers realized very early
how powerful interactive music could be to the gaming
experience. And, by the 90s,
we've reached a point where games can make
some pretty cool sounds. And, with some clever
programming, we can do interesting
things with interactivity to make the games
even more engaging. So interactivity and
dynamic music is really, really what gives
games their power. It's, now we're not just talking
about the level of trying to imitate film, we have a
totally new dimension we can play with. >> Bryan Mosley: So our
final two examples here, we're going to play a
bit of game play footage from two different games to
demonstrate interactive music. In 1991, Monkey Island 2
was released by LucasArts and it was the first game to use their iMUSE System
developed by Peter McConnell. It's a dynamic system
that made transitions between music tracks
more seamless. [ Game playing ] >> Gene Dreyband: So listen to
this edition theme right here. >> Bryan Mosley:
We're in a shipyard, listen to the ground work and
the instruments being used. [ Game playing ] >> Gene Dreyband: Pay
attention to what happens when you walk into the middle. [ Game playing ] >> Bryan Mosley: So you
can see at the bottom of the track the percussion
kind of dropped off and this new melody
layered on top. It's like this nice [inaudible]. A very seamless transition
[inaudible]. >> Gene Dreyband: So we're
back out to the city. >> Bryan Mosley: Okay. She comes back. [ Game playing ] There's one more example here we
wanted to show, a similar thing. It's just so obvious in
this game [inaudible]. [ Game playing ] Such a great soundtrack. I love that one. So in 1998, we have
Banjo-Kazooie which takes real time, that
real time transition of audio to the next level and
fully realized 3D. [ Game playing ] It's exactly what it
sounds like underwater. [ Game playing ] But that theme was transitioned and started making games
a lot more enjoyable. Made it feel like you were
driving the music in the audio. >> Gene Dreyband: So of
course, we've seen a lot of development up to this point. And, obviously, a lot has
changed since that time. It's been 20 years since
that clip from 1998, 21 now. But, the things that
we've covered, the sort of pushing
the boundaries, the idea of interactive audio
has really laid the foundations for what makes games what
they are today and, you know, will continue to inform
games for many years to come. We have, we still have
retro games that kind of are influenced
by old, you know. We have this game Cuphead
which pulls very heavily from old animation
traditions in the 1930s. It's a really cool game with
an awesome big band soundtrack. We have great new games that are
experimenting with art and color and interactivity in,
you know, brand new ways. Like Grease here, we were
actually able to talk to the composers of both
these first two games. And, of course, if you're
a big gamer, we have things like Red Dead Redemption 2 which
almost looks photo realistic. It's incredible. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah and especially has amazing
interactivity in music. It is, you know, you
get this nice kind of homey western
soundtrack that changes as you start galloping faster
and doing different things. So a lot of thought was put
into the music interactive part. >> Gene Dreyband: So
before we wrap up. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah
before we wrap up, we wanted to mention some of the
great upcoming events tonight and content this weekend. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. So we're going to be, you're
going to be joining us actually in the next event, hopefully, for Austin Wintory performing
a piece with Phillipe Quint, Peter Dugan, the Triforce
Quartet, and a new game by Romi Ismael in real time. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah there's
also several more events tomorrow at the Library of
Congress arcade from 10 to 4 where we're going to
play some of these games and experience them
for yourselves. A talk on game preservation at
11 by the Library of Congress where they're going to
discuss the steps that it takes to collect, catalog, and
preserve video game content. And, then finally, a talk
by Winifred Phillips at 2 and her experiences
on game composition. >> Gene Dreyband: So we
want to thank everybody for joining us today
and actually, especially we have a lot of people joining us
from various places. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah. So I want to say thanks. And the community is huge
for video game music. And, it's growing. And, the preservation is
so awesome important to us. And, so a lot of our
friends have joined in that do very similar things. We'd like to share and
just have a good time. There's Rhythm and Pixels,
Key Gliff, BG Embassy, All Join AS, Greg Murray. And, we're really happy
that everybody's come out to hear some
gaming music and join us in the concert next door. >> Gene Dreyband: So thank
you again for joining us. We've been Pixelated Audio. If you want to find
us, you can look us up at pixelatedaudio.com,
on Twitter, on Facebook, or contact us at
that email address, contact@pixelatedaudio.com/ >> Bryan Mosley: Yep. Thank you guys very much and
we'll see you at the concert. [ Applause ] >> Gene Dreyband: Now
we wanted to open things up just for a few minutes. Did anybody have any like
one or two questions? Yeah, yeah absolutely. >> Bryan Mosley: I only
have one answer remaining, so choose wisely. >> I've been a regular attending
to MAGFest the last few years. So to play the Game
Boy [inaudible] so all the composition on
the songs they play on there, is it on the Game Boy
console itself or do a lot of the musicians are composed
on a regular keyboard? >> Gene Dreyband:
Well most likely, there's actually a real
popular program called LS DJ, that's one of the main ones. It's very similar to
that tracker thing that we showed you. You have these like lanes where
you say play this at this time. That's one of the
most common ones that Game Boy musicians use. They like, there's a cartridge
that some guy made that you can like play it like
a game and use it to write music directly
onto the thing. >> Bryan Mosley: Yeah
we see more and more, as people become kind of
nostalgic for these systems like the Game Boy that
they want to recreate, authentically recreate
the sound. And, so they come up with
various ways to record from an actual Game Boy or an
actual Sega Genesis or a PC 98 or a Nintendo and be able
to produce this sound that way rather than just
playing through a keyboard. >> Gene Dreyband: You know,
to follow along with that, one of the things, one of
the reasons why Chip Tuned as a genre really came about
is exactly the thing we've talked about. All of these systems
are old now. They're cheap. You can buy them
for almost nothing. They have great sound
capabilities so people are like, well if you're just
going to throw it away, I might as well use it
to start making music. And, that's really what it's
been about, I mean initially, and it's grown so much. But yeah, I mean, Chip
Tuned has become sort of its own subculture of music
where people use these very like retro sounding sound
chips to make new music today. >> I wanted to ask
something about more, something more modern actually. Do you have any information
about more modern setting, you have, you have say an
orchestra playing your music for your soundtrack. How would that, how would
that technologically different from using say the sample? Like because you're going to,
you're probably not going to get to your whole track necessarily at any given moment,
you modulate it. How would that differ from
just using say a sampler to create your music? >> Bryan Mosley: Well
we've actually talked to a few composers that
had a lot of things to say about the same thing. I think it was Chris Madegan
who did Cuphead actually who mentioned that he wanted
to do, he wanted to sample some of the instruments but he ended
up turning to the live band to do most of it because he
was able to get the best tamper out of that, that authentic,
that real live band sound. Whereas the sample, you know,
it could, you could push it and make it do a lot of things. But, it didn't quite get
close to what his vision was. So I think it comes down to the
composer and what they want. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah. And, with the sample,
sometimes you're just limited. If you only have a few, they'll
all sound kind of the same. Whereas if you record an entire
band, there'll be, you know, minor differences
between the way that they're playing one
passage versus another. So I think, to answer
your question, sometimes sampling is
actually the better way and people use sample libraries
to play back this, you know, MIDI data or whatever and
modulate in real time. Other times, they'll
just have full tracks of this is just the band or this
is just the guitarist playing. And, then they will use these,
sometimes it's called a stem which is sort of sections, and
they'll switch those stems out. It's a similar kind of process
to what you're seeing but with, you know, much bigger budgets, higher audio processing
capabilities. >> Brian Mosley: And, I
think also the imperfections that you get from
live audio are very, very hard to replicate
with samples. It's just too hard to
recreate those minor mistakes and those minor nuances that
you get from a live recording. Anyone else? Good. All right. So I guess we're going
over to the, auditorium. >> Gene Dreyband: Yeah it's about 7:20 I think we
have a few minutes. I think they're playing
starting right around 7:30. Right? Or it's 8. Okay. Great. >> Bryan Mosley: Okay. Great. >> Gene Dreyband: Well thank
you very much everybody for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the talk. [ Applause ]
