There’s a great deal of overlap between the techniques of scoring theatre and games. In the first post of this series, I talked about the practical similarities between these two platforms: of writing music to accompany and synchronise with events that are unlikely to happen at the same time each time they are performed, be that onstage or in-game.
In my previous post, the second in the series, I talked about the same compositional techniques that have evolved for both theatre and games to deal with these same challenges.
When we get to assembling stings and loops, this is what we want to happen:
… which, when played, will sound like a complete, finished piece of music, with a beginning, middle and end, and no joins in sight.
Now onto some of the technical methods of assembling these musical elements. This is how I do it.
I have Mic Pool’s QLab Cook Book to thank for the solution I usually employ – it uses a special QLab cue called a ‘devamp’, and a silent audio file the length of a beat or a bar or whatever length you want it and when you get the timing of the crossfades just right it is perfect. You really can’t hear the joins. If you want to get into it, the instructions are here.
Here it is in action in the project I’m currently working on:
The ‘full track (sting)’ starts at full volume, then after .92s the ‘music body (loop)’ starts. In the ‘fades’ folder below, I gradually pull the volume of the full track sting down to nothing, then stop it, all the while bringing up the body loop to full volume (you can’t see those fade cues as they’re currently hidden).
Then there are a few cues in the middle with lots of action.
Then we have the **DEVAMP CUE** (pink arrow) that stops the bar of silence at the end of its current loop, and after that’s done we move immediately on to the ‘end of music (sting)’ whilst fading out and stopping the looping body music.
This is the third part in a 5 part series on how theatre and games music composition techniques are so very similar – having evolved out of the same challenges. In Part 4 I’ll talk about the technique of vertical layering to create both subtle and overt variations in a piece synchronised to the action to increase or decrease intensity or maintain interest in a long section of time-fluid music.
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