This is part 4 in a five part series on the similarities in challenges faced by composers of both games and theatre, and the similar evolution of their solutions.
In the first post I talked about those challenges brought about by the live and interactive nature of theatre and games, respectively: timings change, and are never the same from one performance, or gameplay, to the next.
In the second I talked about the techniques of using loops and stings to face those challenges.
In the third, I talked about assembling those loops and stings in QLab, for theatre, by using Mic Pools QLab Cook Book technique of a silent looping bar and a devamp cue to make sure that the assembly of loops and stings, along with fades, was seamless.
Vertical Layering
This is a way of stacking looping musical audio files on top of each other, playing one or more tracks at once, and then varying the audio balance between tracks at a cue in theatre, or an action in a game. Winifred Phillips, the awesome (and incredible educational resource) game composer has a great explanation here.
I used a similar technique in the ‘Pageant’ scene in Camelot: The Shining City. Here’s one of the tracks that I created with multiple layers:
The track starts with the ‘Sting(fanfare)’, followed by the ‘Sting(drumRoll)’, which is a short sting to cover the start of ‘USL(Bass+Drums)’. ‘USL’ stands for UnderScoreLoop. All of the tracks inside the folder ‘VARIED LOOPS’ start together at the same time as this Bass+Drums loop but where Bass+Drums starts at full volume, the VARIED LOOPS all start at their lowest volume. I then use fade cues to raise and lower the volume of various combinations of those VARIED LOOPS tracks depending on the on-stage action.
This was the final track:
This is part 4 of a 5-part series on how theatre and games music composition techniques are so very similar – In Part 5 I’ll talk about the technique of horizontal resequencing of multiple loops as a simple way to create variety in a longer piece of music.