How I learned Music for Video Games in a month (You Can Too!) - one hour a day of music challenge!
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- Опубліковано 15 чер 2024
- Music is a very important and often neglected aspect when making video games. It ties everything together and adds an immense amount of polish when done correctly. And If you are anything like me, then that last part, the when done correctly part is one of the trickiest parts in all of game development. So to get better at it, I spent an hour a day for the entire month of August learning as much as I could about how to make music for video games. This video documents that whole journey, so if you are a noob looking to get better, then this is the video for you!
Check out the log here: docs.google.com/document/d/13...
I started off the journey of learning how to make music for video games by watching some basic music theory videos. This taught me a bunch of stuff about how to make music for beginners like me. I also downloaded a DAW (digital audio workstation) called Reaper. I would be working on making music with Reaper for pretty much the whole month.
I learned a lot of foundational music techniques in this video, and by watching you will become familiar with them. Just a disclaimer though, hearing them mentioned in a 30 minute UA-cam video will not make you an expert. Here I just show you what I got up to so you can see all the stuff you need to learn to make music for games.
Some of the basics of music theory I learned about in the challenge were, notes, ADSR (attack, decay sustain, release), scales and keys (major scales and minor scales), sharps vs flats, chords, melodies, the sentence form, the period form, harmony, chord progressions, the circle of fifths, drums, guitars, sleeping, LFOs (low frequency oscillators), and FM synthesis.
If I had more time I would've made some more video game-specific stuff as mentioned in the video referenced on day 28, but I am more than interested in making another video trying to do that in Unity.
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:31 - Days 1-10
13:18 - Days 11-20
21:44 - Days 21-31
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If you have any questions feel free to reach out over social media! - Розваги
![I am making a Video Game that has a New Story every time... [Episode 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lHA7Q8rTPrs/mqdefault.jpg)
So you wanna know about the song on day 14... Well then listen up because it's pretty crazy. During the month of august I planned on making 2 videos, the magic 8 ball video and the normal distributions updated guide, (the music one you are watching now is a September video even though it happened in August). I started with the magic 8 ball video, but it was something completely different to what you guys saw. I had no time limit and I thought of ideas on the fly to ask the 8 ball. The result was me spending over 2 weeks making a terrible game and then proceeding to make a very boring video on it. The song on day 14 was the song for that first magic 8 ball game. I realized the video was bad so I scraped it, and revised the idea and made a pretty entertaining video on it which you can watch right here: ua-cam.com/video/xe9-VnWr_wg/v-deo.html
Oh wow
I feel like often when people make these kinds of videos where it's like "how I learned music/game dev/fantasy writing/French in a month, and you can too!" and then they start by going "yeah I have a background in music theory/computer science/literature/linguistics but that's not gonna help me that much" and it's just f***ing stupid. But not here. So thank you for being one of the few people to actually make a video like this that's properly encouraging XD.
Np thanks for watching!
A month ago I made some pretty decent game music using BeepBox. I had no experience in making music at all but the interface of beepbox was so easy that it made the whole process fun, and in the end I actually like some of the stuff I created.
The problem is is that you can’t really upload samples or other instruments into it, as far as I know, so a lot of the cool sounds I wanted to use just couldn’t be. I think your video made me realize that using a proper daw like reaper is what I have to do next!
Glad it could help and thanks for watching! If you know your serious about it you should look into other daws too. The main reason that I got reaper was because it was essentially free for the challenge and I didn’t want to spend any money to show that you don’t NEED to.
Rest in piece hot cross buns
Indubitably
Feedback that's meant to be appreciative of all the hard work this must have taken, sorry if unwanted:
You definitely needed to use more of your time on rythm!
Melodies don't need to fill out every second of the song or hit every beat, even if it's video game music. The breaks and the offbeat notes are usually the part that makes your ears feel good. : ) so instead of filling out everything with melody, make chords, that arnen't too loud or with saw effect, that last the entire 4 beat measure, and play some melodies over that, with pauses and notes taken from the key of the chords!
Drums are for me something that i don't experiment very much with, but even if you want to, i would still recommend learning some basic 1 and 3 kick, 2 and 4 snare, and highhat on every 8th note.
Thank you so much for the feedback! It is always appreciated and helpful!
so i absolutely love music theory and have for a while but ive recently started trying to make my own music in a DAW and i feel like im way out of my depth. this was a super interesting video because i got genuinely new information but mixed in with stuff i learned in school years ago (for example i literally never understood ADSR until your short explanation and everything FINALLY clicked!) i really appreciate hearing an explainer from someone who's also a beginner - sometimes the onslaught of information from an expert can be overwhelming. you did a great job explaining the music theory so im confident i can learn the basics of electronic music making from this video. thanks!!
I appreciate it! Good luck!
13:25 so this can actually sound good, but it doesn't sound good because you're using notes outside of the major scale, because you're just moving a major triad around. I'm sure you learn by the end of the video, that in a major scale there's several types of triads (mostly major and minor but also diminished on the 7th) depending on where your root note is.
try doing this mary had a little lamb again, but instead of moving around the major triad, use a major, minor, or diminished triad depending on what keeps you within the scale.
so say you're in C major, and the song goes E D C D E E E D D D E G G
you do E minor for the E's, D minor for the D's, C major for the C's, and then G major for the G's, this keeps everything within the C major scale, so you can get that parallel movement while still staying within the scale.
love the video, hope this helps you in your musical development!
also, something cool that can make your songs a bit more unique is to learn about alternative scales, like the 7 classical modes-major and minor are only two of the 7 that exist, and all the modes have cool names based on the islands off the coast of greece: ionian (major), dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolidian, aeolian (minor), locrian.
other scales to experiment with, the melodic minor scale, it's got part of the major scale slapped onto the end of a minor scale so you can still do that satisfying 5/1 resolution in a minor scale, same goes for the harmonic minor, but it only borrows a single note from major, so it ends up with an augmented second between two of its notes, it sounds kinda egyptian, or maybe like a vampire's castle.
another thing to research is alternative time signatures, music theory is a bottomless pit of cumulative knowledge from thousands of years of human history.
also the circle of fifths is more about key changes than about what chords will sound good together, basically, if you're always within one key, any chord from that key will tend to sound good together.
there's also a lot of like standard chord progressions that you can borrow from, i would recommend either experimenting with random chords within a scale until you find an order you like for them, or just using or slightly modifying a chord progression from another song, because if you strictly follow the circle of 5ths you will always end up with a 1-5-2-6, or a 1-4-7-3
24:25 this would actually be an amazing basis for a song if the low notes were moved an octave down with a bit smoother of a timbre, make them power chords (include the 5th and octave), and then every other bar, move it up a half step
Wow! Thank you so much for all the tips / feedback! I did learn about the different types of triads and the diminished chord. I cut some stuff that I learned mainly because the video was turning out to be about 3x longer than I thought it was going to be lol. I knew other scales existed but I never went about learning them in the month. Thanks for giving me something new to look into! And thanks again for watching and leaving such insightful comments!
pretty good content
thanks for the video, greetings from Chile =)
Thanks for watching!
Dude immagine acually learning music theory anr not just bullshiting a bunch on notes to form a melody and after add mverb plus delay am i right guys
Lmao
Noice !
I'm only 90 percent done with the video so hopefully this isnt redundant info, but i think you wouldve had better results if you had gotten different instruments. The Reaper synth you were using taught you a lot about basic subtractive synthesis, and finding a free subtractive synth vst wouldve been a good next step, but instead you tried learning dexed which uses FM synthesis (which is very complex). Not to mention that the sounds you were trying to recreate were all subtractive synths sounds and not FM (You made a good effort though). Also your drums and guitar are realistic instruments which was a harsh contrast to the sound of Dexed.
Here's some more tips:
Limit your chord progressions. Each note of a scale is assigned a number 1-7, and the chords built off of those note are numbered the same except in roman numerals (I-VII). I would recommend limiting yourself to only writing progressions that are 4 chords long with 1 chord for every bar (4 beats), and limit yourself to always starting on the I chord (in the key of C major this would be a C major chord) and always end your progression on either the IV or V chord (in C major this would be F major or G major respectively). This will help you not get stuck on trying to make interesting chord progression, and still give you good sounding results to put a melody over.
Simplify your melodies. Dont try to fill every space with a note, and dont always put notes on the main for beats. Learn about subdivisions (dividing a beat into quarter notes, eight notes, or sixteenth notes) and youll have more options for where a note can be. Also dont use every note of a scale, limit yourself to using notes that are present in whatever chord is underneath the melody as a starting point and then try notes outside the chord to see what works.
Get a new synth. A basic subtractive synth would really help you get started making sounds since youve been learning the basics of subtractive synthesis without really knowing it. Vital is an amazing free synth, but theres a lot of options so try implementing what you already know (waveforms, ADSR, LFOs) before trying anything advanced (i would also reaaally recommended learning how to use filters, its basically the last step before youve learned all of basic subtractive synthesis). Unison in Vital is also really easy to use.
Get some new drums. I don't know what good free drum plugins there are, but id recommend something with more synthetic/drum machine sounds instead of something that sounds like a real acoustic kit. I don't think Reaper has a stock drum kit you can use, but im sure there's free vsts with drum machine sounds. I would also recommend learning the very basics of drum patterns. Until you get more comfortable you should stick to having a kick drum on the 1st and 3rd beat of every bar and the snare on the 2 and 4, and then have the hi hats playing either on every beat alongside the snare and kick, or on every 8th note of the beat. (again, learn subdivisions).
Lastly try to make your chords more cohesive. Using the inversions that you learned can make chords transition to eachother without sounding like big leaps between chords. If the chords have notes in common you should play all of those on the same piano key (if the first chord and second chord both have a C note then play that C note in the same spot on the piano for both chords), and you should keep the other notes as close together as you can. For instance: Playing a C major chord in root position and then an F major chord in root position is a big leap, but playing a C major chord in root position and then an F major chord in 2nd inversion only has 2 notes moving up by a whole step while one note stays the same. It makes the chords flow together nicely.
(edit) I forgot to mention but the circle of fifths is a chart showing the relationship of notes in ascending fifths going clockwise, this is useful down the road in songwriting, but its not a good beginner resource for knowing what chords go well together. I'd recommend learning the chords of a major key and the chord numbering system, that way if you find any useful or common chord progression online youll know how to read the roman numerals and apply that progression to any key. There's lots of great beginner music theory videos on this topic. Signals Music Studio is an amazing channel but is focused on guitar, so you might need to do some head scratching to apply it to the midi piano roll.
I hope all of this helps. This is a great video! The fact that you stuck with this is very impressive considered all of the rage-inducing hardships you faced. I hope some of the stuff I said is helpful because I would love to see your progress as you continue learning more about music.
Thank you so much for all the tips! I appreciate it!
@@WillHessGameDev You're welcome! Don't get too overwhelmed by it and try doing it all at once. Just try to learn and apply things as you go along. I promise music is very fun lmao.
You should have recreated the consulate radio on the last day
I probably would’ve gotten a copyright strike because it would’ve been too good. I would sing it as well and the UA-cam algorithm would flag it thinking it was the original because I sing it exactly like it is in the game…
I have a question: What is the most difficult skill you learnt in game development (coding, art, music)
Music. For me coding is the easy part and any artsy creative stuff is tricky. I’ve been getting better at art but music has been a struggle for me. Sometimes it works out and other times the songs are so bad I feel the game would be better if I just didn’t add in music lol! Thanks for watching! 3D modeling is also a struggle sometimes.
@WillHessGameDev thanks for answering
For me, coding is a big issue, maybe because i am new at it
You said write in the comments, so I think the first one was period, second one was sentence (most of my terrible attempts if game music are probably sentences)
One thing I forgot to mention in the video about period forms and sentence forms is the period forms GENERALLY feel nice as like the main theme and sentence forms are more adventurous (at least it feels that way to me). Thanks for watching, and good job getting it right!
Did you pray today?
5 times a day
@@salah3274me too
@@salah3274 good kid
@@__Rizzler__ why did you assume that