Composing soundtracks for games

condra

Hi guys.

Im interested in working on the soundtrack for a game, music but perhaps also sound design for effects and atmos.

It's something I'd like to get into, but would like to basically do one for free first. Does anyone know a good place to offer my services, perhaps an independent game developer forum or something?

Also, if anyone has any tips regarding copyright, commission agreements etc, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

cornbb

That sounds like a pretty cool project. I don't know much about the video games industry but I know its booming like nothing else and there absolutely must be a demand for composers, sound designers etc. Trying to find a decent online gaming development community would be a good start (maybe try asking in the Programming forum or the Games forum) and you might be able to find a few composers on the kvraudio.com forums or em411.com.

There are a number of really cool aspects to writing music for games, especially the structure of the piece. There is usually an intro, then several intermediate pieces which are designed to loop as often as necessary, then moody variants to these (e.g. when the hero dies, the villain is killed etc). And of course the transition between all of these must be seamless.

There is also the sound design/foley effect aspect to the whole thing which might be fun. Plus the technical aspect of it - its possible you might just supply WAV/MP3 files, or you might have to supply MIDI data and a software synth. You would need to work closely with a programmer and maybe even have a crack at programming yourself. That reminds me, I read a great article on the Halo soundtrack, which was algorithmically composed. I'll try to find it for you.

Anyway sounds like a lot of fun, good luck with it and keep us up to date.

condra

Cheers for the reply.

Before I approach anyone, I'm going to get together a small portfolio of some of my more dramatic stuff, a couple of songs and some atmos and sfx.

I've never been so excited about doing something for free before

Frankiestylee

You might try contacting colleges that offer game programming courses... they'll have to be making games so I'm sure they'd jump at the chance of having an actual musician doing the tunes

Niall - Dahlia

A good start would be the forums at gamedev.net (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/), there's a section there for music and sound, there's often posts from musicians looking for game development teams who need music/effects and vice versa, maybe stick a post in there with a link to some form of portfolio.

Good luck with it anyway, something I was interested in as well at one stage. Seems like alot of people are.

*edit* Try http://www.gamedevelopers.ie too, though I've no idea how active that is.

condra

Great idea! Thanks!

jebusmusic

www.gamasutra.com is good for this too