COMMERCIAL GAME MUSIC: WHAT TO UNOT TO USE

Or take advantage of the many free music resources already available on the net, if you're hopeless at composition. Especially if you're looking for traditional vidya gaem style music, there's a jillion composers around offering their stuff for no charge other than a mention in the credits.

author=slashphoenix
I wouldn't recommend delving into composition only because of how time-consuming it can be to learn and master...

Urgh, tell me about it.
I wish I knew this 2 years ago.

May or may not be useful to any of you, but piece of music, literature, graphic art, or anything that can be described as an intellectual property, that was created in 1926 or earlier cannot be copyrighted. If you don't want to take from other games for fear of overuse, or a C and D letter (and let's face it, when we distribute our work to the public, that threat becomes real), then finding old, obscure music, (not everything that was written has a distinctive 'bygone era' sound) may be a possible solution.

A note about music composition (my very profession being involved in music): If you're trying to make something that has artistic meaning, then yes; you're going to spend a ton of time in composition. However, you're making a video game, and while a few of the themes of any good game should be artistically meaningful, most of what you're composing is just there to fill in the blank spaces.

Right now, with my first project, I am just using the RM2k3 selection of music and then replacing it as I compose something I like. However, I have a scene in which my characters are in jail, whiling away the time. I found absolutely nothing even remotely suitable as a substitute for what I wanted the scene to convey, so I sat down to my keyboard and wrote a short piano piece. It took less than five minutes and barely took a page on the scorewriting software. The piece was perfect. It conveyed the passage of time, was unobtrusive enough to be completely forgettable and it added depth to the scene. It's one of those kinds of pieces that without knowing what it goes to, you can just tell what's going on. This is somebody sitting in a jail cell or a doctor's office waiting for bad news, just trying not to loose his or her mind to boredom.

The point is, musical talent isn't hard to come by. There are a number of things you can do while mostly not having to worry about ripping from another game, or hiring someone. Once you get into your main themes, if you don't have a lot of experience composing music, then by all means, don't rely on your experience (though if you make the attempt, you might be surprised at what you can do). By all means, find a big dramatic score that somebody else has done (Wagner composed a lot of scores that would go good in a lot of RPGs I've played. If it Steven Speilberg hadn't introduced George Lucas to John Williams, the score to Star Wars would have been composed by the aforementioned Dvorak and Rachmaninoff...don't take the old timers lightly. They wrote stuff that would be fantastic in some RPGs).

For those of you who insist you are hopeless at musical composition:

Have you ever heard of twelve point? It's an American style of 20th century music composition that, for very good reason, is extremely unpopular. Here's how it works. There 12 notes to an octave; 8 naturals and 5 halves. These are noted as, A, A #, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#. The composer, puts these notes on a their own little pieces of paper and writes his melody line as follows: Pull one note out of the hat, that's the first note in my melody, second note pulled is the second one in my melody. They do not repeat notes until they run out, and they compose the entire score using this method.

Obviously, the effect is utter chaos that assaults the senses from every direction, but for the composer looking for inspiration, this chaos may be just what the doctor ordered. Go ahead and use this this system of random note entry (go ahead and reuse notes. No need to be as strict as the twelve point purist). Sooner or later, you're going to come across an unique melody that speaks to your senses, that informs the feel you are trying to convey in your project, and would be perfect to write a song around, or a score, or even a full theme. Those of you who fear composition, give this a shot, if you're willing (Of course, those who resist the idea that they could ever compose a song, I completely understand if you choose not to.). NOOBs can do some amazing things...especially when they haven't learned that they can't do it.

@pianotm: Edit your previous posts instead of triple or double posting, please. It's a site rule and one everyone follows. Just remember it from here on, okay? ^.^

Another source of music, if you do want to use a particular tune and it fits exactly into your game, is remixes. Granted, not every song has a remix, but quite a few from well-known games do.

Personally I use a bit of everything. If I know the game I'm creating isn't going to be commercial, and if a piece fits a scene exactly, I'll use it... unless it's super known. I steer away from Final Fantasy music for this reason - it's too tied with certain areas and scenes and takes away the immersion of your own game.

That said, I do use some game music, but if a midi of a super popular game is in the music folder of one of my games, it's more likely that I used it as inspiration - listening to it while doing mapping or databasing (though nowdays I use the music of that area for mapping. It makes it feel more connected.)

No matter what music you use, though, always give credit.

Oh, sorry. O:^)

Well it's not really rpgmakery (a lot of others do it too). It's more like people tend to have certain emotional/nostalgic attachments to music used in popular games. So if another game uses it, it's a wtf. Stop using that you don't deserve it. Or they would think of that game instead of your game.

May I suggest a source? I got most of Enelysion's music from this site:

http://www.jamendo.com/en/

Have fun. There are 500,000 tracks there, covering every single genre known to man. And they're royalty free.