Featured Blog | GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Sounds of Nature

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Welcome back! I'm game composer Winifred Phillips – my latest game project is the award-winning music for the blockbuster 3D remake of Wizardry: The Mad Overlord's Proving Ground! (Listen AND download THE awarded soundtrack and vote for the Wizardry soundtrack in the World Soundtrack Awards public vote.)

This is the second part of my series of articles featuring the content of my lecture at the Game Developers Conference 2024. This year, my presentation, “Dial Up the Diegetics: Musical Sound Effects,” explored how composers can utilize sound design assets and techniques in their video game music. Since we can't all attend GDC, I make sure to publish the content of my GDC lectures each year in a series of articles featuring the full discussions, along with many of the videos and illustrations that were part of my lecture. Last month I have published the first part of this series of articleswhere we have considered a list of categories into which sound design resources can be sorted:

We began with a discussion of ambient diegetics, first exploring how short ambient sound design resources support diegesis and the ways in which we can make these sound design resources work in our musical compositions. So, let's explore that idea further.

There are many musical uses for the short sounds generated by a particular location. For example, last month we discussed the uses of the dripping and popping sounds of water, accenting the music of an underwater game environment in the popular video game Sackboy: A Big Adventure. This was an overt use of position noises to make the music more evocative. So now let's consider the different types of sounds that would be produced by someone while he is interacting with an area.

Interaction noises

Developed by Ubisoft Sofia, Assassin's Creed Liberation takes players from the Louisiana Bayou to 18th-century Mexico, following the adventures of Aveline de Grandpré as she uncovers a dark conspiracy of the Knights Templar.

At one point, he journeys into the frontier wilderness surrounding New York, skillfully braving the harsh winter conditions along the way. When composing the music for this game, I wanted my compositions to contribute to the immersion of the game world, and that included the freezing cold of this particular mission.

So, I thought, what sounds are inherently wintery? Wind isn't limited to winter, and snowfall is pretty quiet. So that leaves the sounds people make in the snow. I wanted something that would work within a stealthy rhythmic musical narrative while exploring, so I thought about skiing. What does a ski sound like when it slides across snow?

It seemed like a start, but it wasn't particularly useful from a rhythmic perspective. So I simulated this sound effect, using brushes instead:

Much better: it still conveys the gliding motion on a powder surface, but now it gives me a clear impact, so I used it as the basis of my pace during winter exploration. Here is the final result:

We thought about short sound effects that propagate from the environment, but what about the general atmosphere?

Locations usually have long atmospherics built into the sound design, but sometimes we want the ambient effects to rise and fall with the contours of our compositions. So let’s look at another winter-themed situation to see how this works.

General atmosphere

In the game Dragon Front Rising VR by High Voltage Software, you are a champion empowered by the Gods to save the world of Terrene Gall during the second Great War. It is a strategic card game and you can choose one of six factions, including the icy warriors Eclipse.

The music for this faction needed to be particularly chilling, so I opted to use both interaction noises and general atmosphere. Gusts of wind rising at just the right musical moments, punctuated by crisp snowboarding flybys conveyed the kind of cold aggression I wanted for these snowy battles:

So let's see what it looked like in the game:

Wildlife sounds can be immensely useful to us as game composers, especially when it comes to adding character and personality to our music. I’ve had many opportunities to add creature vocalizations to my musical scores, and there are a ton of ways to make it work. So let’s look at some examples, starting with the simplest way of using animal sounds to express a point.

Diegetics in the animal kingdom

In the video game Speed ​​Racer developed by Sidhe Interactive, you are an elite racer trying to reach the top of the winners' podium in the World Racing League Cup, which includes numerous events in exotic locations. One of these is Onuris, a fantastical Egyptian-inspired track with parts of the track suspended above the ocean. As the composer of Speed ​​Racer, I wanted the music for this track to vividly evoke the seashore. So, what are the most… beachy sounds?

Nothing makes us think of the ocean like seagulls. Using these bird calls at prime moments during the race music was a great way to impress upon players that they were hurtling across the waves. Let's take a look at how it worked:

As you can see, this was a very specific and obvious sound reference that included some famous birds: really the best way to evoke the diegesis of the environment and intertwine the music more directly with the gameplay.

In the third part of this series of articles, we will delve into the usefulness of animal noises in our musical compositions. In the meantime, thank you very much for reading!

Winifred Phillips is a BAFTA-nominated video game composer whose latest project is the original soundtrack for the video game Wizardry: The Mad Overlord's Proving Grounds (the official soundtrack is now available on Spotlight and as a free downloadable album on Band Field). Music from his latest Celtic fantasy album, Ancient heroes, won two gold medals at the Global Music Awards, was nominated for a Hollywood Independent Music Award and is now available from the record label BMG 1 RevolutionPhillips is known for composing music for games from many of the most famous and popular franchises in the video game world: Assassin's Creed, God of War, Total War, The Sims, LittleBigPlanet, Lineage, Jurassic World, AND Magic. Phillips' awards include the DICE Award, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards (including Music of the Year), and four Hollywood Music in Media Awards. She is the author of the award-winning bestseller A COMPOSER'S GUIDE TO GAME MUSICpublished by MIT Press. An interview with her was published as part of the Routledge text, Female Music for the Screen: Different Narratives in Soundwhich gathers the points of view of the most esteemed composers in film, television and games. Follow her on Chirping, Click LikeAND User profile.