Creating video game soundtracks: Getting Started
Recently for one of my final uni assignments, I’ve been working on a 20-minute, 4 level re-score for one of my favourite games of the year - Doom: The Dark Ages. You can catch a glimpse of some of this work over in the portfolio, so go check them out!
It’s no secret that the modern Doom soundtracks have been awesome, with Mick Gordon’s entries being amongst some of the best music done for a video game, period. While I certainly am no Mick Gordon, I think some of the stuff I’ve done has kicked ass, so I thought I’d run through my process a little bit since I know capturing the energy of a game can be really challenging.
Firstly, it’s good to be clear on your intentions and inspirations. What about the soundtrack excites you? What makes you even want to do the work in the first place? For me, it was the pure adrenaline and violent nature of Doom that drew me in. Mick Gordon had a profound effect on me, his ability to experiment and blend electronic sound design with metal was so eye-opening and inspirational. The Doom: 2016 soundtrack was literally my gateway into metal, and now I’ve worked on multiple metal projects over the past few years.
There’s a few ways to go about doing a game score, especially when you’re not doing one officially. While a process definitely exists for the professionals out there, for us who are just having some fun and gathering some experience, we can choose a few ways to go about it. Some options are:
Scoring directly to a gameplay video, aligning sound hits and moments as close to the on-screen action as possible.
Scoring to a vibe of the game, using screenshots and video to guide your production, not define it.
Scoring off of a brief, using words and limited visual aid to bring about an interest sound.
I’ve tried the first and second option, and the second is what I used for Doom. I recorded gameplay and took screenshots, but opted not to score directly to them. It was all in on vibes first, the music can match the game later since it’s easier to change the music than it is to change the game.
Finding a theme in your work can really help too, for me it was using the games environments to shape how the music was created on a fundamental level. Each level would be a certain ‘layer’ of where the player is, and over each level the player would get deeper. This inspired an idea, that guitar tunings should go down as the player does. This allowed the music to literally get heavier as each track went along, and the music would instantly have a much easier time fitting in.
If you were creating music for a level set in Dooms’ Hell, would a guitar in standard tuning, or down in Drop G be thematically better? I hope you picked the latter, because that definitely makes more sense to me. Hell is deep below, so let’s pair that with a low guitar tuning.
One of Doom: The Dark Ages screenshots I took for one of the ‘Hell’ levels, and the inspiration for MATAHARI and I’s track, ‘Lay Waste’. Check out a snippet below!
Knowing what the nature of the game helps too - Doom is a fast paced, violent, unforgiving first-person shooter. This tells us a lot of what we need to know, we need music that doesn’t distract the player but instead, rhythmically motivates them and their actions. So complex melodies are out, simple driving rhythms are in.
Even a screenshot like the above can give us a lot to work with. The lava and red/orange hue gives a really warm feeling, so maybe we should put in some warm, harsh bass synths? The tortured demons and castles adds a biblical vibe - maybe means we should add some haunting choirs? The weapons our players are holding indicate to me that we’re in control here, so we don’t need something inadvertently scary, we need something badass and confident. Sounds like Doom to me.
This is just from one image, you can draw inspiration from anything! Emulate what you’re seeing, just in sound form.
The most important thing however, is EXPERIMENT. Lean on inspirations, try new things, make weird shit before you make good shit. Anything you try will help make your vision clearer. There are no rules, only guidelines. It’s up to you how you get to your result.
As Mick Gordon once said…
‘…CHANGE THE PROCESS, CHANGE THE OUTCOME...’
Now go make some cool ass soundtracks.
