Songwriters Got Games—and New Challenges

"This is a real exciting time for songwriters and composers to be involved in the 'music for games' market," said NovaLogic audio director, composer and moderator Russ Brower.

He was speaking May 9 at the E3 games expo, part of the second annual seminar sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Society of Composers & Lyricists.

Within the dramatically changed retail music marketplace, more artists, songwriters and composers of music for TV and films are finding a rapidly expanding revenue stream.

Original game music typically is bought for $800 to $1,200 per minute; an original song can command up to $5,000 or more depending on the artist; and licensed tracks are being offered by music publishers for prices dependent on the various artists and songs involved.

Held at the American Film Institute, the program featured mini-case studies on game music projects from three artists.

Laura Karpman, composer of Stephen Spielberg's sci-fi TV mini-series "Taken," scored the online game "Everquest II." Inon Zur, who composed the score for the original "Everquest" as well as best-seller "SOCOM II: U.S. Navy Seals," addressed his just-completed work for "Men of Valor." Billy Martin, whose credits include "Tarzan Untamed" and "Spy Kids 3D," wrote children's songs for "The Book of Pooh."

Karpman noted that "Everquest" producer John Blakely and the developers had liked her work for "Taken," and that kids were really listening to big orchestral music.

"I had only about three weeks to come up with more than 80 minutes of a fully orchestrated score for 'Everquest II,'" she recalled, "but it was the favorite project in my life as a film and TV composer."

She detailed some of the challenges in creating themes with many variations for two key city environments and the music for what could happen in those places.

"Going to Prague to work with the orchestra there was a wild experience," she said. "It was like writing a symphony."

Zur offered some tips that he used to create the score for "Men of Valor," which he described as an "action-laden, first-person shooter with more complex elements" than a typical game of its kind.

"As a composer, my job is to trick the gamer into thinking that the music is always with them," he added. He talked about activating "stingers" to keep action moving; the use of "stems," or taking a 90-second cue and breaking into one to three stereo streams; and using "nodes" to flag music breaks.

"Music can work to create an interactive score that lets the gamer feel he is in control of 'driving' the orchestra," he said.

For Martin, the challenge was writing two-minute songs aimed at the 5-year-old and younger audience for Disney's "The Book of Pooh." He came up with the creative solution of providing three endings for each of 20 interactive songs, with the kids helping Eeyore the donkey find his tail, as one example.

"What do games demand of you?" he asked the audience rhetorically. "You're often working with just a description of gameplay, with no animation, so a good imagination is essential," he said.

"Most important, make sure that everyone involved in the project is 'on the same page' to make it work."