AUDIO // GENERATIVE SOUND | BUILD John Broomhall talks to Earcom’s Paul Weir about the potential of generative audio HEARD ABOUT
WHAT DO Paul Weir’s video game projects have in common with a Scottish airport, a Middle Eastern Bank and a rather famous London department store? The answer is generative music – or as Weir
prefers – ‘emergent music’ – a randomised replay of very small musical components according to a set of pre-defined rules which can produce a flexible soundscape. “Games are a world of opportunity for generative music – you remove the limitation of loops. And because it’s ‘real-time’, you can control and construct it on-the-fly, building musical intensity and even changing tempo and key according to a map of allowed relationships,” says Weir, who currently serves as digital music consultant at audio design outfit The Sound Agency, audio director at Microsoft Games Studio, and also founded games specialist Earcom, providing audio for the likes of Rogue Ops. “It can respond to game variables and locations without the player ever being conscious of the organic changes.”
MIX AND MATCH Weir explains that the approach works best as ‘ambient’ background material, and in games it’s really nice to mix and match between generative and pre-rendered content – to dramatically shift from something that’s structurally ambiguous to a more conventional linear piece. On the generative side, you can easily apply pieces of music to locations and then set rules for interpolating from one piece to another as the player moves. It’s really quite powerful. “The more granular the elements, the
better,” Weir continues. “A lot of the common control elements are the same as with sound effects – shaping how often sounds from a group will play, their density, pan and volume. Sitting on top are the more musical controllers such as key and tempo. Simple musical rules can create surprisingly pleasing musical pieces if fed with the right sounds.” When composing generative music you
have to work backwards, in that you need to think of the individual elements like little snapshots and move them around in your sequencer to get an idea of how they will combine together. If your piece is heavily dependent on structure, then you’re going to go horribly wrong. “Timbre is really important – how the sounds co-operate together sonically within a looser structure – not dissimilar to Brian Eno’s early pieces like Apollo or Harold Budd's music. In the same way that Eno used long tape loops, you lose control in some respects, but you're forced to be creative in new ways, thinking less about progression and more about tone and atmosphere.” Weir believes these techniques are a very useful alternative to conventional layered loop-based music approaches for scenes of indeterminate length in games, where creating and producing a ton of music
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
Generative audio Expert: Paul Weir Earcom / Microsoft Games Studio / The Sound Agency
www.thesoundagency.com
content to cover ambient background is both time-consuming and expensive. However, he has also realised the potential for the same tactics in other real-world commercial applications whilst working on audio branding projects with The Sound Agency.
Generative audio can respond to
game variables without the player ever being conscious of the
organic changes. Paul Weir, Earcom
BRAND AWARENESS “There’s an obvious crossover between generative and ambient music, and The Sound Agency’s CEO Julian Treasure has a strong interest in the psychoacoustic effects of music,” states Weir. “The concept of generative was seen as esoteric a few years ago, but now we sit in the boardrooms of major brands like Tesco, BAA and Volkswagen, happily talking about it as an entirely viable, valid option.” The Sound Agency usually carry out an
‘acoustic audit’ of a venue first, then will offer acoustic treatment suggestions often along with how new sound can be added to the space to make the consumer experience more pleasurable and relaxing. “Adding a generative soundscape via our Ambifier system has the advantage that we
can respond to real world inputs, for instance, customer noise level, or market research feedback,” Weir continues. “In some instances, you might want the soundscape to change according to time of day or according to the number of people in the space. At one airport our generative music in retail outlets helped increase takings by up to ten per cent, indicating that if people feel happier, they spend more. “In a Californian city where a generative
birdsong soundscape was deployed via some 70 speakers around the streets, it's even apparently helped reduce crime. Our tech is networked so we can make changes remotely, and our wider team can all download proposed generative pieces I’ve put on the server and leave them running for hours in their own offices for testing purposes. “The children’s department of the world-
renowned store, Harrods, is the latest venue to play host to the Ambifier system. From early in the discussion when the new models to form the installation were being discussed, it was decided to explore the possibilities of bespoke sound design.” “ We can install it, see how it feels and because it’s ‘unfinished’ we can adapt and tweak it. We’ll change the density of it over the course of the day depending on footfall. It’s the shaping of the experience that’s key. “Actually, it’s going to sound rather like a video game.”
John Broomhall is an independent audio director, consultant and content provider. E:
develop@johnbroomhall.co.uk www.johnbroomhall.co.uk
AUGUST 2012 | 83
Paul Weir’s wealth of experience with games audio has even seen him create in-store soundscapes for retail stores
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