Check it out our new course right here - here: thinkspace.ac.uk/courses/how-to-write-video-game-music/ How To Write Video Game Music is our brand new course and we are super excited about it! If you ever wanted to get started in video game music or you are looking for a new musical challenge this course will give you the essential skills every video games composer needs. The course includes our new interactive video technology, MinusONE scoring projects and a vibrant and supportive Discord Community where you can share your work and get feedback from your peers.

"You're writing the music for a scene that hasn't been directed yet" is a great way to encapsulate the challenge and the potential in game music

I appreciate Guy Michelmore and what he does for the music community so much, and intros like this remind me of why I originally subscribed all those years ago. ❤️

The amount of work this man puts into describing specific musical concepts for free is mind boggling! Thank you so much for making these amazing videos!

This was super creative! I loved every minute of this. 😊

I've been doing this for 20 years, not professionally, but I'll still watch this because you're so informative

7:46 A great example is the music in Mirrors Edge. In that game the composer named Solar Fields really added lots of horizon movement so that the soundtrack feels alive. Which makes one song easily around 10 minutes long. How? Well Solar Fields divided the pieces in certain blocks like Guy talks about in this video: The first one is just an ambiance, the root of the song like Guy made at 2:45. From there he starts adding and subtracting things so that the song gets lets static. The second part is the more "alert" style of the music. In Mirrors Edge this can me you get chased by people or something happens in the narrative that shifts the music. The third part can go two different ways, so for the music creation there is an branching path: You managed to escape but are now in a building where you have to solve a puzzle by doing parkour or, the chase intensifies to an another level and the music gets more aggressive and got that "hurry up" feeling. From there things gets interesting, because again an level can be branched in more different ways. Note that the alternate music always got the same roots as the ambiance, for the track still ahs to feel familiar. But now so familiar that i gets boring. So Solar Fields added lots of modular synthesis to solve that problem(also something you hear in the Doom 2016 OST by Mick Gordon)...!!! If you want to hear an example to follow along of what i am talking about, here is a link to one of my most favorite pieces of Solar Fields~ Hopefully it can you help all out if you want to create your own video game music...!!! Keep on creating D Mirrors Edge - Flytrap OST: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gdSPmbKE0Zaxd4k.html

This is absolutely amazing! Very very creative and informative! But I think one of the challenges is to put down a great pieces which doesn't suck or get very boring on lots of repetitions!!

This feels like it should be paid content, you wouldn't get quality like this from any college lecturer. I feel inspired to try and compose myself now. Absolutely phenomenal demonstration with a great balance of interactivity as well as tons of useful information. Love it!

Wonderful! So glad to hear you mention Jason Graves! I went to high school with him and had the pleasure to play music with him! He's really done well for himself and we're all so proud to know him!

Really had no idea that video game music did some of this. I pick out cross fades and loops when I play one but the vertical layering is really something else entirely that I didn’t even realize. Very neat content this week.

This is great ! Though being a game composer specifically often also requires a bit of knowledge of the tools used to implement the music into the game - usually FMOD or Wwise - and actually playing the game to understand it and the kinds of interactions one may have in it is also beneficial.

Less than a minute in and this man has already earned all of my respect. So well done.

You are one of my absolute favorite music educators on KZfaq. You are so knowledgeable and have such a great way of conveying the matter. Absolutely love your videos!

Chopping the end of the bounced audio and moving it to the front blew my mind, so simple!

Friday afternoon: off work, cup of tea, a new Guy Michelmore video --- happy days!

I love your channel. Most of the content isn't necessarily new to me, but you're one of the few who've captured my attention, and I'll watch to support you! Thank you for everything you do for the community! -Cheers

Awesome video as always, Guy! Love your humor throughout.

Maaaan, I've gone 28 years of my life not understanding how exactly they transition music like this in games, and this finally explained it so very well 👏😁 absolutely fantastic job explaning it and showing it all off! Also incredible intro section haha

Every Guy Michelmore vid he puts out, puts a smile on my face....reminds me to ease up when making beats

Such a fascinating explanation of the challenges and how to overcome them!

This is one of the best episodes ever! Thanks a lot for this one! ❤

The start was long but surprisingly, it kept me interested the whole time. Very well done.

Love it! Thanks for this great info, Guy!

This is one of my dreams! I really appreciate you, Guy, for this segment, explaining how this works! Thank you!

I am loving your content Guy!! I just found your channel yesterday, and I’ve must have watched like 10-15 of your vids! They’re both educational, inspiring, and just fun, I love your energy and personality

Forever grateful for your content, and you.

I learn SO MUCH every time I watch! Thank you😊

I haven't finished the video yet but as an aspiring composer who is working with her roommate on their first project, that intro was fantastic.

Best video about music production i've ever seen. Very well explained.

This. Is. Gold. THANK YOU!!!

This video is the most informative, succinct, revealing and practical introduction to game music composition the world has ever seen! A master communicator, thanks👍.

Fascinating! Thanks, Guy; superb as ever.

watched the full thing, wonderfully explained and showcased, loved all the effort put in, very very informational!

Great lesson! Thanks Guy!

another great video, thanks a lot Guy

Always inspiring. Your creativity in music is matched only by your child-like imagination, the one you use every time you have to come up with an idea for a video. 👌🏼

A topic I’ve been waiting for. Thank you

I can’t put into words how much I appreciate this video

This video is brilliant!! You went above and beyond, thanks for explaining all of this in such detail :D Thank you

Wow!!! Another outstanding video tutorial!!! 🎮👾🎶🙌🏿

Sir you're a musical genius like hans zimmer. A true gem ❤ for young producers who want to learn about filmscore music.

Super helpful insights! Thank you!

Captivating presentation and great explanation!

So blessed to have found this video. Yes, this video is very useful. I will be starting a music for video game course soon and your video has certainly given me many pointers as a head start. Thank you.

great video, i was recently approached with some work for an indie game and this has been invaluable in trying to figure out the structure of everything

Guy, could listen to you talk all day. Please continue to make content

Best information I've found on this so far!

thank you so much for explaining

This. Was Sensational... Excellent insight! Thank you ONCE AGAIN, Guy.

Fascinating, thank you 👍

Just loved it Guy, great explanation

Thank you for seamless loop tips, will be very useful 🙂

haha that intro was awesome! Very great video as always!

Thanks a lot for the lightning tour, Sir. That will help me a lot when doing music for my games. I will use it to illustrate the danger in a realm were you need to whisper and to be quiet. Keep up the good work :D

Maaaaaaan you read my mind!!! That's what I need right now! Love it!

Guy, really appreciate your time and effort w/this vid! On LinkedIn, video games companys are looking for audio engineers at large numbers. It's mindblowing to me, bc I grew up using razor blade editing, & now computers are so ubiquitous that we have a multitude of areas in audio engineering to investigate for employment. Your vid helped me to see how it is done. Thank you.

Im very happy I have found your videos! :)

Great Video! Love the "game" you made!

I'd preemptively donned my sunglasses of doubt having, as a gamer, seen years of marketing bonanzas wherein composers are given about 8 seconds to spill the beans that their game has a custom Dynamic Music System™ (like many others), or simply has music which (gasp!) makes you feel stuff and things. I should have expected better from you, but here I was with the glasses. This was great! Sincerely entertaining _and_ educational as usual. I figured it must be more complicated than I realized, and having this concrete peek at the process gives me even more appreciation for this version of the art. And of course your intro was great fun, even for me with my acute zombie game allergy. :)

You deserved a like just for that introduction. WELL DONE.

This is bloody awesome! I actually had no idea that it was done this way! ❤

So for this upcoming year I’m gonna be doing game dev and I got offered to try to get music for this lil game this definitely helped a lot to understand and I’m glad you mentioned Jason graves I went to go search him and found he composed music for one of my favorite games untill dawn I can’t wait to get started with composing ❤

I’ve been playing The Last Of Us 2 recently - and was tuning into just this kind of thing, the way the music is cued at certain points, the way it fades, changes, is used to foreshadow - and have been intrigued by how well the score responds and interacts with my choices. So interesting!

Loved the little intro!

Thanks so much for this great informative video. One of the tips that you gave is going to solve a problem I have with my current project. Absolutely love watching all of your stuff.

You sir, are the greatest music tutorial KZfaqr ever.

Super video thanks!

This is great, Guy. Really tells me what I need to consider as a composer for this medium.

As always: a great video, Guy! I'd like to add: you don't necessarily have to compose to a scene that hasn't been directed. I like to ask for the installer file, or gameplay footage, and score to that because I think finding the "pace" in those scenes is important. If they don't/can't provide the installer, and I'm having trouble coming up with something, then I'll grab a snippet of a scene from another game that I think captures what I want to write, and then compose to that scene. For anyone interested in composition for video games Winifred Phillip's "A Composer's Guide to Game Music" is a solid learning tool!

This video is so good. I love you, Guy.

This was extremely helpful! I'm a senior in game design (art side), working on my thesis. Have a big background in music, but I never really knew how games went about music comp. This is really gonna save my butt, because music from our previous years theses have been so abhorrently uncared about!

Amazing video. Quality was very high as well as informative and entertaining all in one! The beginning intro was top notch though and very creative. Saving your video and channel for when I start composing.

Great video. Super helpful!

Great video thank you.

The first 5 minutes of this was really useful, in games where each scene has one track of music and it's not changing depending on what's happening. You just got to cut off the intro and then loop the rest of the song indefinitely. So render the music to audio. Cut off the intro, then make sure a few extra bars are rendered at the end so it can loop into the cut seamlessly. Bookmarking this video for future reference!

Great video thank you Guy👍

Rah this video editing is SERIOUS. 10/10!! Great explanation of gaming topic. I like how you was inside the 🎮 . I could visualise what you was speaking about

awesome soundtrack love it 💞🔥🎵🎶🎶 thanks for the teaching

You are so creative my dude. These videos are hilarious to watch. But i'm actually learning sonething ye know. Love the intro. Kudos to you.

Really appreciate your content.

this has helped me so much!! thank you very much, goodness! 💖

Hi Guy ! Thank you so much for your detailed videos, they have been a really useful source of knowledge ! much love from Belgium

Amazing. Thank you

Amazing! one of your best videos!

Absolutely charming.

This is a great teacher!!!

this is so well explained

that intro was amazing!!!

Very cool and inspiring!

Smart, someone hooked you up with the idea of consistent high quality content.. it’ll work well for you

Wow, excellent tutorial, keep up and well done, Sir.

Very interesting and inspiring video. Thank you!

This is mind blowing would love to make music for games. Thanks so much

Very good advices thank you for this insight.

Oh my god I love this guy!!

Funny story 😂: I looked for some tips on composing a videogame for a client. This video was the one which seemed to be great to watch. And then, I saw your face and I was like: "hmmm, this person is very familiar to me but I don't remember who exactly". And when I finally reached the end of video, I was like :" wow, great explainer, he is very familiar to me. There was this great and aged-person I considered as Gandalf for music composer and his name was Guy Michelmore. However, this one have a beard. Guy didn't had a beard at that time" When I was going to look for another video, I just looked at the OP name and it ta-da it is Guy Michelmore 😂 I missed your Easy-Go-Ness, I feel I belong with you humably speaking. Thank you for the video Guy! Great work

Currently creating a horror game audio library for the final project of my degree, this was so helpful!

entertaining intro and informative tutorial. thank you for this gem

I love you man. You are amazing as always ❤️