Almost a year ago I posted about the possible trend of students wanting to perform video game music. With more and more professional orchestras playing music from video games it seems like the trend will eventually end up in our music programs, especially now that music publishers are picking up on it. With websites focusing on topics ranging from remixing to live concert tours of video game music, resources are available for music teachers to deal with this emerging genre. Some students may become excited to create their own video game music while others might be interested in arranging and orchestrating video game music to be performed by your school’s ensembles. Does video game music have a place in your music classroom? How would you frame it’s inclusion from a music education perspective?
Video Game Music
Tags:video games
Our software Sound2Game allows pupils to compose music for five specially constructed computer games. We have documented the work of a professional sound designer and his compositional process and presented this in schemes of work and various worksheets for puipls to use, etc. In our experience, getting pupils to compose music in this genre is stimulating, fresh and exciting. By using various pieces of freeware such as Audacity, pupils can edit and process sonic material to produce spot effeccts, ambient loops and music, as well as foley-esque style effects, within computer games. They can also engage in some critical studies of their own as they play and listen to exisiting computer game sound designs in light of the lessons they have learnt from their own compositional work. So we have found it a very useful medium for composing with pupils aged between 11 to 16.
More information about Sound2Picture can be found at http://www.sound2game.net and http://www.ucan.tv