Art of Record Production 2019

Over the last decades, the game industry has become an increasingly important arena for music production. Earlier studies shows that interactive games requires music with a non-linear musical form[1] and to make it follow the intensity and the events in the game[2] it has to be adaptive. Through teaching adaptive music production I’ve discovered a potential for new tools to fill the gap between traditional Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) and middleware used for audio integration in games[3].

The aim of this study is to understand how music producers respond to a specific idea for such a tool - Music Mind Map[4] – an interactive mind map representing the structure of a composition. A prototype was built using the web based iMusic[5] technology and was tested by twelve music producers who reported their feedback through an online form.

The result indicates that most participants found the music mind map interesting and useful for organizing, getting a better overview and testing the different parts of a composition. My hypothesis was that they would primarily find it best suited for game music but the answers I got indicates that they find it useful for traditional compositions as well. Suggestions for improvements generally focused on a better graphical interface with more complex connections and more nodes visible at the same time.

My conclusion is that it would be valuable with further studies on how new technical solutions like the music mind map could help music producers being even more creative and productive.

References:
1. K. Collins. 2008. “Game Sound : An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design”. Cambridge: MIT Press
2. A.-P. Andersson and B. Cappellen, “Same but different: Composing for interactivity”. Audio Mostly Conference, 2008, (p80–85).
3. N Böttcher. 2013. “Current problems and future possibilities of procedural audio in computer games”.
Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 2013. (p215-234)
4. H. Lindetorp 2018. ” MusicMindMap”. http://momdev.se/hans_lindetorp/musicmindmap
5. H. Lindetorp. 2018. “iMusic”. https://github.com/hanslindetorp/imusic