Begining of Sound/Music Study

I'm going on programming, it's time i'd get something to
study about Music and Sound programming, music before sound.

So anyone know how to start?

Since nobody bothered to answer, I'll dare to break the silence.

First of all, I'm not at all an educated musician, therefore some of you might find my opinion questionable. I'm self-taught in all the departments: from coding to graphics, and while developing the 2d adventure game I'm currently working on I am forced to work on everything by myself - music included. Thanks for the freeware scripting engine I'm using I didn't have to code the entire game from the ground up, but whatever tools you're using, development is still hard work - especially when you don't have a team.

My own take on music is that study - while certainly helpful - is not necessary. When I'm scripting a part of the game that I think it should be orchestrated, the first thing I think of is mood of this particular scene - whether it should be epic, sad, funny etc. Then I start ModPlug tracker, load the instruments and play with them for a while. The idea evolves while I'm working on the music itself. In a way, I allow it to evolve rather than following some pre-conceived idea, although it's not always the case. For example: one of the moments in my game has the lonely protagonist going back to his apartment (it's the first time player ever gets to see this location). The scene will be illustrated by a lonely, melancholic piano piece (that I happen to be listening to right now ) that is meant to illustrate protagonists solitude. And it wasn't at all a pain to compose. Music in games, however, is quite a complex subject given that it has to correspond to dynamically changing context of the game. By rule, 2d adventures are less dynamic than, say, first person shooters or survival horror. Therefore whether the challenge is small or big depends on the genre.

are you interested in the coding part of music or in the formal education part?

Imho learning music theory is not a big deal, but it makes little sense to learn that isolated, without an instrument where you can apply the stuff while you think..

Hmmm, i dunno... what's the difference?
After you tell me something about them,
would be easier to tell my interest of which.

What's the difference between music theory and programming? That's an odd question.

You can't tell the difference between this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory and this http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de..._playsound.asp????

Originally Posted by monjardin

What's the difference between music theory and programming? That's an odd question.

You can't tell the difference between this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory and this http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de..._playsound.asp????

I mean the difference coding and formal educational.

coding == programming

formal education == music theory

They have nothing to do with each other.

NOW it's clear to me.
I'd like to get on with coding, but... how much is there about formal education?

hi, new here... formal education can last a lifetime. i am, well, i try to be a musician my self and still, i get stumped when i encounter words like pentatonic or harmonic minor... it never ends.

what i can tell you though, for the sake of game dev, is you can try out softwares like virtualdj to mix your own brand of music and fool around with existing music... or if you want to make your own music, try acidloop or something. i remember playing music generator on my psx a few years ago... had loads of fun ^_^

Originally Posted by drewcarrey

hi, new here... formal education can last a lifetime. i am, well, i try to be a musician my self and still, i get stumped when i encounter
words like pentatonic or harmonic minor... it never ends.

It's getting kinda offtopic, but:


For a programmer (I assume that programmers have at least some mathematical background) music theory is a piece of cake. The only problem is, that most introductional theory books have been written by guys who himself don't really have understood what they talk about. Pro musicans just don't tend to be math wizzards, and they have a different, more emotional approach to things. Their skills are usually more on the memorize side than abstraction. This can confuse us.

In reality the stuff is dead simple. It is almost like 4th class elementary school stuff. You just need someone who explains it without mystifying the half of it. Don't be fooled if you you think it's complicated. It's not.

Knowing theory does not make you a better musican though. It helps you on the way, opens the inner ear, brings you ideas and tools to analyze music you like (and then extract the essence of it). In my oppinion it's a "must have" if you play with other people, but that's it. You can be a world class musican without knowing what a lydian dominant scale is.

Music notation / terminology, along with the 15-30-40 tennis scoring system, are the two horribly asymmetrical and impractical things I never thought would survive past the 20th century.

I'm curious, what do you think is impractical/horrible about music notation?

Too many weird names for concepts, lots of special cases, differences between US and European notations... I've never had formal music training, but from what I have read and studied, it seems to me that half the effort is in becoming fluent with a lot of memorized information. Knowledge-wise, of course - having any talent is completely separate.

Well, I've had quite a few years of formal training, and I'd say that the amount of jargon and 'technical details' you have to learn in studying music is no greater than in any other discipline, like programming for example

Yeah, it's just that most of that jargon seems so irregular and ad-hoc to me. Why the hell does the "base" note have to be the C? Nah, your comparison is quite apt; I understand that a lot of this is due to historical practices and evolutionary design, much like C++ can be argued to be, and a musician would be similarly baffled by the large amount of (largely irrelevant even if useful) programming languages we have managed to produce in half a century.

Originally Posted by Jare

Yeah, it's just that most of that jargon seems so irregular and ad-hoc to me. Why the hell does the "base" note have to be the C?

Actually the "base" note is A minor.

If you are going to get technical, how does minor modify a single note? You can play an A minor chord or an A minor scale, but I've never heard anyone play an A minor note. And for that matter, an A minor scale and a C major scale have the same notes in them.

A guitar and a piano are C instruments, but a trumpet has B flat as its "base". So, everyone typically tunes to "Concert A" or 440 Hz. I guess that's what you meant by the "base" note?

What makes a guitar a C instrument?

A "C" note played on a guitar is the same pitch as concert "C". Well, sort of, guitar music is actually written an octave higher than the corresponding piano music so that it can all fit on one staff (just like a contrabassoon or a double bass). So, a guitar is a special case of a transposing instrument since it occurs at the octave, but it is still in the key of "C".

On the other hand, a trumpet (and several others) is a B-flat transposing instrument. In other words, a B-flat on a trumpet is actually pitched to a concert "C". This was very confusing to me the first time I played with a horn player. I told him to play a certain scale and didn't get at all what I expected!

Wikipedia has a more exhaustive explanation of all this here.

That is very evil! Thanks for the info, didn't know that, and I would have never expected this.

You've got it backwards, a C on a trumpet is pitched at a concert B-flat. So a B-flat on a trumpet is actually a concert A-flat, and if you want a concert C out of a trumpet you've got to tell him to play a D.

I rest my case.

The transposition thing dates back to a time when wind and brass instruments were made that could only play in a certain key; and they would write the music as if it was in key of C to avoid needing sharps/flats, while the pitches that came out were actually in some other key.

However, you've got a point, and I agree that the transposition thing is annoying and imho should be made obsolete now that we make instruments that can play in any key. But what can I say, musicians are a traditionalist bunch.

Originally Posted by monjardin

If you are going to get technical, how does minor modify a single note? You can play an A minor chord or an A minor scale, but I've never heard anyone play an A minor note.

True, but what he means is that during the Middle Ages music was modal (not major or minor) and the base note was A, for the Aeolian mode (which was just one of several modes around). Later a particular mode, the Ionian, became especially popular and it turned out that the base note for it was C if you didn't want any accidentals (sharps or flats). That mode is what we now know as the major scale. The Aeolian mode is the natural minor scale, and the rest of them aren't used too much any more.