Sound and Music Skills

Tip

Many people have excellent recording programs and don't even know it. They often come free with your sound card in your computer. If you got a CD with your sound card, take a look at the programs it contains. You might find a feature-rich sound recording program there. For example, many computers have sound cards from Creative Labs. If yours does, check the CD for a program called Creative WaveStudio. It's a great free program for recording sound.

Great games have great music and sound effects. You don't have to be a musician to write games if you can find one to work with you. If you do have a musician for a partner, or you are able to hire one, all you really have to know how to do is play their music during the game. However, the more musical skills you have, the better your game will be. Even just being a hobbyist musician can help you develop a better ear for music. You'll need it when you're selecting music for the different portions of your game. Good music can tremendously intensify the experience of a game. If you doubt this, try playing your favorite game with the sound off. The experience is usually rather lifeless and sterile.

Computers store music in one of two ways. One way is to store a digitized version of the music itself. You usually do this with sound recording programs like Windows Recorder, which comes with Windows. That program will help you get started, but you'll eventually need a more professional program for recording and mixing music.

Digitized recordings of music are generally stored in WAV or MP3 files. WAV files give better sound, but MP3 files are a lot smaller. You need to decide which is more important for your game: sound quality or disk space.

If you have an electronic musical keyboard, you can easily record music on your computer. Just plug one end of a cable into the headphone jack on the keyboard and the other end into the line-in jack on your computer's sound card. Use your recording program (even if it's only Windows Recorder) to record whatever you play.

You can use the same technique for digitizing music you play on your electric guitar. Most guitar amplifiers have a headphone jack. Like the headphone output from a musical keyboard, an amplifier's headphone output can be plugged into the line-in jack of your computer's sound card.

The other way that computers store music is in MIDI files. A MIDI file doesn't store the music itself. Instead, it stores a set of commands that tell how to make the music. The computer then acts as a synthesizer and produces the music from the commands.

Warning

The technique of recording music by routing your instrument's headphone output into the line-in jack of your computer's sound card is the penny-pincher's approach. It may not give you the high-quality sound recordings that are common in professional games. If it doesn't, you need to explore other options, such as buying a better sound card or external audio-to-digital conversion hardware.

MIDI files are much smaller than digitized music files. However, not all computers have the same ability to synthesize music that your computer does. Some are better at it than your computer. Others are not as good at it. Either way, you cannot guarantee that the music will sound the same across all computers. For that reason, most game developers use digitized music files rather than MIDI music files. Many will use MIDI instruments, such as electronic keyboards, to produce their music. However, they'll record the MIDI music into an MP3 file so that they know the final product sounds the same on all computers.

Most electronic musical keyboards have a MIDI output jack. That means you can hook your musical keyboard into your computer to record your MIDI music. Virtually all computers have a jack on their sound cards that can be used either for a MIDI instrument or a joystick. You can plug your MIDI keyboard into that. If you want to then digitize the resulting MIDI song, you use a music player like Windows Media Player or Winamp to play the song. At the same time, use Windows Recorder (or something similar) to digitally record the song.

Cheating Your Way to Great Music and Sound Effects

If you're not a musician, and you're not likely to become one soon, you can still get good music for your games. Many little-known musicians can be found on the Web on sites such as GarageBand.com. They will often donate a song or two to your game to get the free advertising. Some of them sell royalty-free music that is designed for use in games.

Another way to get good music is to use a music generation program. There are several around, but the one I recommend is Band-in-a-Box. It enables you to quickly create great music by doing little more than clicking your mouse a few times.

For sound effects, you can get sound effect generator programs. However, I haven't been particularly impressed by any of the low-cost programs. Instead, you might consider using sound effect collections, which you can purchase on CDs. There are also free collections you can download from the Web.

As with learning art skills, you can take music classes at your local community college or high school. Because the easiest way to get music into a computer is with an electronic musical keyboard, you should probably concentrate on learning to play piano. However, it also helps to know how to play guitar and drums as well.

Whether or not you're a musician, you must deal with music and sound effects for all games. Without them, the experience of playing a game becomes extremely sterile and bland. Good music and sound effects are absolutely essential to games.