The Production Process

I kicked off the production process by gathering the initial DLS sounds for each composition. Then, setting the tone and main themes for the pieces, I divided the rest of the composing between my team and myself. Rather than having one person assigned to each composition, we all worked on every song. Each composer was responsible for a range of groove levels in each piece. I periodically merged all of our work so that we were aware of each other's progress. Toward the end, I polished and mixed the pieces, ensuring coherence.

Gathering, Creating, and Assembling DLS Banks

I find working in DirectMusic's DLS creation environment to be straightforward. Its interface, while not perfect, is similar to other sample-bank creation software. The process consists of importing wave samples, creating an instrument, and assigning samples to regions across the keyboard. The DLS Level 2 standard allows for the layering of samples and adds basic low pass filtering.

The trick to good sound is not in the tool but in the experimentation process. Many composers like to get right to the notes and use whatever sounds are available. This can lead to a generic-sounding piece of music. Creating sounds with a specific piece of music in mind gives the sounds immediate relevance. There is a lot of back-and-forth between tweaking a sound and trying it in the context of the music. The process boils down to a few key points:

• Quality samples

• Instrument layers

• Real-time filters

• Good use of the ADSR amplitude envelope

• Efficient use of samples

• Real-time effects, such as reverb, delay, etc.

We created an individual sound set for each piece of music. We honed each sound set to a specific composition, giving each piece a unique sound. The development team set aside 8MB for each song's sample set, for a total of 24MB of instruments. In the end, we kept the sample rate at 44.1 kHz for pristine sound. The game loads all 24MB of instrument banks at the start so that the player can switch between songs without pauses. We designed the sounds from scratch or used licensed sounds from Sonic Network (the instruments are called Sonic Implants) at www.sonicnetworkinc.com. Sonic Network has an excellent electronica collection, which served as our point of sonic departure.

Each composition has its own rhythmic feel and flavor that the sound sets portray. There are live drum loops diced into quarter note sections; these loops live in a DLS instrument, so they can play back in their original form, or we can mix and match them in a variety of rhythms. This loop-slicing technique is common to the electronica genre and allows a live drum feel with added flexibility and variation.

For percussion we use standard drum machine sounds, such as Roland 808, Yamaha R8, and other obscure beat boxes. Hollywood Edge has a great collection of classic sounds called Beat Machine. I got specific permission to use these and other Hollywood Edge sounds in our DLS banks. I also used a Roland Jupiter synthesizer (a little white noise and a filter gave an industrial flavor to Gravity Ride) and some samples generated from percussive metal spike sounds.

We used samples of synthesizers as an integral element of the sound palette. We spent a lot of time building and layering synthetic instrument sounds to sound thick, rich, and mean when they needed to. Many of these instruments have three or four layers, which are panned and slightly detuned to add density to the sounds. I also took advantage of real-time filters as the primary musical gesture on both the lead synthesizer and the rhythmic synthesizer of Spin Cycle.

Setting Up Styles

We set up each of the three compositions identically in DirectMusic Producer. One style held all of the groove levels, the motifs, and the Band for a given piece. We set up the Band (within the Style) with the pchannels assigned to the custom DLS instrument patches after we created the Style. We then set the instrument's levels and panning for a rough mix, tweaking them during the composition process, and created our patterns.