With many computer games now available on CD-ROM, games players don't have to put up with dismal computer-generated music and sound effects anymore. To take advantage of the new format, games companies are enlisting the help of top musicians and composers to write their soundtracks, and setting up their own music production facilities to produce music and effects in-house. We talk to games company Ocean who have opened their own facility, and TV and film composer Debbie Wiseman, who is crossing over into the games market. Could the multimedia and games market offer the same opportunities to music producers in the 90s that TV and video did in the 80s...?

The games company

Ocean games have long since established themselves as one of the finest independent computer games companies, churning out quality games (for the most part at least) by the truckload.

Amongst the unsung heroes of the computer gaming generation are the people who churn out brain-addling tunes to keep the adrenaline pumping while you do battle with sundry mutant psychopaths and homicidal hedgehogs.

Ocean's musical team comprises four members; three musicians, Keith Tinman, Jonathan Dunn, and media-shy guitarist Dean Evans; and the sound effects engineer/designer, Dylan Bourne. Keith (who prefers to be called a composer rather than a musician, because he 'can only play a few chords and things...') and Jonathan have been writing music for games since time began. Back in the age of the built-in speaker, 48k Spectrum-driven tunes were about as musical as an electronic doorbell, but computer musicians have come up in the world considerably since then.

The breakthrough came with Bomb the Bass's score for the Bitmap Brothers' incredibly successful Xenon II game. But there is little point trying to find out which snowflake caused the avalanche. Indeed, Ocean themselves have briefly succumbed to the whim of the commercial music manufacturers, and allowed Alien Sex Fiend a game on which to plaster a soundtrack. The epic PC CD-ROM adventure Inferno features two CD tracks alongside the computer music, and coincides with an album release of Sex Fiend music.

The whole project was one huge coincidence, according to Chris, or rather Mrs Fiend, of Alien Sex Fiend. They had just decided to take a break from touring when they were approached about the idea. Although Ocean rarely commission work from outside musicians, Inferno's designer Shaun Hollywood wanted to take a more cinematic approach to the game, and so Barry Leitch who was involved with the game (and also a fan of ASF), suggested that they might ask Alien Sex Fiend to write the music.

Writing the theme music for Inferno was supposed to have been a side project for Alien Sex Fiend, but they were soon working at Ocean from nine to five, five days a week, becoming completely immersed in the whole project. During their time there, the game was still being written, and so music and graphics evolved symbiotically. Mrs Fiend explained what the project involved for them.

"We wrote the music to go alongside the animation sequences, and during the gameplay. There were some restrictions; firstly, there were no lyrics allowed, and then having to write music to a specific length for example, and also for certain tempos. But it was good, because the space theme in Inferno was right up our street. In fact, the only negative thing about the project is that it took so long to come out!"

Ocean also receive a lot of enquiries and unsolicited tapes from unsigned artists. Keith claimed to have had a telephone call from a studio engineer once, asking him how he could get into a job like his, to which Keith replied: "Would you like to swap then?"

Despite all this outside interest, music is rarely commissioned. Only when a game is bought in from an outside company does it have external musical input.

By and large the musicians are left to their own devices, except of course when a film or TV conversion, like The Flintstones, dictates that they must use the original theme music as well. Usually they are given a written brief outlining all the required music for all the levels. Often, this is the only thing that the musicians will see of the game because it usually isn't finished (or started sometimes) at this stage. Alongside a list of the required theme and mood music, a list of sound effects are also drawn up. Generally, there is one person per project, although this is very flexible, and changes according to who needs the extra help to get a project finished on time. Despite working independently, the three musicians and sound designer often share each others' work, making (sometimes impolite) suggestions about what could possibly be done to improve the music.

The studios are perhaps more like Frankenstein's laboratory, with half-built monster PCs with their innards exposed, sitting on desks filled with gadgets, mobile phones, and disks. As one of the primary sources of sound, the Ensoniq EPS16 features heavily in the set up. For the analogue sounds, a Moog synth sits ready for use. As well as this, there are CD players, a seriously dodgy mixer, Roland D10, DAT and CD-R, and various other bits and pieces, bits of cable flaying loosely from most of them.

Most of the sound effects and sounds used in the games are taken from Ocean's vast sample library for the Ensoniq EPS16. Allegedly, a great deal of these samples are from Jon's own personal library. They also have a collection of sound effects CDs, which are scattered around the three rooms. Not very many of the sound effects are created in-house; only when it is absolutely necessary. For the Flintstones game, for example, Jonathan had to record Fred's "Yabadabadoo!" phrase (the resemblance was remarkable!) because Ocean couldn't get the license to use the original sample. Keith, amused by my asking if they did any recording of effects, produced a customised telephone receiver with a 1/4" jack on the end of the cable. This was their microphone.

All the samples that are taken with the EPS are then dumped via MIDI, to a sequencing program on the PC. The program they use to create music is much like Octamed; an eight track sample sequencer or 'tracker' program. The program also has facilities for receiving and dumping samples (specifically from the EPS16), and a sample editor. Like all tracker programs, the notes are inputted using values for pitch, length, various effects (like pitchbend and modulation) and sample name. These are arranged into eight columns with a number of rows, each row corresponding to a demi-semi-quaver note. The notes are then inputted, and samples auditioned, using the computer keyboard. In this way, a section of the music is created and added to a playlist of other sequences to create a full song. Sound effects are created in much the same way. Take, for example, a running sound effect. To save sample space, a single step is sampled and then sequenced to create the desired noise.

So that it sounds exactly as it will later when it has been incorporated into the code on the game, the music is replayed via a customised PC soundcard. Depending on what platform the musicians are writing for, a sound chip from that machine (be it SNES or Megadrive) is mounted on to a host adaptor and then fitted inside the PC.

According to Keith, a knowledge of the computer platform you're writing for is essential. The limitations of writing for a machine like the SNES is that there is only 64k allocated for the music part of the game. This is probably about the equivalent of a fifth of a second of a 16-bit 44kHz stereo sample, and for this reason, many of the sounds are short, 8-bit and sampled between 8kHz and 16kHz. Most of the samples vary in size from about 100bytes (less than 1/10th of a k!) to around 5k. Simple waveforms, like sine, square, and sawtooth, are used frequently, because they only need to be a single cycle to be looped easily. To add variation or interest to a sample (effectively increasing the palette of sounds available), effects like tremolo, pitch bending and transposition are applied within the sequencer.

Writing for the Megadrive is very different however, because it only has half the amount of tracks available, and uses a four operator FM chip, as opposed to being able to use samples. Jon pointed out that this can be quite frustrating, particularly if the piece you are working on has been converted from an eight part sampled sequence on the SNES. However, the Nintendo Gameboy is perhaps the most restrictive of all, having just three channels of sound. And much in the same way as it was with 8-bit basic, the music is actually inputted in script form. This presents the problem of doing something wrong somewhere at the beginning, and the rest of the music being out of time. According to Jonathan 'though, this method of composition makes you rely much more on having everything perfectly worked out beforehand.

I was treated to a performance of many of the current projects whilst there, including music and sound effects for The Shadow and Flintstones games, as well as Keith's remix of Whigfield's Saturday Night, which had us all in stitches.

Although it seems that everyone is happy writing music using these methods, both Keith and Jonathan are very much looking forward to starting work on new machines such as the Playstation, Saturn, and NeoGeo CD. I suspect that half of the fun is in the month or two it takes to get to know the machine. With all these new developments, and the increase in popularity of CD-ROM, the practices of music writing are changing at Ocean. They are currently putting together ideas for a new studio, with items such as Cubase Audio and the Waldorf Waves(!) listed as essential. Audio might now be playing a more substantial role in computer games, but it's never going to become pre-eminent. "It's like when you see an awful film, but which has a brilliant soundtrack" conjectured Jonathan, "You don't come out and say: 'Oh. the film wasn't very good, but I liked the music', you say: 'That was crap!'. The soundtrack of a computer game certainly helps the gameplay to be that much more exciting, more mood enhancing, but only a certain amount of space can ever be dedicated to it."

Jon has often thought that computer games music should be reviewed on its own merits, independently of the game. He was once going to suggest this idea to one of the computer weeklies, but the publication folded, typically enough. But if the quality of game music does continue to improve at the current rate, then perhaps one day Sonic the Hedgehog may have the Christmas number one. Oh, now what have I said...

The Composer

Debbie Wiseman's studio is something of a paradox. At the centre sits an old upright piano, and beside it, thousands of pounds of hi-tech gear. But for this composer of film, television, and now games music, a full selection of equipment has to be on hand twenty-four hours a day. At just 31, she's one of the nation's leading composers, operating in a field where versatility is of the essence.

She's in her busiest phase at the moment, with a new TV series just finished, and a project on a range of interactive games by Spears, called CD Adventure. For Debbie, film and television composing was an ambition from her earliest days.

"I was never really into concerts or anything like that. Although I love pop, I realised it was all very short term. The film that started me off was Gone With the Wind. From when I saw it as a teenager, right up until now it has stayed with me. You just can't beat it."

"At eighteen, I went to the Guildhall School of Music and was open to all sorts of influences there. These included everyone from Elton John to the French composer, Messian. I love a good melody. To me, it's everything."

Debbie's TV work has ranged from situation comedy themes (The Upper Hand) through to political documentaries (A Week in Politics'). Despite all these successes in TV, and indeed the success of the BAFTA award-nominated Tom & Viv, Debbie still manages to laugh at her first attempts to break into the business.

"I know it's a cliché, but I could literally paper the studio with the rejection letters I received when I started out."

Her first chance came in 1984, when she left Guildhall and started writing to TV stations for work.

"There was this TV show for kids called File of the Fantastic, which was a really corny Saturday morning programme with David Frost narrating strange but true horror stories. I ended up writing the music for this after a quick 'on the spot' audition, and the show became so popular it ran for three years."

Despite network success with her first show, it was sending a demo to documentary film maker Paul Bryers, that resulted in her first serious commission. She composed the score for the documentary A Vote for Hitler.

"I just sent him in some music I had written at college. It's always a good idea to send out your best tapes and see what happens. It worked for me at any rate, and since then I've built up a steady working relationship with him and other directors. Actually, one of the main difficulties in trying to write for any mixed media is the fact that it's a collaborative effort. The director or game designer has to really trust the composer, and so the relationship they have is usually one that lasts for some time. For that reason, it is hard to start a relationship with an established director. You often have to find someone on their way up who is willing to take a chance."

In Debbie's philosophy, success depends on a broad range of writing styles, from pop through to classical and jazz. It is this talent that has facilitated her transition from film and television to games writing.

"I really aspire to writing the ultimate score. Whether it's for a game or a feature film, it has to be memorable. Look at Vangelis' work on Chariots of Fire; it fits in with the film perfectly. It is just like a piece of pop music in that anyone can hum it, but set against the pictures it's so lush. It really makes the film come to life."

The game range that is out now was a bit of a creative risk for Debbie, as well as for the inventors. There was a distinct lack of financial backing for the concept of CD-based board games to begin with. Ever one for a new challenge, Debbie seized the moment. Other artists mucked in on the three minute demo, including Chris Langham (of Spitting Image fame), and Monty Python's producer, André Jacquemin.

"We went to the studio with literally just a script, no pictures or finished designs or anything. But after just an hour of playing around with effects and melodies, we'd written a three minute excerpt of the game. It was a bit of a gamble, because we did a sample of these tracks for no money or anything."

The task of selling the game was made much easier by this time, as the film Tom & Viv was nominated for a BAFTA award, and Debbie's stock was rising. With her credibility enhanced, Spears games (of Scrabble fame) instantly took an interest, and put the CD Adventure game on the release list for Christmas. Debbie then had to work solidly on the game music, while Spears worked on the artwork and the television advertisement, to promote the game worldwide.

"A game is a bit like a film. When I'm working on a film, I usually get a glimpse of the script, but what I often end up with is a 'rough cut'. The trick is to get inside the director's head, and decide what he or she wants."

Debbie took the same approach to writing for these games as she did for all of her film work, drawing all her sounds from a Roland JV80 with an Emulator III.

"The Emulator is the best sort of machine I could get, and together with the drum machine [an Alesis SR16] and an Aiwa DAT machine, I felt ready for action."

As most of her work is intended for picture, all of her equipment is locked into a Sony video recorder, so that she can see the visuals to compose to.

"I compose with just the piano. That's the basis of everything. It's quite old fashioned I know, but everything is an extension of that. From here on in, the director of the TV show, film, or game producer is brought in to look at the work, and give their first impressions.

"I love construction, and putting soundtracks together. Whether it's for films, TV, or now games, it's just like putting together a concerto, for example. But I can't just throw things up in the air like some composers do, and hope that something sticks. With me, it's a matter of getting the right elements together to begin with, and then the orchestration can begin."

Working on interactive CD games may not carry the kudos of film, but she still maintains the cinematic grandeur of her work. Like the games players themselves, they are all maturing and metamorphosing into a new species of creative media.