Scoring For Video Games with Shaun Chasin

Film / TV / Video Game composer Shaun Chasin let us into his studio to talk about his approach for scoring the video game "Way of the Turtle" from Illusion Labs.
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Shaun Chasin Website: www.chasin.ca
Way of the Turtle Soundtrack: apple.co/2Pjv5z2
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Soundiron is a premium developer of virtual instruments and sample libraries for songwriters, composers and sound designers. They are a team of programmers, engineers, composers and instrumentalists passionate about building beautiful-sounding instrument plugins that are inspiring to play. Whether you're new to music production or a seasoned pro in the film, television, advertising, video game, or music recording industries, They’ve got you covered. Soundiron serves the best and brightest composers and artists in film & media today.
#soundiron #scoringvideogames #shaunchasin

[@walzmusic]

Composing music and making audio for games was my childhood dream and I am so happy to have a career doing it!

[@SoundironAudio]

That's amazing! Glad to hear that you're living the dream!

[@walzmusic]

@@SoundironAudio THANKS!

[@badmana5768]

How does one get started?

[@johntylerscores]

Can you talk about the money break down? I’m doing a video game score and I’m not sure how to charge?

[@Dashstyle]

​@@walzmusic🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@naagnant9939]

As a pianist transitioning to composer this video is simply amazing thank you for sharing your process

[@SoundironAudio]

Thank you for watching!

[@Tracks777]

lovely stuff

[@wlow_music]

This video and comment section is an absolute plethora of information

[@SoundironAudio]

Thank you for watching!

[@Cinematsic]

This was very informative and useful. Thanks a lot! 👌

[@bossbattleorchestra]

Switching instruments, great tip! I'll give that a try for sure

[@dougboughter7638]

Shaun, that you for this GREAT video. I'm using this as part of my curriculum for my isolation remote learning music classes. We are looking at different professions in the music field. Thanks!!!

[@SoundironAudio]

Very cool, happy teaching!

[@sdfjsd]

Why does that guy have an old Mac? Why not update to Catalina?

[@shaunchasin]

Really glad you enjoyed it! Hope it's helpful for your classes!

[@shaunchasin]

@@sdfjsd It's not very old. The iMac is from 2017. A lot of music software we depend on to work smoothly can get messed up with OS updates so it's usually a good idea to stay at least one version behind what is current until all the music software developers give the go ahead that everything is going to work with no issues on the latest OS.

[@tindzaferovic7384]

this was so informative, gold!

[@neverlow777]

Shaum Chasin is on a really pro level 🤌

[@nicholasharral6128]

Thanks for the insight Shaun! Your mock-ups sound incredible

[@SoundironAudio]

Thanks for watching Nicholas!

[@vincenttroyer779]

I'm curious, do you code the music into the game yourself or do you send it to the developers and they handle it?

[@shaunchasin]

I send them the audio files and they do the actual implementation. What I send them though is usually very specific and is figured out before hand in terms of what files are loops, stingers, transitions, intros, etc. As a game composer it's important to make yourself useful in terms of planning how the music is to be implemented and being able to communicate this very clearly with the developers. If you don't have a plan for how your music should be working dynamically then unless someone else on the team has a concept in mind, it might end up being a boring or static score. As the composer, it's your job to make sure the score works in interesting and immersive ways with the game. For example in this game for the first level the music begins with an intro file triggering at the same time as the level 1 explore loop. The level 1 explore loop has a volume of 0 and begins fading in at a set time allowing the intro music to play and then fade out as the explore music fades in. The intro and the explore layer had to be designed by me to fade into each other in a musical and seamless way but it is the developers who will be doing the actual programming to place it in the game. Small things like this throughout the score, will make it feel more tailored to the players unique game experience and less like they're just hearing loops thrown at them. There are middleware engines (Fmod, and Wwise) that are commonly used in games and often for smaller projects it can be the composer who creates the implementation file in these programs and passes it along to the developers. Usually the bigger the game is, the more they already have in mind how they want the music to be working and will give you very specific delivery specifications for the music and what kinds of assets they need from you. On smaller indie games, it's a great creative opportunity to come up with neat ways for the music to work yourself.

[@teamyordle23]

Yo I thought I commented on this video before without remembering it but then I looked at your name.

[@nucentury08]

Thank you for the Video of some underscoring Tips and your Flow.

[@jnaramusic]

Been contemplating on getting into video game composing, this was very helpful and inspiring! Thanks for sharing this:)

[@SoundironAudio]

Thanks for watching, Joshua!

[@reginaldd.paperstacks194]

Nice vibes

[@CaseyChronicle]

Enjoyed watching every second of this video! lookin forward to the next on:)

[@harrysanders818]

Fantastic Score! Really sounds amazing.

[@JonathanKillstring]

That was really informative! Been curious about the back and forth in this process. :)

[@SoundironAudio]

Thanks for watching Jonathan! Glad you found it helpful.

[@dafingaz]

Great insight and great sound!

[@SoundironAudio]

Glad you enjoyed the video! Thanks for watching!

[@dafingaz]

Soundiron no problem!

[@willycalderonofficial]

Thanks a lot Shaun! Very informative, but you’re little responses to the comment section were probably a bigger help- for me at least! So, I ask, is there a basic asset checklist we should all write loops for? For example: a intro, overworks theme, lose life theme etc? And what’s a usual or max loop size in terms of bars? And so basically composing in layers is essentially creating the most layers you can stacked on top of eachother For a set amount of bars and then implementing them in with middleware, right? Thank in advance for the response! (If there is any 😅)

[@shaunchasin]

In terms of a basic checklist, it really depends on the scope of the game. In general I would never be afraid to suggest more rather than less to the developers. They may not go for it but it doesn't hurt to suggest more. If the game has a more varied selection of loops and unique musical scenarios, then it's all going to feel more custom as the player moves through it. The last thing you want is a player to feel bored or worse yet annoyed by a loop that overstays its welcome. It can be really helpful in preventing this boredom if there are a lot of scenarios where the game will move to a different set of musical assets. In terms of length of loop, the sky is really the limit. I wouldn't think of it in terms of bars, but just simple time. If you have the chance to play test the game it can be helpful to try and get a sense of the average amount of time it will take to play an area. If it will take 20 minutes to get through an area then a 1 minute loop isn't going to cut it and will be super annoying after a while. A cool way to get more bang for your buck out of loops is by having them be different lengths. With melodic stuff it doesn't work so much unless you're really carful but with percussion loops, it can lead to some really interesting results. Say your main explore loop is 32 bars. If you create a percussion groove that is say 29 bars, then every time it loops around it will be placed over a different part of the main loop leading to interesting accents and rhythm interactions you may not have been expecting. Check out Clapping Music by the composer Steve Reich. Every time the passage loops around, one of them is shifted over by one beat and as you listen you get all these really interesting interlocking rhythms that you wouldn't have expected. You could argue Steve Reich "only composed one bar of music" but the way he's implemented it allows for a really interesting 4 minutes of non repeating music to unfold. In game music you can implement this kind of thing by simply having your loops be different lengths so they loop around with each other in interesting ways. Note though with percussive stuff you're likely to get cool results but with tonal stuff you might end up with unintentional clashes that you aren't intending with this technique. Always make sure you test out your loops in as many ways as you can predict they'll be heard so you can make sure it will always sound as you intend. In terms of stacking lots of layers, I would be carful with this and wouldn't make it a goal to stack as many layers as you can. That would get out of hand and sound too busy very quickly. A general rule that might be helpful is that the more layers you have, the more sparse each one should be. That way they're not competing with each other. For most projects 2 or 3 layers is common. I've been asked to do more in rare instances but more than 2 or 3 layers is pretty unusual. A good technique to make sure it won't be too busy is instead of creating layers by adding music, create them by removing music. Start by writing your full track with everything you may want in it, then remove certain elements to be used as their own layer. For example the percussion might be on one layer, the brass alone might be on one layer and then everything else is on the main layer. As the brass enters, the music already feels more epic and heroic, and then as the percussion enters we get that battle tension. This way we don't need to be worried about a huge mess of competing sounds. As always experiment with your loops in your DAW to see how they feel and have fun!

[@cinebeatmusic307]

Hey Shaun, what's your advice for getting started in games as a composer.

[@futur_sunds]

Honestly, play a lot of games (different games) and listen to a lot of music. Listen with an open mind and just try to understand what your hearing and figure out how you can use it as inspiration. Play a lot of games to get an idea of how the music blends with the game. See when it fades in and when it fades out. Listen and look for different sections of the game, like how the music transitions from a normal peaceful land to all of a sudden a monster appears, boss battles, dialogue music, different map themes, pay attention to how all of those things work. Hope this helps :)

[@emanuel_soundtrack]

let me call this butter phantasy? sounds all so smooth and comfortable

[@Shanluki]

Amazing video. I have a question about the volume of every track ¿is there a standard level for all of them?

[@jennyhasted7405]

Hi Shaun love your stuff , any advice on process of getting companies/ People interested in the music my son composes for computer games please ?

[@sambryant163]

Hey Shaun. Incredible video, very detailed and I’ve learnt so much just from watching this and the creative process that’s necessary from a composition point of view. I’m a composer looking to start creating for video game music, what sound libraries would you suggest I look into purchasing?

[@PluieMelodique]

depends on what kind of music you have in mind. there are thousands of libraries tailored for all genres. writing for video games often involves some orchestral vibe with hybrid sounds.

[@albertpepper1]

Hi Shaun beautiful video and so interesting! I would love to start composing for VideoGames but don't know where to start, any suggestion regarding that? I love the Final Fantasy games and I'm trying to simulate the composition style on my DAW but besides that would need some guidance. Any good advice? Do you teach? All. the best Alberto

[@adamantiumreaver4283]

Check Alex Moukala and Guy Michelmore

[@midianoctav]

Hello, mr shaun I wanna ask a silly question if i may Do you play the game that you're going to work with on every project? I see that you sync your music with that gameplay videos for each scene Do you make that yourself or the company sent that to you? Thank you

[@orchestralmadhouse2810]

Nice work, Strings sound great. which sample library are you using.

[@shaunchasin]

The strings are a combination of things. The bread and butter of it is Cinematic Studio Strings. For spiccato i use fluid shorts, and then where needed I use spitfire chamber evolutions, albion tundra, and other little aux string libraries like that along with custom recorded samples for string fx.

[@vlogswithankitnayakvlogs]

Nice

[@SoundironAudio]

Thanks for watching!

[@skippyzk]

this dude is so chill. i'd really like to smoke weed with him

[@zionularwow1796]

Do you work with the same DAW for all gaming projects?

[@RockFlexible]

Very interesting, btw. what is this string instrument at 0:05?

[@shaunchasin]

It's a Guitar Viol and it's awesome! It's made by a luthier named Jonathan Wilson togamanguitars.com/

[@SoundironAudio]

That is a Guitarviol made by Jonathan Wilson. togamanguitars.com/ Thanks for watching!

[@Bertthemovieguy]

Where your track is complete what file types do your customers usually want?

[@shaunchasin]

For film and TV it's almost always 48kHz 24 bit Wav files. For video games, especially for mobile games, a lot of wav files can take up an awful lot of hard drive space really quickly so if they're trying to keep the size of the game down then music often ends up as a .ogg which is essentially an open source version of an mp3. It's important to note for video games when you're often dealing with loops that an mp3 can't loop seamlessly. mp3s must be one of a certain set of lengths and if the length of the file is slightly longer than one of these lengths then it will add some fraction of second of silence to the end of the file until it gets to the next available export length. This silence in the file will cause a noticeable click at the loop point thus making mp3 more or less useless for game audio. An OGG file doesn't have this limitation and the file sizes are fairly small while still sounding good making it a pretty common file format for games. Most DAWS can't export to OGG so you would export it from your DAW as a wav file and then convert it using a program like Adapter or some other conversion program. Adapter is free! For bigger games where hard drive space isn't a limitation then WAV is the way to go as it can both loop seamlessly and there is no compression so you're getting your full quality audio.

[@fernandobardelin2014]

Greetings Shaun! Would you tell me what Midi Controller you've been using for these jobs?

[@shaunchasin]

Currently I'm using the M-Audio Code 61.

[@sdfjsd]

That guy has a super old Mac. I like that. Old macs are awesome.

[@karenliu1316]

How can you tell? Just curious

[@wenFFBE8372]

What software is this? 🤔

[@SoundironAudio]

Logic X

[@alecgurdon5197]

Eton yah

[@KrazyKarma]

Bungie kills it when it comes to the OST