Into the Score - August 22, 2007

Cloud

1) Intro
2) Contact Info
3) Story of the Game
4) Production
a. Experimental Games
5) Game's Insides
6) Composer
a. Vincent Diamante
7) The Music
a. Review of Adaptive and Thematic Music
b. Explain Why Cloud is Both
c. Fixed Ensemble vs. Flexible Ensemble
i. Orchestration
d. Tension/Resolution
8) Analysis
9) Interview!

INTRO

(TITLE)

I'm Kenley Kristofferson... and this is Into the Score.

Episode 14, here it is! Hello, listeners and welcome to Into the Score, the only podcast solely devoted to the academic study of video game music! I'm Kenley, your guide for this evening as we traverse the skies with Vincent Diamante's score to the 2006 Independent release, Cloud.  This is a really exciting episode because, for the first time in Into the Score history, we are going to study a game's score and then have an interview with the composer of that very game! Yeah, it's true, Vincent Diamante will be on the show with us, so let's get ready! But before we dive in, there's just one more thing we have to do...

CONTACT INFO

Where can you find us? www.intothescore.com, as always.  Again, the server has been down at betamod, where the files for the show are stored, it's been down for quite sometime now, but if you're listening to this, then it's back up.

Before we start this episode up, I think that it's prudent to say that if you're listening to this episode, you're taking a journey that you may not have expected to take.  You're also probably just hearing what I have to say about this game because you've probably never played it... or even heard of it.  Well, before we pack our bags, you can download this game FOR FREE at www.thatcloudgame.com , one more time, that's www.thatcloudgame.com .  If you want to play it a bit before listening to this episode, that could be cool, this game is a really new experience for a player and it's worth checking out.  I feel bad in that it's only for Windows, but if you're a PC guy or girl, you get to check this game out!

Whew, alright! This is going to be a pretty big episode - we have lots to learn tonight, so I hope that you're ready to have a seriously expanded mind, because it's going to be a big trip.  But you know, that's okay, because together we are going to pack our bags with everything we need for our journey to the skies, including this next piece, "Just About Ready," from Vincent Diamante's Original Soundtrack to Cloud.

(JUST ABOUT READY)

While the piece "Just About Ready" isn't very long, I talked to Vincent and he gave me permission to play full pieces for our show today, so that was the whole loop.  We'll still be looking at some songs in bits, but we'll hear a lot of the full ones too, which is a nice treat! So, 2006 in gaming? Big year? Let's find out.

2006 IN GAMING

This is the most recent "this time in gaming" we've had, so these memories are still fresh.  On January 26th of this year, Nintendo release the Nintendo DS Lite.  On that very same day, public schools in West Virginia add Konami's Dance Dance Revolution to their curriculums to help battle obesity... and nay-sayers tell us that video games are bad for kids... ridiculous.  But that's a discussion for another day.  On April 27th, Nintendo announces its next console system - formally coded as "Revolution", the Nintendo announces the Wii.  Not even a week later, May 1st (to be exact), Time names Rob Pardo, the lead designer from World of Warcraft as one of their 100 Most Influential People, wild stuff.  May 9th was a big day for press releases, having both Microsoft and Nintendo announce some of their biggest releases in the past few years.  Microsoft shows the trailer for Halo 3, episodic content from RockStar Games (pertaining to Grand Theft Auto, of course) and the announcing of Blue Dragon, a 4-Disc RPG for the Xbox 360.  Nintendo, on the other hand, announces that the launch title for its new Wii system will not be a Mario game; it is actually Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess according to IGN.com, it is the second-highest-selling launch title ever (with Super Mario 64 being the first).

In which case, some very notable releases from 2006 include Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Kingdom Hearts II, Metroid Prime Hunters, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Mother 3 in Japan (which we know as Earthbound), Guitar Hero II, Final Fantasy III for DS and to cap it off, the PS3 and the Wii.  Man, that was a solid run.  I didn't say the companies or systems because there are really good odds that you've heard of all of these games because the history is so recent! One thing that we, as gamers and even as citizens of life in this age is that we are making history right now.  These video games are modern classics and there are some games we'll play and think "this game is going to be a classic, this game will have its place in history." And more often than not, it does.  

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_video_gaming)

Now here's a crux for us to think about - there are a lot of games that are "classics" that really... well... they really aren't that good.  It's like the radio in that way: There are a lot of awesome songs out there, but some of the ones on the radio are brutal... yet, they're on the radio.  Meanwhile, a lot of other amazing songs don't get to swim in the sea of the radio - a lot of this is independent or "indie" music. 

This very same phenomenon happens with gaming and we've been exploring that throughout this podcast, studying games like Uncharted Waters: New Horizons or Shivers, there are good odds that our listeners had never even heard of, let alone played ANY of these games - but that doesn't make them bad.  We'll see this trend of diamonds in the rough pushed to its furthest limit with this podcast here, on Cloud.   This is "First Flight" from Cloud, by Vincent Diamante.

(FIRST FLIGHT)

Mmmm... long loops.  That was "First Flight" by Vincent Diamente.  

STORY

It's hard to explain what this game is "about" because the game is really more of an experience rather than a "video game."  This is the forming concept, written by Jenova Chen.  

"When you have a strong desire of sharing an experience to the others, you have already started your design concept.

Though you may feel it in a different way, in Cloud, we tried really hard to communicate and protect this experience. It is the feeling of youthfulness, of your memory and the feeling of imagination which we all enjoyed in our life.

Where did the inspiration come from? A lot. The beautiful sky with clouds and white moon, every dream about flying including Miyazaki's films, true love, joyfulness and goodness from Katamari Damacy, childhood memories, ocean, mountains, etc...

I always wish to make a video game that makes you feel more productive and enjoy your life better. Most video game today is about addiction. But for Cloud, it is designed to be something you can put down and go back to enjoy your life at any time. No failure, no saving. You pick it up and leave it with no second thoughts..."

(http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/formingconcept.htm)

With that said, it's clear the Cloud is not a conventional game: No saving princesses, no slaying of dragons and no fighting aliens as an FPS.  Cloud is what is referred to as an "experimental game," meaning that the fundamental elements of the game are outside of the triple-A title conventions.  I mean, we heard it before, this game isn't about addiction and it doesn't really have a clear-cut story and by not having a clear story or varied setting, it really allows the player to focus on the experience.  

THE GAME'S INSIDES

Unlike previous games that we've studied with an army of people working on a project, Cloud only had a team of 7 people - seven students to be exact, as well as 4 faculty advisors.  All of the developers of this game are students at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema Television - Interactive Media Division, whose website is http://interactive.usc.edu.  The production was split up into six categories: Forming Concept, Exploration and Rapid Prototype, Production, Concept Reform and More Prototype, Wrap Up Crunching and Future Plan.  All of these are cited from the Cloud website found at thatcloudgame.com.  We read the forming concept earlier, so let's move onto "Exploration." 

The Exploration stage was largely brainstorming and discussing what everyone really wants and what the game is really about.  Through brainstorming, experience was one of the recurring themes and the design became boiled down to four specific elements along with the experience that would accompany them:

1) Gathering (the feel of satisfaction, warm and safe)
2) Abstract Shape, Creation and Dragging (the thing that makes you imagine)
3) Puff Simulation (The feel of the puffy clouds)
4) Camera (the feel of freedom).

So every element has a purpose; with that said, production began.  The crux of being students was very prevalent here as production started in January of '05, it became the slowest part of the process in a very quick way.  Through assignments, classes and exams the developers failed many early milestones and by the end of the first semester there were a few clouds and a few dots in the water.  Jenova Chen had this to say about production:

"As scary as it may sounds, deadline is your only friend when you are stuck and melting in the endless production. After maknig so many games, it is fairly obvious that a deadline will benefit people with goal, hope, moral, and surprises. Although it was half a year before IGF deadline, we came up with our own deadline in the summer and crunched 3 weeks to push Cloud to alpha. By then, the idea wasn't fresh any more, people are losing interests, we called break......

But one golden rule you have to remember: "If you can't finish making a game, it's worse than not making it." No matter how far it is from your original vision, you will always be extremly rewarded when the game is done. And believe me, amazing surprises always happen in the last several days."

(http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/production.htm)

As we know, the game was finally completed for the IGF deadline, which is the deadline for submissions to the "Independent Games Festival," because it actually won the contest.  It also won the Philosophy (Design) Award in the 2006 SlamDance Guerrilla Game Maker Competition.  Furthermore, it was presented at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop during the 2006 Game Developers' Conference, which is won of the largest (if not the largest) VG conference in North America.  Also worthy of note, it was #6 on GameInformer's "Top Ten Games You've Never Heard Of" and the link to that is in the shownotes.

http://www.joblo.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=99310

There are a lot of describing words used in the game's premise - the feeling of freedom, the thing that makes you imagine, the feeling of satisfaction, warm and safe... This trend bled into the music too, with Vincent naming all of his pieces very abstract, but project-appropriate names... "Wanting", "Intrusion," "Just about Ready..." all very emotive.  This next one that we're going to listen to follows suit, it's called "Fluffy Sweet."

(FLUFFY SWEET)

BIOGRAPHY

Vincent Diamante was born on ________ and grew up in Washington, DC.  He's going to tell you about his musical history in the interview, but one thing that we don't talk too much about is Vince's exposure to a practice called "demoscening."  Demoscening began in the 8-bit era and is a bit of a subculture, really.  It involves groups of musicians, artists or programmers in what was called a demogroup, and these demogroups would put on these non-interactive demos (essentially) of really cool visual art on the screen with really cool music, like a total-theatre for a computer screen.  These demogroups would sort of compete with other demogroups to try and show up other groups.  That was the extremely watered-down version and I am definitely not doing it justice, look it up on wikipedia.  Anyways, back to Vince...

He was in 2nd-year at USC at the time of Cloud's release... 2nd year is "sophomore," right? We don't have those in Canada, but I think that in American College then second-year is "sophomore"... maybe... Anyways.  He is now an adjunct professor at the very same college, which is really cool and you can see what he's up to on his blog - website is in the shownotes.

http://interactive.usc.edu/members/diamante/

With that said, let's get into the Music.  

THE MUSIC

Like Guy Whitmore's Shivers from two episodes past, the score to Cloud is adaptive, meaning that the music is used to show the environment more through sound than through a catchy tune.  Just to review, music that has a stronger emphasis on melody is called "Thematic Music" while music that uses sound to reinforce the mood of the atmosphere is called "Adaptive Music."  Again, most scores are not one or the other, but rather those two terms are on opposite ends of a continuum, with each score falling somewhere in between "Thematic" or "Adaptive."  It's a balance, like most things in life.

In Cloud's case, it is a balance.  Actually, similarly to Shivers, many of the pieces revolve around one theme and it's actually the first thing that we hear in the game - this is "Title."

(TITLE)

What a beautiful melody! It's very song-like, like a child singing, or a folk tune reminiscent of home... It's also oddly thematic... thematic in a game with an adaptive score.  The piece starts to get more adaptive around the halfway point of the piece, roughly 45 seconds in.  Particularly around this part...

(TITLE - 0:35 - 1:10)

Right where the second statement of the theme ends, the orchestra plays this big chord underneath - and it's not where we think it would go.  This is a common thread through the entire score of the game.  Mr. Diamante plays with our sense of expectation, leading us to an arrival point in the music, but then just when we think we know what the next chord will be... it isn't.   Let's listen to "Title" one more time and try to set up goals for where our ears think the music should go, then see where our composer takes us.

(TITLE)

Was anyone surprised? After the second statement of the theme, our song-like melody seems to fade away and these long, sustained chords come in and seem to weave one overtop of another, creating these very tense and emotional sound.  What our ears want is for this tension to resolve into a big happy chord where everything is at rest, but the composer never seems to do that, he always guides our ears somewhere else in such a way that we think he's going to resolve the tension he's built, but he never does.  Rather; he takes that tension somewhere else, to create these moving parts.  Let's look at another example of this, this is "Fluffy Sweet."

(FLUFFY SWEET)

Yeah, he sets up the piano part in a very nice, happy, major sounding pattern , so we think that it's just going to be happy.  Instead, the rest of the symphony comes in on totally different chord (the IV chord, to be exact) and creates this harmonic tension that we want to resolve, but it doesn't.  He has two different things going on here: This clever interplay between the pianos that bouncing on top of every other part, just like it normally does, then underneath, he has these long and tense string parts.  The two don't really agree - I mean, it's not like they sound bad against one another, but the dissonance between the two creates a feeling of longing and pulls at the player's heart-strings.  But one can't do that forever or else the listener gets bogged down and forgets where the center of music even is and the effect is lost, so both parts eventually meet about 40 seconds in and the piano changes to harp.  Lots of information, eh? Let's see if we can hear that in the first minute of the piece.  What happens after the harp comes in? Let's find out.

(FLUFFY SWEET 0:00 - 2:00)

Yeah, again that's "Fluffy Sweet" from the Cloud OST.  As the harp comes in, the audience kind of gets thrown a bone in having the harp and strings agree on what they're saying, it's really quite nice.  Just as we enjoy it, though, he moves away again.

This trend of toying with the listener's sense of expectation is paramount in this score and I think that Vincent does an incredible job of it.  Again, it's rarely about themes, it's more about the feelings that the music gives us as we're playing the game, that's what makes it adaptive.  Let's listen to another, how about "Method."

(METHOD)

Same thing, there's a time when he moves us and a time where he allows us to rest, absolutely brilliant.

Considering that this game is all about moving audiences and creating all of these emotions, I had to admit that I was a little bit surprised that all of the pieces were scored for orchestra.  In fact, this is the first game that's been studied on Into the Score where the music is scored for one ensemble.  In video games, I call this concept a "fixed ensemble," where all of the music is scored with a set group of particular instruments in mind.  The opposite is the method of which most video games we've studied on the show are done: Each piece is scored for a different group of musicians, which I term the "flexible ensemble."  Different composers have different views on which method is correct: Uematsu used "flexible" ensemble for all of his Final Fantasy games while Sakimoto used "fixed" for all of his FF titles, which were scored for orchestra (notably Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII).  We're going to take a look at that... in fact it's our big idea...

(MARIO CLIP)

Orchestration!

ANALYSIS

Orchestration is the art of assigning different lines or sections of music for particular instruments or instrument groups.  Naturally, different instruments have different sonic, musical or emotional reactions, so the composer takes in these elements and crafts his or her music and selects the right instruments for the atmosphere or feeling that they want.  

As we begin to use these instruments, the music begins to develop a sort of textural or chromatic sense.  I don't mean "chromatic" in the way of C# or Bb, but rather in its traditional sense, with regards to colour and painting.  "Chroma" is the Greek word for "colour"; in fact, the science of colour is called "Chromatics."  That his how ancient music theorists thought of "chromatic" pitches like the early F# or Bb, these raised or lowered tones would colour the harmony in early types of music and create these new kinds of harmonic colours.

Speaking of colours, this is a good segue into another basic idea on orchestration.  When composing music with instruments in mind, a composer will often pick more than one instrument to play a given part.  The sound of these two instruments put together is referred to as a "tone colour," and to some degree, it implies that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.  To clarify, a flute and a clarinet playing a unison melody will combine certain sonic elements of a flute with certain sonic elements of a clarinet and create a new sort of composite sound.  If we were to call the flute "yellow" and the clarinet "red" and mixed them together, we would get orange, right? The same thing happens with orchestration.  

To demonstrate this, let's have a listen to a fantastic piano suite by Modest Mussorgsky called "Pictures at an Exhibition."  Composed in 1874, the piece chronicles a visitor walking through an exhibition of Mussorgsky's friend, Viktor Hartmann, a prolific artist at the time.  This is the first exposition of Mussorgsky's "Promenade," performed by Lazar Berman and it is on the Deutsche Grammaphon music label.

(PIANO - PROMENADE)

That was "Promenade", written by Modest Mussorgsky and performed by Lazar Berman.  Now, I know what you're thinking... we are talking about orchestration, right? Dude... that's a piano.  

Well, that's what Maurice Ravel said as well, until he had this grand idea.  While he was not the first person to attempt an orchestration of this 10-movement piano suite, his is the most famous.  I believe he is the fourth person to orchestrate this, according to a wiki on the subject.  

Let's hear what Maurice Ravel had to say about the first "Promenade."  This is the Berlin Philharmonic performing "Promenade;" it is conducted by the uber-awesome Herbert von Karajan and is also recorded on the Deutsche Grammaphon label.

(PROMENADE)

Ah yes, trumpet solo of ages - this is a very famous excerpt for trumpet.  The parts in the proverbial background are all members of the brass family as well, giving the solo a sort of a halo of pride and nobility.  Then, the strings soften up the texture and entirely take over.  Listen one more time.

(PROMENADE)

So beautiful.  What I'm also not telling you is that there is more than one "Promenade" in the suite.  It seems that after Mussorgsky is looking at the paintings, he pulls himself out and returns to the Promenade where are all these paintings would be hanging.  In the piano part, Mussorgsky changes it slightly, but Ravel takes it to a whole new level and uses whole new colours... here is the second Promenade orchestrated by Ravel.

(PROMENADE 2)

Now it's led by a French horn and accompanied by a woodwind choir, giving those same notes a whole new colour - they have a whole new meaning and whole new emotions to them too.  In fact, he takes this one step further - the fourth "Promenade" is entirely woodwinds, but the deeper into the example we get, we find that the instruments want to take us somewhere else.

(PROMENADE 4) 

With that said, there is a myriad of colour that one can draw from JUST the orchestra.  Some masters of orchestration throughout history include Hector Berlioz, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.  Again, just my opinion - I think that Gustav Mahler sticks out over just about everyone in the universe, just putting that out there, his symphonies, particularly 1, 2 and 9... ugh, masterpieces! Masterpieces of orchestration!

This may be a good reason why so many works have been written for orchestra - symphonies, operas, film scores and yes, most recently, video games.  Dragon Quest VIII was done entirely by VGM veteran Koichi Sugiyama; Xenosaga was composed by Chrono series composer and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (who have performed hundreds of film scores including film score goliaths such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings).  Those are just a few examples - another one is Cloud.

Now, we have discussed playing with the audience's sense of expectation as well as the craft of orchestration, there is still one question that comes to my mind before as the next logical step... "How did the composer do it?"

Well, I could analyze and speculate all I want, but the best way to figure it out is to go right to the source.  That's right, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of Into the Score, we have the composer of the game of the episode on the show.  This interview was recorded on October 11th of 2007 and the interview is quite extensive.  It starts with his history and how he got into music, then we dig a bit more into the Cloud project.  Without further adieu, this is what transpired...

(INTERVIEW)

That was an interview with Vincent Diamante and myself, recorded between Los Angeles, California and Winnipeg, Manitoba on October 11, 2007.  This brings our Episode 14 to a close.  We studied Vincent Diamante's score of Cloud, which can be downloaded for free at www.thatcloudgame.com.  

If ever you would like to reach me, it can always be done at www.intothescore.com.  If you'd like to drop me a line, feel free to comment on any of the episodes or send me an email at Kenley@intothescore.com, it's always great to hear from you!

Next up is Episode 15, where we will be looking at Konami's Castlevania

(END)





  






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