Interactive Music Sequencer Design

Interactive music sequencer design for games is a real mouthful -- or rather an earful -- and a pretty large topic to boot. I'll begin with a summary of the motivations for making interactive music and then get in to the design discussion. To make the design discussion a bit more manageable, I will assume a lot of familiarity with music and synthesizer details and put greater focus on design options and programming methods. First, I will talk about the design issues in making a computer music language. Second, I will consider the controls available with audio synthesis. Third, I will add the issues related to providing interactive music functions for game control. Throughout, I will focus on concepts that directly influence interactivity, and point out approaches that make the complexity more manageable and help to make implementation practical.

Motivations for Interactive Music

Most forms of electronic entertainment include music. Games, movies, and TV shows are seen as incomplete without music. We hear music at the introduction to news programs, on our mobile phone rings, in department stores, and at coffee shops.

Music is its own form of entertainment. We listen for styles, attitudes, technology, improvisation, composition, and skilled performances. Our memories associate music with past situations, friends, places. We associate music with love and hate.

Games include music for many reasons: To identify with a particular audience. To establish attitude, tension, and mood. To let them hear the pride and glory of success or shame and ridicule of defeat. To march them off to the drums of war. To take them to a magical place. To set them in the past. To set them in the future. To take them to alternate worlds. To bring them back to reality. Music instantly adds definitions and associations beyond what the visuals can do.

Games are interactive. This means a player has control over the game in some way and the game asks the player to interact in some way. This control and interaction are the basis for how a game becomes immersive and entertaining. The quality of control and interaction are the basis of successful games.

Therefore, it is natural to want to mix the immersive quality of control and interaction in computer games with the immersive qualities of music. How do we control music? How can we create musical interaction? This is the motivation for this article.

The reasons for developing your own interactive music sequencer code are the same as the reasons for any code development. You may want standard features across many platforms. There may not be systems available that meet your needs. You may want an implementation that you can optimize for delivering the particular features you need. You may want control over your own code to provide improvements, enhancements, and reliability in line with internal scheduling requirements.