How To Fail At Music And Sound

Music is hard, and sounds are whatever, let's take as many shortcuts as possible! It's easy to fail at this topic!

If you would like to learn to code, I recommend these great online courses! (It's what I'm using.)

Contact and Social Media:

Music:
Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod

[John-pefw]

I think I've done the opposite countless times. Started making sound effects and music until i feel overwhelmed and then give up on the game. For me, it seems music is a great way to fail at video games.

[we_slay_dragons]

I also recommend adding a single unbalanced sound effect that will blow your eardrums out. Players love this.
Props for the Video and design

[JohnSmith-ukwh]

Music is the one part of game dev I'll always, always outsource. I like doing programming, pixel art, sound design, writing, all of that stuff, but I have neither the desire nor the patience to learn how to compose. Mad respect to the musicians out there, especially those who make tracks available for free.

[ballom]

Rainworld:
"Ok dude, I'm making a game and I want someone to make music for it, i'll pay you ofc"
"...hum dude i'm a bit busy programming some stuff, so since you're a bit familiar with my game now...can you do some level design for me ?"
Yeah let's give to the music guy the responsibility of the level design...what could go wrong ?

Well rainworld happened, and there is room to make an entire video on the artistic and emotionnal feeling conveyed by the game, wich certainly take its root from the fact it was a musician who had a huge impact on the level design... in fact there was already multiple video on this topic.

[artman]

Great shortcut for making video game music: Make only a short sequence of notes and use it in every song. If anybody complains, you can just use "That's called motif!" as an excuse.

[kellywilson]

As a professional game developer, I totally loved these videos. Please make more.

[Artindi]

I made all this art in one day. 0.0
my brain hurts.

[Dmanthepowerful]

1:57 And back to collecting colourful fauna 😂

I know it was probably a mistake, but there are a lot of possibilities to imagine here:
A) Are the flowers actually animals that look like flowers?
B) Did the gameplay mechanics suddenly change after the boss fight to become a monster collector?
C) Did we just get bored of the game and started playing pokemon?
D) Do we just expect the player to be dumb enough to not know the difference between flowers and animals?
E) Is the player in a dream sequence initiated by a hidden boss mechanic, and has to fight their way out over the course of several hours just to realize that they never actually finished beating the boss?

The possibilities are endless

[Anomen]

Should I add a sound for the dash ability? I fear it might give it too much weight. After all, it's supposed to effortlessly launch forward.

[kaviscorea]

Honestly music and sound intimidate me the most. There are *so* many different videos of art, how to 3d model, how to draw, pixel art, and in regards to the technical side of things there are tons of things for that.

But in regards to music, there seems to be lackluster content especially when it's in reference for a game. And it seems even less for sound design, and using it in conjunction with coding. Like there are some minecraft mods, like Sound Physics Remastered, or like Presence Footstep. I've always wondered how the hell it works or how they did it, how I can use the same techniques for my own games and so on.

At most I've seen lots of videos on concepts of sound design, but never really the how I guess.

And it's a shame since I love when games have great audio and music, but I just have absolutely no clue how to do it myself, especially since I'm not musically inclined so I'm starting with no knowledge :P

[Aleeeec]

The one dislike is from the guy who succeeded

[alu]

Ironically, I am actually learning some stuff about what to do and what not to do, not by following the instructions given, but by doing the opposite.

[pointyorb]

My music experience boils down to:
I went to band class for 2 years and had some theory lessons to go with it
I looked at some sheet music for songs I liked and took notes

And now I can compose mediocre music!

[kataevellei]

I'm now genuinely tempted to make a platformer with a soundtrack consisting entirely of a single chiptune and random burps.

[HenrikoMagnifico]

As a musician, I always start with the music when starting a new game project. The music conveys the feeling and rythm of the game, then the rest follows after it

[krthr]

For a hackathon at work, and I took a tutorial for Unity, followed it, but skipped the last section on sound/music opting to implement sound using FMOD. It was great... until I had to present. Since it was a time-constrained hackathon, I had not considered implementing a volume control, and no one could hear me talk about the project while it was running since the volume was too loud. 😅

[mundomusicaearte]

You can also add characters speaking in different volumes, love having to lower the sound because of one character and not be able to hear another one.

[FrostMonolith]

This even outside a game context is very useful.

[Emmycron]

the amount of ear piercing screeches i've heard in game jam games as a jump sound is *insane*! biggest tip: at least make the audio not make you immediately turn the game off

[touya]

The more I watch, the more I realize I've completely set myself up for failure. But I don't care, I'll fail at everything and never try again because it's easier