Interactive music

Interactive music also known as nonlinear music or adaptive music, is synonymous with soundtracks to interactive media and in particular computer games.

Recently there has become an increasing trend away from detached linear scores similar to those found in the linear narratives of film, in favor of advanced, carefully designed audio, more tightly integrated with the gameplay in today’s interactive entertainment titles. We are now at the stage where a musical score is able to adapt in real-time to what is happening in a game.

The music in a game is able to adapt to a users movements through a storyline using two techniques. Horizontal re-sequencing is the method by which pre-composed segments of music can be re-shuffled according to a players’ choice of where they go in the storyline or environment. Vertical re-orchestration is the technique of changing the mix of separate parts of an on-going loop, relative to a players movement within the narrative of a game. Recent games such as Bungie Studios: Halo 2 (2005) employ a mixture of these techniques to create their tightly integrated soundtracks.

In the context of performance, interactive music indicates performer/composer to computer interaction, while in the past it most often specified performer to audience interaction. According to composer Todd Winkler (2001), interactive music is "a music composition or improvisation where software interprets a live performance to affect music generated or modified by computers," however, as he also points out, all music is "interactive" to a certain extent. At one end of a spectrum he puts a conductor led large ensemble such as in Romantic era classical music, and on the other free jazz, he suggests using all examples of musician to musician interaction as models for computer to musician interaction.

Don Buchla designs many electronic and virtual instruments which are used in interactive music.

Source

• O’Donnell, M, (2002) ‘Producing Audio for Halo’ http://halo.bungie.org/misc/gdc.2002.music/
• Winkler, Todd (2001, 1998). Composing Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max. Cambridge: The MIT Press. ISBN 026223193X.

External links

• http://www.iasig.org
• On Composing Interactive Music by John Szinger, 1996
• http://www.rainerlinz.net/NMA/articles/interactive.html