Into the Score - August 22, 2007

Shivers

1) Intro
2) Contact Info
3) Story of the Game
4) Game's Insides
5) Biography
6) Composer
a. Guy Whitmore
7) The Music
a. Monothematic - to the extreme!
b. Orchestration
8) Analysis
9) Arrangement
a. "Cerebral Rose Jam"

INTRO

(101 - OPENING)

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

Good evening everyone! Kenley Kristofferson here and you're listening to Into the Score, which is the only podcast solely devoted to the academic study of video game music.  Tonight, we look at Sierra's 1996 release called Shivers and the man who wrote it, Mr. Guy Whitmore.  Also, we'll study up on orchestration and listen to some awesome music! How do you reach us? Well I'm so glad you asked...

CONTACT INFO

Our website is www.intothescore.com and it's open 24-hours a day, 7 days a week.  You can reach me at Kenley@intothescore.com.  That email now works... very nice.  What else has been happening in life? I started my job teaching music at Maples Collegiate, a high school here in Winnipeg and it is amazing.  I'm pretty bagged, but it's worth it - the subject material is super fun, the students are amazing (not only as musicians, but wonderful people too) and I agree with everything about the school and the division - everything just seems to be lining up incredibly.

What else has happened? OCReMix's Final Fantasy album project "Voices of the Lifestream" was released this week.  It's amazing, you have to download it - it can be found at http://ff7.ocremix.org.  In fact, "Music 4 Games.net" reviewed it earlier this week and gave it a stellar review... the review is in the shownotes. http://www.music4games.net/Review_Display.aspx?id=97

If you missed Episode 10, it was on Final Fantasy VII, so if you want to do hear part of the original score and get educated on the game, you can check that out first! Where can you do that? www.intothescore.com.  So, what about some Shivers? If you insist, this is "Inventions" from Sierra's 1995 release, Shivers by Guy Whitmore.

(INVENTIONS)

Alrighty, 1996 - what happened in games? According to the "Chronology of Video Game Systems (1996)", a lot of things.  The year begins with Acclaim releasing Mortal Kombat III on both the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation, pretty cool stuff.  Speaking of Sony PlayStation, Square releases the official documentation that it will be releasing Final Fantasy VII for the PS1 and not for a Nintendo System in January of that year.  January also saw the release of Duke Nukem 3D  and became a monsterously popular First Person Shooter for subsequent years, but not the only one... we'll get to the next in a minute.  The following month, Nintendo releases the pivotal title Pokemon Red in Japan, and that's for the Super Game Boy - another great game.  

And that brings us to March.  March of 1996 marks the release of a game that some video game scholars will say created the genre of "survival horror."  It was put out on the Sony PlayStation platform... any guesses... any ideas... if you're thinking Capcom's "Resident Evil", then you're right.  It will have sold almost 1,000,000 copies by the end of 1996.  

You know how there are always two really big releases that are similar at the same time in movies.  Like "A Bug's Life" and "Antz", or "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact"? Well, this happened for First Person Shooters as well.  Id software releases Quake for the PC console in May of this year - crazy big release.  

Even another great game is released in May of that year - a Nintendo/Squaresoft collaboration project called Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, I love that game... great premise, lots of fun, awesome music... really had fun with it! Anyways, that game was released on May 13, 2006.  Two days later, an American audience would get its first taste of the new Nintendo 64, with Mario 64 playing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, which held 55,000 in attendance over the weekend.  

An incredibly important day of that year was June 23rd - the day when Nintendo releases the Nintendo 64 in Japan.  That same day, Mario 64 is released and both of which sold 500,000 units in the first day alone... wow.  It reached North American shores on June 29th.  Nintendo also released another system that year, the Game Boy Pocket - and that was on September 13th.  

On the internet side of things, a website specializing in video game MIDI called,VGMusic.com is launched.  It is one of the oldest VGM sites on the internet, surpassing even such goliaths as Google, Digg and Slashdot.  Information taken for that segment was researched from "Chronology of Video Game Systems (1996) and the Wiki article for 1996 in Video Gaming - both URLs are in the shownotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_in_video_gaming

http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/vidgame/vid1996.htm


Now let's get to some music - Sierra released Shivers in 1995 and its got some pretty terrifying music.   With a dissonant music box and the incessant rolling of tape, this is "Fortune Teller" by Guy Whitmore.

(FORTUNE TELLER)

STORY

So what is this game even about? The game begins with a video (set in the first person) of the player getting taunted by his friends to stay in a haunted museum called "Windlenot's Museum of the Strange and Unusual".  I know, it's a bit of a stereotype and we don't seem to be off to a good start, but let's just bare with me.  The museum is owned by the archaeologist, Hubert Windlenot but he's been dead for about 15 years - now the game begins.  

So you're trapped outside and you have to break in somehow - and you do, through the well... and you get in there by solving a puzzle.  The whole museum is riddled with puzzles... (hahaha, play on words) and as you venture deeper into the museum, you discover its tragic end as a public attraction and about the life and discoverings of Professor Windlenot.  However, you also find out that two local teens were claimed missing from years back... and they have dangerous ties to the museum... 

Both teens actually made it into the museum, but tragically got separated from one another.  They left each other notes about these mysterious spirits and these jars and lids... now things start getting weird.  

The player eventually puts together that the Professor found these jars that had evil spirits called Ixupi in them, and only when they are trapped in the correct jar with the lid, can they be trapped forever.  This is your task in the game - trap the 12 Ixupi in 12 canisters.  There is a bit more detail to the game, but that's the basic story.  I'm not sure if you can still find it, but if you can get your hands on it, buy this game... it came out 11 years ago, it shouldn't be more than five or ten bucks.

Before we get into some of the game's specifics, let's hear some tunage.  This is the "Planetarium" area of the game, again, by Guy Whitmore.

(PLANETARIUM)


THE GAME'S INSIDES
Really cool stuff, really cool - that was "Planetarium."  The game is most similar in style to older PC games like The 7th Guest or Myst, using a first person viewpoint but pre-rendered pictures to navigate through in the game.  According to the Wiki on Shivers, over 2500 watercolours were scanned in, touched up in Photoshop and 3D Studio Max, then booted into the game.

The bulk of the gameplay is based on the solving of puzzles.  Some puzzles are very easy, like realizing that each Ixupi has an elemental property (the solution to this is in a book hidden in the first areas of the museum) to ridiculously difficult.  So, if there is a fire pot and a fire jar, the next logical step may be to go to an area where fire could exist in the museum - say the fireplace or the lava pits, that's an easy one.  I'll get back to the premise of the museum in just a minute.  A harder one may be puzzles that have several steps and have to be solved in sequence - the puzzle regarding the UFO in the Planetarium for example.  An even harder one maybe the infamous "Chinese Checker" puzzle in the Mythology room of the museum, which involves SEVERAL moves (I think 40) that have to be performed so that every piece on the Chinese Checker board is killed off EXCEPT ONE, and that one ends with being in the very middle of the set... nearly impossible, I had to cheat for that one.  In any case, they are of varying difficulty.

Let's get back to that Museum part of the discussion that we mentioned before.  One tip of my hat that I have to Sierra is picking a really dynamic atmosphere that is conducive to a many, many stimuli.  Museums have exhibits, right? Well, this museum has many exhibits... and... because it is the "Museum of the Strange and Unusual", there is a lot of room for things to be very creepy and all very different from another.  And, some places aren't even exhibits! There is a secret cave beneath the office, there's an office, there is a subterranean cavern... just a truly splendid job.  

The icing on the cake for me, was the music - that's our next section.  To get us there, this is "Stonehenge Entrance" by Guy Whitmore from Sierra's 1996 release, Shivers.

(STONEHENGE ENTRANCE)

BIOGRAPHY

Let's start this section with a biography on our composer, Mr. Guy Whitmore.  Guy Whitmore has been a freelance composer specializing in video games since 1994.  Some of his most credited games are Shivers, Die Hard: Nakatomi Pizza, Russian Squares and most recently, the Gears of War Limited Collector's Edition... pretty sweet.  His credits were researched at Mobygames.com.  

Mr. Whitmore studied Music at both Northwestern and Southern Methodist University.  After his academic career drew to a close, he wrote music for regional theatre production and independent film all around the US including Dallas, Los Angeles and New York.  He is also one of the co-founders of both the Seattle Composers Alliance and an independent firm called "Music Design Network," so he is definitely a busy guy not only in the studio, but also in the community.  Information researched in an interview with Guy from the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group, the website is in the shownotes.  

http://www.iasig.org/pubs/interviews/guy_whitmore.shtml

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

THE MUSIC

The music in this game is different from every other game that we've talked about in this podcast and its different for a few reasons.  The first is that most games we've talked about have a fairly long full-length score - Kingdom Hearts, Mega Man 2 or 3, Final Fantasy VII or any of the Chrono series.  The CD version of the KH OST is 2 discs long, Chrono Cross is 3 and FF7 is 4 discs long.  Well, the total length of the Shivers OST is a mere 11:49.  Not too long at all...

... But you know what, this is a strength for this game.  A score doesn't have to be long to be good - both this episode and Episode 14 are going to demonstrate that incredibly well.  

At the time, this score was unlike anything that the gaming world had really been exposed to, with the notable exception of Cyan's production, Myst, which came out 5 years earlier.  There were a lot things that I actually didn't realize about this score until I started studying it and I've played through this game three times already.  

Now, how is this score different from the other games we've studied, you ask? Let's listen to an example, and see if you can pick up what I'm going to say... Listen for a theme, listen to the instruments... listen to the feeling that the music is trying to give you... this is "Lake Exit" and it's by Guy Whitmore.

(LAKE EXIT)

Did you hear a theme? Probably not, but you probably got a feeling of what the composer was trying to visually or through different sensory responses.  While I said that "Orchestration" was going to be the big theme of the episode, it is a critical part of an even bigger idea that will be in both this episode and Episode 14 - which is our big idea for the episode: (MARIO CLIP).  Adaptive Music.  

There are some graphics that will support this, if you'd like to follow along - they'll be on this post on the intothescore.com site.  As most things in life, almost nothing is black and white and almost everything is on a "shades-of-grey" type of continuum.  The continuum that I'll be referring to during this episode is what could be called a basic continuum of basic musical composition.  In other words, the type of consideration that composers use when writing music for a game.

Okay, cue graphic 1: 

With regards to some of the most basic questions of composition, the two extremes with regards to gaming are THEMATIC and ADAPTIVE.  First we'll talk about Thematic music, so turn to Graphic 2.  

Thematicism, or the practice of using musical themes, is the association of a melody to a given character, setting or motive in a work.  It is usually tonal, meaning that is major or minor and it's usually memorable - so after you hear it, you could probably whistle it a few minutes later.  Let's hear some examples of this in everyday life.

(IMPERIAL MARCH)

Hmmm... do we know that one? If you said the "Imperial March" from Star Wars, you're right.  Every time we hear that theme, or even part of the theme, we know that Darth Vader is coming.  Let's take a look at another.

(CONCERNING HOBBITS)

How about this one? It's the Hobbit theme from Lord of the Rings - "Concerning Hobbits", if you'd like to know the real name.  How about one from a video game? Here we go...

(LOCKE'S THEME)

Okay, this one is a bit more classic.  This is "Locke's Theme" from Final Fantasy VI - it also the basis of "Forever Rachel", which regards Locke's earlier love in the game.  All of these pieces have very memorable tunes or melodies that represent a character, making them essentially "thematic."

While thematicism is nice, it sure isn't everything in gaming.  The other side of the spectrum in Graphic 1 is the style of "Adaptive Music."  Now it's time for Graphic 3.  and "Adaptive Music," which means that the sound is used to sonically show what is happening on the screen, rather than telling it through a catchy tune.  It's usually (but not always) atonal, meaning that it is neither major nor minor, it's just kind of... sound.  It's representative of the emotional quality of the environment - sometimes nice, sometimes spooky, sometimes archaic... it's hard to say.  And the last point that I have to say about Adaptive music is that it is sometimes called "programmatic music" or "ambient music", but not to be confused with the trance style of music called "ambient."

Just to show some of this adaptive style of writing, let's listen to some examples.  This is "Watery Grave" from the MMORPG Ragnarok by Seock Jin-Lee.

(WATERY GRAVE)

"Watery Grave" is a fantastic example of adaptive music: There are a lot of random kinds of sounds, neat synth effects, cool drum samples... it's even hard to find out what is happening in terms mode and key - is it major? Minor? Does it have a key? I don't know! Now let's compare that with what we heard before: "Lake Exit" from Shivers and by Guy Whitmore.

(LAKE EXIT)

Alright, so we hear that this piece definitely has a key, but it's almost hard to tell what the melody is.  Instrumentally, the melodic instrument is a harpsichord that is doing some very fast and scalar passages and maaaaaybe a cello or double bass very faintly in the background.  In other words, there really isn't a lot of melodic content going on, it's really just using the instruments to paint a picture with sound, which is exactly what adaptive music is - sonically showing the piece rather than telling it through a melody.  With that said, listen to it one more time, just a snippet.

(LAKE EXIT)

Let's listen to some more room themes where the sound is showing us the environment.  Pay careful attention to instrumentation - how is the composer using instrumentation to colour the sound? The first musical example is the music in the Clock Tower, simply called "Clock Tower."

(CLOCK TOWER)

So yeah, the melody doesn't really sound like anything, really, but the cello solo definitely gives us a sense of darkness and to me, almost a sense of longing.  The next clip that we're going to play is the music in a room called "Man's Inhumanity to Man" and it chronicles all of the different ways that humanity has killed each other over the years.  The room is entirely stone with physical examples of a gallows, an electric chair and much more.  The loop is only 10 seconds, so I'll loop it twice.  

(MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN) x2

All it is is snare drum playing a funeral march type loop and a totally distorted... something... maybe a voice? It's hard to say, but it definitely conveys the message - this room is not cool.  Then if there's an Ixupi in the room...

(INHUMANITY 2)

A distorted and overdriven voice of a man screaming, then dying... is it music? Could be, scares the hell out of me, though.

Another short but poignant example is the Funeral Rites room, which simply exhibits different ways that different cultures celebrate the passing from one life to the next.  It has a very tribal sense - again, not very thematic, but its drums tell us what the room is like.

(FUNERAL RITES) x2

Our last example is from the Theatre, where people can watch a movie about a Subterranean Cavern in the Museum.  Note the use of ambient noise, like people talking or things clicking... the terrifying thing about this piece, however, is that the room... is completely empty...

(THEATRE)

Now, with that said, instrumentation and orchestration is crucial in thematic music too, because the instrument playing the theme is as important as the theme itself.  Let's compare it to visuals - let's say that the melody is like a picture.  Just as one can draw the picture with a pencil, pastels or a paintbrush, that picture visually changes according to the medium that you use to draw it.  Now, with a melody, it will be interpreted differently according to the instrument that plays it.  

One really solid example of this is, actually, a wind ensemble chart called "Children's March" and it's by one of the greatest composers for winds of all time, an Australian man by the name of Percy Aldridge Grainger. The A section melody starts with bassoon, bass clarinet and bari sax, then the clarinets take over the melody about 40 seconds in, the euphoniums get in there and the trumpets and percussion finish off the first section.  So really, it's like a bunch of different kids, really, and all of the instruments give you a sense of what the each different child is like.  Here's the example:

(CHILDREN'S MARCH - 0:20 - 2:00)

Alrighty, so as each instrument changes, the character of the melody changes.  Now, if we take a look at Graphic 4, we see a continuum of pieces of that are either more thematic or more adaptive.  We see Super Mario Brothers as being very thematic - obviously, we see Ragnarok as a bit more adaptive and we see Shivers actually being closer to thematic - which is my own analysis and I'll tell you exactly why.

There is one piece that we have yet to play that I think is the most important piece of the game.  It's playing in the Library section of the Museum, it's called "Library 2."

(LIBRARY 2)

While the game's score is definitely adaptive, the game is also monothematic, meaning that the game is essentially based on a single theme.  However, like any good writer, Mr. Whitmore has taken that theme and really crafted it to suit every different room and even connected the music from one room to another - we'll hear more of those later in the episode, but it's that principle that makes it adaptive.  And that's going to take us to the analysis portion.

ANALYSIS

The one thing that makes this game different from many others with regards to the connection between music and gameplay is architecture.  The music takes place within one building - a museum, to be exact.  In gaming, that's not really anything new, there are a lot of games that take place in one small place.  The difference in Shivers is that a museum has different exhibits so the game is not like one building that looks the same everywhere, rather the opposite, actually: Where every room is very different from the room next to it.

The challenge here is that we don't want the game to feel shifty, because when we do that, the whole unity of the museum doesn't happen and the game feels like a bunch of random rooms that are thrown together, which doesn't achieve the end.  Our composer had to find a way to link the rooms together - making each room important while still ensuring that everything is still a cohesive unit, tough problem to have.  

The way he's done this is taken one element from each room preceding or each room following it and placed it in a room's theme.  To show this, let's go for a walk through the museum.

At the beginning of the game, we get put outside after we get dared from our friends to go stay the night.  We eventually find the Stonehenge Entrance, which sounds like this.

(STONEHENGE ENTRANCE)

So very adaptive, ambient, very simple but mysterious.  When we find the stairwell into the Underground Entrance to the Museum, we hear this as we walk the path downwards.

(SUBTUNNEL)

The long synth lines from the Stonehenge Entrance are now as long, but distorted in the Sub Tunnel.  It's not note-for-note, but it's the same style.  When we navigate through the tunnel, we approach the Lake Exit, which doesn't sound very much like the tunnel but rather, sounds more like the pieces following.  Here's "Lake Exit."

(LAKE EXIT)

Okay, things start to get a bit more Baroque sounding with that one, as we leave the Lake Exit, we approach a hidden office which branches to the Library - you may or may not take that wing, but if you do, you'll hear this.

(LIBRARY)

The Library music seems to slow down the rhythm of Lake Exit but still keeps a very keyboard-esque feel, making the transition from fast harpsichord to slower synth a bit smoother.  The next theme, Library 2, is even slower in terms of musical motion, so this first Library also acts as a sort of intermediary piece between the Lake Exit and the actual insides of the museum.  The last point that I'd like to make about the Library room theme is that it also begins framing the theme of the game in the tones of its melody.  The best way to show this is by playing them back-to-back.  First I'll play the Library music, then I'll move right into Library 2, you'll hear the difference between the two pieces.  Here's "Library"

(LIBRARY)

(LIBRARY 2)

So we can hear how the musical motion really slows.  "Library 2" is the first time that we hear the theme of the game... or so we think.  It isn't until we get to the next room, which is the Main Hall, that we hear the theme in its entirety: "Library 2" is just one section of the theme (albeit the most important one).  Let's do another transition - this is "Library 2" into the Main Hall.

(LIBRARY 2)

(MAIN HALL)

Okay, so now we've heard the thematic melody in its entirety.  Notice how all of the thematic pieces are now in the same key - this adds cohesion from room to room and makes each room sound similar to the one before or after it, while still offering the ability to be different and individualized.  

It's also appropriate that the Main Hall be the first time that we hear the melody because this room is like home base of the museum - many paths branch off from this room into other exhibits, like a spider web.  

Sometimes, theme is used in subsequent rooms - one example of this is one we've earlier... the Fortune Teller.

(FORTUNE TELLER)

Another example of this is the "Gods and Relgious Items" room, which naturally chronicles a lot about mythology and ancient people's beliefs.  The theme is in a lower synth with a sample of a man opening and closing his mouth... very cool.  

(GODS)

The last example of this that we'll use is in the Puzzle Room, with a creepy laughing man and some serious pitch-bending action.

(PUZZLE ROOM)

That room just freaked me out when I was playing through this. 

Other times, the theme is implied through other musical elements - like harmony.  The "Inventions" room does this really well.  Instead of playing the melody, there's a repeating rhythm with chords that imply the melody, here's "Inventions."

(INVENTIONS)

Another way that Guy Whitmore has adapted the music for architecture is using location-based sounds and physical space to introduce the sound.  It's a bit hard to explain using words, but you'll understand when I play the examples.

A theme can be introduced in one room, then the music could change because of the physical features of the room - almost like on-the-fly mixing.  Then, when you finally get to your target area, the theme erupts in all of its glory.

The one section of the museum that I'm referring to is the Planetarium.  There's a small blue room that really, only has a staircase in it and it introduces the Planetarium's music...

(STAIRWELL)

Now as you're coming up the stairwell, there's a small platform that ascends into the next staircase and, while you're only in it for a second, the music changes and it sets up the Planetarium theme, but it sounds like you're outside the door or hearing it from far away.

(PLANETARIUM HALLWAY)

Then as you finally reach the main room Planetarium, you hear the main theme.  

(PLANETARIUM)

So yeah, essentially one theme that changes throughout the walk, very cool.  Lots of work has gone into really planning out this score in a cohesive, adaptive and creative way.  My kudos to Guy Whitmore - but now let's see what someone else has done with his music.

ARRANGEMENT

Arrangement time! Truth be told, in my entire history of hunting down VGM arrangements, I've only ever found one from Shivers.  It was arranged by Michael Dover, aka Israfel out of Garland, TX and it's called "Cerebral Rose Jam."  It was submitted and approved to OverClocked ReMix in December of 204 and  it's a very ethnically-charged arrangement, lots of neat melodic material and really awesome production.  It you want a copy for yourself in better quality and stereo, make sure to pick it up at www.ocremix.org.  

Speaking of OverClocked ReMix, they have just completed a monumental album project called "Voices of the Lifestream."  It is the largest collaboration in the history of OverClocked ReMix, uniting over 40 arrangers, resulting in 45 tracks of music lasting over 3 and a half hours long! 

Episode13 is going to be on this monumental project, so instead of highlighting a game, we're going to be studying an album.  

For more information on tonight's big idea - Thematicism and Adaptivity, I gave a presentation last year to the Winnipeg Game Development Group here in the city and the following video is on that presentation.  It's the basics of game music composing - I mean, not that I'm a pro, but I've scored two games already, so it's getting better each time.  It'll be the next "mini-episode," so keep your eyes peeled!

Looks like this wraps up Episode 12! This has been "Into the Score", the only podcast solely devoted to the academic study of video game music! Thanks so much for listening, and this is "Cerebral Rose Jam" by Israfel - have a great week!

(CEREBRAL ROSE JAM)

(END)





  






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