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procedural audio is all about (for further discussion
on the limits of realism and definitions of percep-
tual realism, see Grimshaw, 2008; Grimshaw &
Schott, 2008; Hug, 2011).
powerful analytical technique. Perhaps this paucity
of imagination is where game audio, driven by an
adolescent sense of inadequacy in the “realism”
department (which I hope we have established
is largely irrelevant anyway), differs from film.
The way that game audio will break away from
it's older brother's shadow may be to break into
a fresh abstract and modernistic movement, not
rejecting the concrete in a reactionary way, but to
find a proper voice for the living, reactive qualities
that the video game can offer as a form.
scHOOLs OF DEsIGN
I would like to talk a little about the “how?” of
procedural audio. Rather than dwelling on the
dry, mathematical subject of synthetic methods
it seems more fun to cluster the use of methods
into schools of thought. This sideways glance
may provoke some thoughts about application of
synthetic methods in procedural systems because
each exposes a different view of abstraction and
control.
Essential
Essentialists are preoccupied with exactly model-
ling, one to one, those physical features of real-
ity with sonic effect. For hard proponents such
as Hiller and Ruiz (1971) or Zheng and James
(2009), brute force modelling from elementary
equations of material and fluid dynamics is the
paradigm. Moderates such as Smith (1992), Cook
(2002), Bilbao (2009), and Karplus and Strong
(1983) are happier with approximations offering
computational efficiency or analogous behaviour.
Common analogous methods are waveguides,
which are finite or recursive filters designed as
acoustic models of spaces, finite element model-
ling, mass spring damper arrays used prima facia
to model energetic propagation on a per point
basis or such as tensor arrays aimed at solutions
over continuous manifold. They are, of course,
inherently causal. Beyond sound, modelling one
can identify radical essentialists who seek not just
depth but full concurrency and coherence with
the audiovisual, a high ideal in which the sonic
and visual characteristics of a modelled object/
process are a product of the same underlying be-
haviour (and computation). Here we would, for
example, use the same fluid dynamic equations
to render a view of rippling water waves and the
sounds made. This breed of essentialists want to
recreate the real world within their computers and
love helium cooled supercomputers, extravagant
research budgets and William Gibson novels.
concrete
I mention this first because the liberation of sound
design requires at least a few more punches to the
jaw of orthodoxy, if only to wake it up. Let the
concrete school represent all that we are trying to
attack and reject, the use of recorded samples and
the attendant culture of infantilising commodifica-
tion (“one problem one product”). I like the term
concrete, as it derives from musique concrète
conveying the spirit in which this technique is
usually executed. The real principle of musique
concrète is the juxtaposition and recontextualisa-
tion of real sounds. Since this is obviated by game
audio practice that demands a gunshot represents
a gunshot and a falling rock represents a falling
rock, it is, in the words of Rand (1971): “Blades
of grass glued onto a piece of paper to represent
grass”. Thus the value of concrete technique,
in technical and traditional sound design, is the
substitution of one sound for another. Breaking
bones represented by a snapped carrot, tearing
flesh by a cabbage. We can learn a lot from sonic
metaphor, about which features of signal A make
it a useful perceptual substitute for signal B. In
other words, a study of sound metaphor exposes a
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