Sound for Fantasy and Freedom - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 33

on this level of perception is totally natural to
us. This fact also supports the idea that sound is
very well suited to adding to the total experience
of immersion in the game world.

municate the same thing to two persons. But if the
music is paired with something else, for example, a
film or a game, something happens. People that are
said to hate classical music, and would never put
on a recording of classical music, can spend hours
watching films with music tracks firmly grounded
in western classical music tradition, sounding like
something composed in the late 19th Century by
Richard Wagner or Gustav Mahler. When musical
sounds meet other sensory inputs, for example,
music in an animated film, the individual stimuli
tend to blend together and become a new whole.
The “film + music” object is perceived as being
radically different from the film alone and the
music alone. The music becomes more universal
and has the ability to communicate relatively
universal values, emotions, and moods.
Music is normally a very linear phenomenon:
a song starts at A and ends at B, and the journey
between the two is always the same and takes the
same amount of time to travel each time. This is
especially true of recorded, mediated music. In
a non-linear and interactive context, this linear
music concept does not necessarily apply. Most
often, music has a form that creates successions of
tension and relief, which in turn creates expecta-
tions on how the music will continue: the music
can therefore not be altered as quickly and easily
as other media. To function and be perceived as
music, it has to follow at least some basic musical
rules of form and continuity.
A number of techniques and systems have
been developed to cope with the gap between
linear music and non-linear environments. Many
of these are proprietary systems developed by the
commercial game developers and are not available
to the general public. What most of the systems
seem to agree on is a division between a vertical
and horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension
controls aspects of musical intensity and emotion
and the horizontal dimension controls aspects of
time and form. The vertical dimension is often
implemented using a layered approach whereby
a number of musical tracks play in parallel. Each

Music Makes You Feel

Sound in general and music in particular have a
very strong ability to touch our feelings. Music
works emotionally in two significant ways. Firstly,
it tells us stories about feelings that we do not
necessarily feel ourselves: the music works like
sounding pictures of emotions (Gabrielsson &
Lindström, 2001, p. 230). Secondly, music can
have the power to induce feelings in us, that is,
to actually make us feel (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008,
p. 562). Today, the borders between music, sound
effects, ambient background sounds and voices
become more and more blurred and music is used
as sound effects and sound effects can be used as
music. It can therefore be hypothesized that the
emotional qualities of music are also, to some
extent, true for other types of sounds.
Research has shown that music alone, in the
absence of supporting pictures or other sensory
input, can in many cases and for a majority of
people induce feelings of happiness and sadness.
Most people can also accurately tell if a piece of
music is composed and intended to express sad-
ness or happiness. Other, more complex emotions
like jealousy or homesickness are harder to dis-
tinguish: Music, alone, has less power to induce
such feelings and to actually make us feel them.
However, if you add pictures and other media
to the musical expression, the musical power
increases exponentially.
Auditory perception tends to dominate judg-
ment in the temporal dimension (Avanzini,, 2008,
p. 390). Music is a special case of this, since it is
sound that is highly structured in time. By syn-
chronizing sound and visual movements, very
strong effects can be created.
Some of the music we hear affects us very
individually: it is not universal and does not com-