Blogsome is terminating its blog hosting services. I want to thank the Blogsome team for an awesome service, it’s been a pleasure. And now, goodbye!
On a brighter note, this change in hosts gives a good reason for MeaningfulNoise to be getting a facelift. The new location is meaningfulnoise.wordpress.com, do check in on the new sparkling MN! Please also take the extra time to update feeds/bookmarks to make sure you aren’t missing out on future updates. See you all there!
Earlier this week, the BBC Radio Wales aired a Science Café episode focusing on psychoacoustics featuring some of my colleagues, and also me interviewed via telephone. If you are fast, you can still catch the show online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/sites/sciencecafe/updates/20111115.shtml Adam Walton and I talked a bit about scary game sound, and I thought I’d post a short recap on some of the primary tricks to achieve a sense of horror with game sound.
HORROR = FEAR + DISGUST
To start off, horror basically lives off a combination of two emotions: fear and disgust. Fear best built taking into account both the sounds and the game mechanics, whereas disgust is less dependent on gameplay and can be realized with less attention to game action.
FEAR = WEAK PLAYER ACTS IN A SCARY WORLD
In gameplay sense, the fear comes from constant threat & limited resources and the general weakness of the player character. The sounds should emphasize the player’s lack of power over the situation by) helping to portray the game world as a hostile place and by portraying a weak and fragile player character. In order to heighten emotions, it is also of particular interest to maintain a positive main character so that players can relate to and emphasize with him/her.
DISGUST = IT’S NOT HUMAN AND IT MIGHT RUB OFF
Disgust is an averse reaction to something that is rooted to a sense of contamination. Being disgusted is neurophysiologically linked to the feeling of nausea and throwing up, literally with getting rid of contaminating substances. The aversion to touching, tasting, and even smelling disgusting substances is similarly a way to avoid contact with something that might be harmful to us. This is also the function of disgust as part of horror - it makes the scary part of the monster unbearably scary by hinting that the monster’s hideousness might somehow rub off on us. Notably, the things we find disgusting tend to become more numerous as we learn about contamination, moreover, disgust can also become associated with processes that have no roots in the physical notion of contamination. Specifically, disgust seems to be triggered also by things that violate our category of what constitutes as human.
So, lets see at how these emotional processes can be geared towards horror with sound.
1. Hostile environment (fear)
To build a scary environment, all the classics of horror are ok: ambiguous noises, unpredictable (timing) and sudden volume changes, "double scares" (anticipate, first scare, lull, second scare). Traditional horror often uses a string orchestra playing tremolo to create a stylized wall of noise, because a noisy background is both less predictable and more open to listener interpretation (the ear has a tendency to try and hear specific sounds even when there aren’t any). Wind sound is another typical background that covers a wide frequency spectrum.
2. The game world is sentient and evil (fear)
A special case of hostile is when the game world is portrayed as living and sentient. To be fully effective, this requires support from game mechanics, there needs to be a sense of intelligence behind how the world responds to player action. However, some parts of this can be created by adding antropomorphic hints in the sound design: utilizing breathing patterns and mixing human or animal sounds into ambient or object sounds.
3. Counter-functional sounds (fear)
In addition to the general soundscape, there are a few specific tricks bound to gameplay. They are counter-functional sounds, and they build on the interaction that is necessary for progressing in the game, and somehow go against that goal. For example, you might have audio cues, but a background that make these cues hard to hear. Or footsteps that are loud when you’re supposed to sneak. The balance here is of vital importance - you need to keep the annoyance level in check so that the player gets slightly unnerved, but not outright annoyed, even after several tens of hours of gameplay.
4. Weak character (fear)
The weakness of the player character is relied through character’s action sounds: interacting with the game world, breathing and even footsteps. Especially important here are the sounds the character makes when s/he is hit or hurt or performing demanding tasks; the effort and the pain should be subtle but clearly discernible. It is a good idea to add tactile cues to heighten the impact of physical injury, and tactile cues are also often used to signify the character’s scare level e.g. with a heartbeat through the controller.
5. Contamination (disgust)
For portraying disgust, sound is used to make both the monster and the surfaces relevant to it seem as contaminating as possible. Contamination portrayed by foul air and slimy surfaces can be enhanced by suitable choice of sounds (foul air is tricky, whereas slimy surfaces are not). Often the sound is useful in filling in the gory detail where visual cues fall short, adding tactile sense and texture to game world objects.
6. Body sounds (disgust)
In terms of conveying emotion, body sounds can be immensely powerful. The shared reference - we all have a body, and our bodies are remarkably similar in function - makes them immediately recognizable even on an unconscious level, and we may become influenced by sounds without paying attention to them. Just one example is listening to a hoarse voice, which may cause our own throat to tighten. Other, more disgusting, body sounds that also play on this same effect are, for example, burps, farts and popping knuckles.
7. Human but not human (disgust)
Finally, disgust can be triggered by playing on the borderlines of humanity, by hinting that something both is, and is not, human. This trick uses a deeply rooted models that we have that dictate what categorizes as a normal human being, a definition that is refined and revised along our lifespan. This is a recurring theme in monster movies: vampires (the Nosferatu version), zombies and often aliens both are human and are not. In a game, this can be used to guide the sound design for NPC:s, for example by mixing human sounds with sounds of insects, machinery etc. Unnaturally long breathing patterns (or continuous sound signifying no need to draw breath) are often used to signify the supernatural, whereas metronomically rhythmic sounds draw our thoughts to a mechanical origin.
EFFECT IN SUBTLETY
Finally, emotion relies on subtle. This is especially true for sound design. There are two risks associated with too prominent sounds: First, if sounds are too unpleasant or annoying, the player might choose to switch them off. Second, obvious sounds may get "caught" and loose their power, either because the player recognizes them as cliched and the effect is spoiled by other associations, or because players are able to actively discount the emotional effect of a sound when they realize what it is there for.
That’s all for this time. Hope you enjoyed reading and as always, I’ll be happy to read your thoughts and comments on the topic!
Are you interested in sound? Aalto University and the Finnish Game Audio Network are organizing a tightly packed one-day Game Audio symposium on Friday May 20th 2011. The program offers academic and industry presentations, including keynotes byPaul Weir (Earcom, UK), Barney Pratt (Supermassive, UK) and Max Lachmann (Avalanche Studios, SWE).
The event is funded by Aalto Media Factory and free of charge for registered attendants.
Learn more about the event and sign up here:
https://blogs.aalto.fi/agar/
Stumbled upon this Guide to Sound Effects, maintained by David Filskov of EpicSound. It’s a collection of tips for making your own sound effects, submitted by sound designers from all over the world. Brilliant read & some really, really good ideas for solving tricky sound situations.
While you’re at it, make sure to check the other interesting guides on the site, as well.
Springer Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces (JMUI) has announced a special Issue on Interactive Sonification - 1st Call for Papers:
This special issue will address computational models, techniques, methods, and systems for Interactive Sonification and their evaluation. Sonification & Auditory Displays are increasingly becoming an established technology for exploring data, monitoring complex processes, or assisting exploration and navigation of data spaces.
Sonification addresses the auditory sense by transforming data into sound, allowing the human user to get valuable information from data by using their natural listening skills. The main differences of sound displays over visual displays are that sound can:
Auditory displays typically evolve over time since sound is inherently atemporal phenomenon. Interaction thus becomes an integral part of the process in order to select, manipulate, excite or control the display, and this has implications for the interface between humans and computers. In recent years it has become clear that there is an important need for research to address the interaction with auditory displays more explicitly. Interactive Sonification is the specialized research topic concerned with the use of sound to portray data, but where there is a human being at the heart of an interactive control loop. Specifically it deals with the following areas (but not limited to), in which we invite submissions of research papers:
IMPORTANT DATES:
Deadline for paper submission: 17th December 2010
Notification of acceptance: 4th February 2011
Camera-ready version of accepted papers: 8th April 2011
Publication date: June/July 2011
GUEST EDITORS:
Roberto Bresin, KTH School of Computer Science and Communication, Stockholm, Sweden
Thomas Hermann, Bielefeld University, Ambient Intelligence Group, Bielefeld, Germany
Andy Hunt, University of York, Electronics Dept., York, UK
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:
Submissions should be 6 to 12 pages long and must be written in English. Formatting instructions and templates are available on: http://www.jmui.org
Authors should register and upload their submission on the following website: http://www.editorialmanager.com/jmui/
During the submission process, please select "SI (Special Issue) - Interactive Sonification" as article type.
Authors are encouraged to send to: Roberto Bresin a brief email indicating their intention to participate as soon as possible, including their contact information and the topic they intend to address in their submissions.
The Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces is a publication of OpenInterface (www.openinterface.org)
Editor in Chief: Jean-Claude Martin
Founding Editor: Benoit Macq
More information on www.springer.com/12193 or www.jmui.org
Online content: www.springerlink.com
SoundEffects is a new international peer-reviewed journal operating on the Open Journal System.
Journal description:
"SoundEffects brings together a plurality of theories, methodologies, and historical approaches applicable to sound as both mediated and unmediated experience. The journal primarily addresses disciplines within media and communication studies, aesthetics, musicology, comparative literature, cultural studies, and sociology. In order to push the boundary of interdisciplinary sound studies into new areas, we also encourage contributions from disciplines such as psychology, health care, architecture, and sound design. As the only international journal to take a humanities-based interdisciplinary approach to sound, SoundEffects is responding to the increasing global interest in sound studies."
In preparation for the first issue, due early 2011, the journal has issued a call for submissions on the theme Sound Experience – Experiencing Sound. Topics of interest may include (but are not limited to):
To submit, an abstract of 300 words should be sent by e-mail to aestng@hum.au.dk no later than October 15, 2010. Full articles are due on January 15, 2011.
Following the hugely successful 35th International Conference in 2009, the Audio Engineering Society is announcing its second conference dedicated to audio for games, to be held in 2011 February 2-4 at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), London, UK.
Suggested topics
Schedule
Full details of the call can be found on the AES website.
With its first themed issue devoted to the topic "Computer Games and Music", the new peer-reviewed online journal "Act — Zeitschrift für Musik & Performance" invites papers from the perspectives of musicology, theatre studies, media studies and related disciplines in order to develop new ideas, approaches, and questions.
Possible subjects include:
The submission deadline for articles is Sept. 1st 2010.
Full call can be found here (pdf).
Product Sound Design Summer School, August 23-26 2010, Aalto University, Design Factory, Espoo, Finland
Future products will rely on our natural capabilities of continuous and physical interaction. Moreover, for the best experience in their use, they need to stimulate, but not saturate, all our senses. Our sense of hearing is quite advanced; yet only a few product developers, engineers, marketing teams, and designers know how to make use of it properly. The COST-SID action, over the years, has developed a growing body of methods, tools, and techniques to get you started.
Our mission in this summer school is to educate the future product design and development team members with a specific competence on interactive sound. The training school is strategically positioned as a first step in a longer research and training on the integration of SID product sound design methods with Product Design and Development, as thought at the Aalto University and MIT, for example.
Upon completing the summer school, the participants will be able to
Target Participants
The target participants are 16-20 students in the last year of masters studies, or first two years of PhD studies in design, engineering, or economics. They will be selected by the relevance of their studies or research to the product sound design. We expect about half of the trainees to be Aalto students.
Application
The applicants should send,
all in Portable Document Format (PDF) to Cumhur Erkut <cumhur.erkut [at] aalto.fi> at latest by Monday, June 21, 2010.
The summer school requires no registration fee. For the selected participants from outside of Finland, basic financial support about EUR 600 (TBC) that would cover the most economic travel and accommodation costs will be provided by the COST IC0601 Action SID.
Some time ago, I was happy to receive notice that our paper (with designer Michal Rinott) on Vocal Prototyping was accepted to Designing Interactive Systems (DIS2010). The paper is entitled "Using Vocal Sketching for Designing Sonic Interactions", and it reports the outcomes of a joint effort with Michal and me on Vocal Sketching, organized during the COST-SID action workshop last year in Holon, Israel. The event was themed Sketching Sonic Interaction, and our contribution looks into the affordances of the human voice, and more specifically into the practice of using the voice as a sketching tool.
I’m doubly delighted at being able to present this paper. First, I’m really happy that there is serious interest in bringing sound into the design process (which is still very visual in general), and particularly that interest spans also such lightweight and predominantly non-technical approaches as vocal sketching. Second, I feel truly privileged to have had the opportunity to work with Michal. Together we had the the chance to tap into the expertise of the very talented students in Holon, as well as the sonic interaction experts from all around Europe that participate in the COST-SID action. I am so happy we can now document the insights we reached together and share them with the greater community.
I personally feel vocal sketching brings together so many elements important to the design process: First off, the human voice provides a very accessible and low-barrier entry point for demonstrating interactive ideas at the first stages of prototyping. Vocal sketching is also intrinsically social, in that you often need to collaborate (and communicate your ideas) with others in the design team in order to make a complete demonstration. It is nearly impossible to make a chord by yourself (yes, overtone singers do that). Furthermore, there are a number of psychological processes (like emotion contagion) that guide our perception of vocal sketches; this actually facilitate interpersonal understanding on an unconscious level when you sketch with your voice. Think of someone sounding sad, or thriumphant - describing these emotions in technical (sound) terms would be nearly impossible, but they are easy enough to imitate! Finally, engaging in sketching with your voice activates your whole body, which in turn makes you more creative, helps you remember your designs, and serves as a bonding process to the design team. I’ve earlier used vocal prototyping with my students, and I tell you, there’s a tangible change in atmosphere when people start making weird noises!
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