WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2024-2025       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
The Evolution of Audio in Interactive Entertainment; Creating Music with Limiting Technology
DDC 228
Fall 2024
Section: 01  

In the creative world, introducing limitations demands incredible innovation from an artist. Nowhere has this been truer than in video game audio. An entire generation has grown to hear complex worlds in just a small combination of oscillators and noise generators, and the lengths composers and sound designers went to craft those worlds is nothing short of astounding.

In this course we will examine and emulate compositions which used the iconic sound architectures present in home consoles, taking us all the way from the implementation of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in "Smurfs: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle" (1982), through David Wise's implementation of octave displacement in the NES classic "RC Pro-Am" (1988), the string of composers who all had to create homogeneous yet individualized soundtracks for the "Rockman" game series (starting in 1987), and landing in the nostalgic implementation of these architectures in the practically polar opposite games of SUDA 51: "Killer 7" (2005), "No More Heroes" (2007), and Toby Fox's "Undertale" (2015). Along the way we will cover sound design and emotional impact outside of chiptunes, one big example being the work of Akira Yamaoka in the "Silent Hill" (1999) series. This course will both serve as a survey of these games as well as contain practical projects, where you will be using tools to create work in a similar vein and where you will be presenting and dissecting the sound design of interactive entertainment which carries a particular meaning to you.
Credit: .5 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA DDC
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (IDEA-MN)
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on DEC-03-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459