Advanced Dynamic Music: Composing Algorithmic Music in Video Games as an Improvisatory Device for Players

Video games as interactive media provide a natural venue for algorithmic music as the soundtracks which are dynamic, adaptive, procedural, interactive, modular, and generative. This dissertation explores the composition of algorithmic game music as a device for transforming gameplay into musical improvisation, which I call Advanced Dynamic Music (ADM). The ADM system combines various compositional techniques and procedures with a real time algorithmic strategy that links types of music and game parameters to generate or “improvise” game music interacting with the actions of players. This paper first gives a review of existing theoretical and musical literature on game music. Based on this literature review, I explore the compositional approaches in two creative game music projects: Do or Die: A Roll Playing Adventure and Mastery.Through my experience working on the two projects, I propose eight defining properties of ADM: variability, user-interaction, modularity, game-music association, multidimensionality, multiplicity, staticity, and coherency. ADM is the very first systematic and specific definition of a type of highly dynamic game music, which derived and developed from my experience in the two creative projects as the composer, game-music interaction designer, and music-game programmer and integrator. ADM can be used as an analytical methodology or taxonomy for game music scholars, as well as a compositional framework and solution for game composers in the future