Music - MYP 4 and 5 - Samuel Wright - Hodder 2020

What is sound design?
and 8-bit harmony
‘Fez’
game ‘Fez’ (2012) is a beautiful world of colour and
The
Figure 7.11 ■
Artists approach game scoring as a combination of
musical elements and sound design. At any given time,
Portfolio presentation
the artist is making decisions on which sounds to layer,
add effects to or change. Software tools like GarageBand
or Helm now provide us with unlimited sound-creating
three-dimensional puzzles. You play as a little character
tools. Listen to the track ‘Pressure’ from ‘Fez’ and you
called Gomez in an immersive world, with music composed
will hear this in action again. The chord progression is
by Rich Vreeland (Disasterpeace).
based on E minor (i), D minor (vii), E minor (i), F major (II),
Take the track ‘Compass’, with the electronic effects and
E minor again. But what you hear is the tone-colour
and added effects applied to these chords with the E
synthesised 8-bit sounds; it is one chord, C add9. If you
remember, this means the
triad
of C major, and you keep
Phrygian mode (1 b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 8).
up the to add the 9th note, a higher D.
scale
counting
Figure 7.12 ‘Compass’ by Disasterpeace
■
Figure 7.13 ‘Pressure’ chords by Disasterpeace and Phrygrian mode for improvisation
■
Experiment with music software and try to replicate these
sounds. Make sure you draw diagrams detailing how
you ended up with the sounds you created (for example
Figure 7.14).
Figure 7.14 E minor on the free synthesiser Helm
■
Music for the IB MYP 4&5: by Concept
182