Non-Diegetic Music In Games

The staff have recently to have brought up the terms diegetic and non-diegetic sounds in conversation. In the Giant Bomb Presents... feature with Sam Barlow, @austin_walker inquired about the use of non-diegetic sounds connected to clips and how they are prompted. This lead to a discourse of design decisions that may or may not invite players to feel connected to certain characters. Listening to these conversations made me wonder what the Giant Bomb community thinks specifically about non-diegetic pieces (music) in games.

Before I move on, here is a definition to save time for some of you:

Non-Diegetic Sound -

Sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present in the action:

• [...]
• sound effects which is added for the dramatic effect
• mood music

Non-diegeticsound is represented as coming from the a source outside story space.

FilmSound.org

I have stated in the past multiple times that I believe non-diegetic music is not given enough credit to the success of video games. These pieces have the ability to take a scene or sequence of events, and insert a profound amount of emotion from them. They have the power to convey to the player an emotion that a character is feeling in ways that words can either not describe, or would otherwise be received as a lazy form of connection. Performers and writers live by the popular creed, "show, do not tell," and music is the perfect medium to transcribe emotion from a fictional plane, deliver it the recipient, and use that person as a proxy of feeling. Music has the power to tell whole stories that range across the whole emotional spectrum and although it is tapped into fairly well in movies, it seems overwhelmingly underused in video games. I think for the typical non-diegetic music/scores to be interesting, they have to be nuanced. It can be a hard thing to hit just right. Although easy to use in trailers, the problem with games is that they're pace is controlled by the player which means the music must be adaptive in some ways or another in expectation of anything the player may decide to do, and match up somewhat with their current actions. This is what I believe to be the next step in polishing the video game medium for my personal taste.

How do you feel about non-diegetic music in games?

Do you like it when a designer uses non-diegetic sounds to make you feel a certain emotion? How about when they use it to convey an emotion a character might be feeling?

It seems strange to pick apart non-diegetic music in video games because it's the norm rather than the exception. Soundtracks are expected, and while they may elicit and emotional response from the player, they do so in the exact same way movies and television does, so it almost doesn't feel like a topic worthy of discussion in this broad sense. To go further with my example, it would be like saying "Hey, music made me feel something watching a movie", to which most people would respond "Yeah, of course it did, so what?". Maybe I'm entirely missing the point of your thread though. I think a couple of key examples would be Shadow of the Colossus's use of music and silence, and Far Cry 3's use of the timeless classic "Make it Bun Dem". Two very different examples, but used to similar effects. SoC's technique of muting the music when faced with a huge creature or perilous drop for the first time makes you feel small and insignificant, whereas loudly blasting dubstep while you torch a psycho's weed field makes you feel superpowered.

Diegetic music in video games, where the music is coming from an observable in-game source, I feel is a much more interesting discussion. It's rarely used, but can be incredibly effective. The radio in Fallout games constantly playing 50's crooners for example, or the corporate lounge-y music that plays out of loud speakers in sections of Portal 2's Aperture Labs achieve a hell of a lot in terms of establishing setting and tone.

Uh, just to clarify here...by "non-diegetic" music you just mean music, right? As in, the game soundtrack. As in, the thing pretty much every game has, that plays in the background while you play the game.

If the above is correct, then:

Game Soundtracks are cool and I think they're given plenty of credit. Game soundtracks are sold separately from the game so you can listen to them on their own, there are tons of bands and musicians that do covers of game music, and there are even orchestras that play game music live. Game music seems well regarded to me.

A good chunk of my music library is game music.

@hamst3r: Yeah, non-diegetic seems a pretty grandiose term for a soundtrack, but it is technically correct. Non-diegetic can be used in other ways though, not just for music. It's basically any sound that isn't justified in-world, such as a voice over without context vs. someone reading from a diary.

@shortbreadtom said:

I particularly enjoyed the fictional ZZ Top knockoff in Left 4 Dead 2, called the Midnight Riders. Several of their songs were playable in juke boxes, or at the finale of one of the campaigns that takes place at an amphitheatre that was going to be part of the band's tour.

Also, I don't know if it's considered diegetic music or something else entirely since you sort of "perform" it, but I think the use of player-performed music in Ocarina of Time was handled a lot better than in most subsequent Zelda games that have tried to do it. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are especially bad in that they pay lip service to the idea of having songs the player has to perform, but the songs are almost completely unimportant because you only play them once or twice, and the inputs the player has to carry out to play said songs are awful and unengaging. They must be getting feedback from players that people really want performable songs in the game, but the last time the songs really had any major relevance to the game was in Wind Waker.

Well... pretty much every game has "non-diegetic" music, we call it a soundtrack. And video game soundtracks get plenty of recognition. Let me go look up the London Philharmonic Orchestra's covers of famous video game tunes when I get on a real computer...

EDIT: Ah, here they are:

I couldn't possibly care less for their choice in cover art, though.

EDIT 2: For some reason, spoilering videos doesn't work, so here and here.

@bisonhero: Also in Alan Wake where you're basically doing the same thing. The radio in Portal is a silly fun one too.

It would probably be more useful to discuss non-diegetic sound effects rather than music, right? And a prime example of that would be stings in horror games -- you know, those violin hits that are intended to send chills up your spine, etc.

I guess the point I was trying to make is not soundtracks, but the use of scores to convey emotions across to the player during narrative driven games.

But isn't that the very point of a soundtrack? You want to discuss the link between soundtracks and the emotions they attempt to impart upon the player?

There's very little video games do with music that they didn't learn from movies. The only significant divergence is with music the player makes (like in Ocarina of Time), or music used to guide the player somehow.

I think if you made a list of games with only diegetic music it would be a very short list.

@believer258: Yeah, the use of the soundtrack. I think what I've been trying to say is that I'm more or less often disappointed in the way music is used in games, rather than the choice in music itself. Just had a very weird way of saying it lol Sometimes it's cheesey, sometimes it's generic, and sometimes it's really effective. Some people find it off-putting when media uses music to try and convey emotion and don't prefer it at all. Although I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, there are also games where the audio is used to convey how well you are performing; I think more games could benefit from that sort of design element, right there.

A great example of how diegetic and non-diegetic music can work together to create an amazing scene is the intro to the Bioshock Infinite Burial at Sea Episode 2. The way they layer non-diegetic music to form transitions between the diegetic music sources from is incredibly well done, and feels so natural that I never even considered it until a professor brought it up and had my class analyze how they did it.

Pure non-diegetic music is what makes up most game scores, and the most iconic scores are pretty much all non-diegetic. Master Chief wasn't blasting Marty O'Donnell's score out of the speakers of his warthog, orchestras don't follow you around in Final Fantasy, and so on. Diegetic music is a tough thing to pull off, but what I find really interesting is the mixing of the two like the example above. While soundtracks are often key in creating an emotional connection to a game (trying to avoid absolutes here...), intelligently used diegetic music can create really immersive experiences. To combine them without it being immediately apparent to the player is a really cool concept that could make for some interesting experiences to say the least.

Here's an excerpt about the use of music and adaptive music (mentioned in my previous comment) from an article (linked below) on devmag.org about the use of sounds in video games. This sort of describes part of what I'm trying to get across.

In games that use adaptive music, the player’s emotions can be controlled even more tightly. How much more dramatic is a battle when the brass enters as it starts?

Interface sounds give the player feedback on his or her actions. They are vital to show that the interface is responding, and to draw the player’s attention to important events or information.

In Borderlands, the music effectively becomes part of the interface, changing based on your life level, presence of enemies, and their difficulty.

Video Game Audio: Diegesis Theory

@captain_max707: Wow, never played that DLC. You are right, that was an amazing blend of the two and great use of music in general!

Saints' Row the Third's use of Kanye West's "Power" was a pretty fucking sterling example of effective use of mood music (I can't bring myself to call it "non-diegetic" *rollingeyeemoticon*) in video games.

There are plenty of great examples that come to mind interms of non-diegetic scores. I think pretty much every horror game utilizes 'mood music' in some way or another, the very lack of music in a horror game can itself feel unsettling.

I think themes have an appeal emotionally too. As the name suggests they set the 'theme' for what is to come. They help Inpart tone. Think of Zelda and how critical the theme is to the experience, it sounds adventurous and heroic and imparts that feeling to the player and the game consequently.

One of my favorite examples would have to be Demon's Souls. The entire soundtrack has a distinct and dark feeling of uneasiness. It's not only a great game soundtrack in my opinion, but also a very unique and interesting one. In Demon's souls case I think the music helps to establish the mood of the world, in an auditory way it communicates the decay and slow descent into madness that you observe in the environment and levels. It adds greatly to the story too, imparting a very distinct mood to the narrative and even dictating some of reaction. I personally think Demon's Souls would be less without its soundtrack. Great listen removed from the game too.

I feel like non-diegetic music is the opposite of "show, don't tell". Not that it's a bad thing. It's just that when it's used badly, it feels like I'm being told how to feel about something. Like when combat music plays in Oblivion for enemies I don't see, or when stings/very distressing music is played in horror games even when it's not scary. It's great when they script the music perfectly to the game though, like how Dark Souls scripts the Ash Lake music to play when you see the sky.

I think there's a strength in both aspects of the usage of music. I think for manufacturing a real sense of place a piece of diegetic music will always be more powerful, but when creating a controlled atmosphere a piece of non-diegetic music will probably always be better, well, if done successfully. For example, entering Mexico or when you ride back to your family in Red Dead Redemption are sterling examples of great use of non-diegetic music that really underlines the overall tone of the experience. But there's also walking through Novigrad in The Witcher 3 and seeing musicians perform and how much that music says more about the world that the soundtrack at large isn't, it grounds you in that place.

This is what I was getting at as far as the discussion goes. It can really rub some people the wrong way when the intent is to force them to feel something specific; some people just don't like that. I personally like the direction when directors use it. It seems that even for the people that don't like it, the use is situational and can still be positively received. I'm on the side of using it more often as long as it is tasteful.

Silent Hill would be where you want to look for music composed of sounds that did not come from instruments being raised or lowered in certain scenes, and don't come from environment. I think of the hospital sequences in 2, where as you approach a Bubble Head Nurse, the 'loud' section of Die, Patient... begins with its aggressive "doom doom whomp doom doom". I think of Hibernation from Shattered Memories, and how there's two or three tracks going on that get raised or lowered depending on where you are. If you're wandering in the woods, you just get the minimalist guitar notes and some of the ghostly synths... as you approach buildings and areas with the spectral messages you can find, it raises the more flanged and processed parts of the synth in the mix, and adds the percussive beat.

There's one moment in Silent Hill 2 where you enter a big darkened courtyard that you soon realize is a gallows area. You can't see more than a foot in front of your face or behind. Part of the soundtrack itself is the sound of rushing, shuffling feet, which absolutely panics a person the first time they enter. Almost of the enemies in SIlent Hill 2 are slow shamblers who seem like they're in pain; surprising the player with the sound of a hostile sprinting enemy is a shock.

And of course, that one boss fight in Syndicate wouldn't be memorable if it didn't suddenly kick in Skrillex's remix of the theme.

I was playing Super Castlevania 4 and I thought Stage 3-2 did a pretty good of setting the mood of a Gothic waterfall. The use of the single note seems intentionally designed to call to mind drops of water falling into a pool. Similar to how Stage 3-1 uses reverb to hint at the echo of a labyrinthine cave.

I uh... I'd rather we spoke about diegetic soundtracks, the sounds that are coming from a radio or something. It's more interesting and pretty rare (i.e: Portal, Bioshock Infinite.)

Non-diegetic? It's like that in every movie and every video game. It's boring at this point, even though it can do wonders setting the mood. However the interactivity of the game sometimes breaks everything. You know, the whole ludo-narrative whatever.

*The following statement is a vague recollection from a couple of film history courses in college a few years ago, so its accuracy may be suspect.

For everyone saying that ambient music has always been used in games and movies, it really hasn't. Early (and I mean early) filmmakers specifically avoided using music in scenes without some visible/implied source because they thought it would confuse the audience (and maybe it would have, I don't know).

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow: I think what I was trying to get at is that sometimes the use of non-diegetic music in games feels lacking in restraint. Using non-diegetic music in all cases is already the norm in most popular entertainment media, but it can be a bit tiring to be constantly told how to feel in games that last easily three times the length of a feature film. The music in the Souls games is pretty cool because of how sparse it is, with most of their soundscapes being diegetic noises. The non-diegetic music works pretty well to accentuate moments.

It does depend though, some games just work better with non-diegetic music always playing. Payday 2 has one of my favorite uses of game music in recent memory, with background music that adapts to the phase the game is currently in, constantly setting the tone. It's one case where being constantly told how to feel is good, because it is actually useful gameplay information. The bass drops when the cops/gangsters come in for a raid, how good is that?! It might help that every round is relatively short too. Some "retro" games also use it in a way that sometimes reminds me of music in silent films.

@twolines: I think for the typical non-diegetic music/scores to be interesting, they have to be nuanced. It can be a hard thing to hit just right. Although easy to use in trailers, the problem with games is that they're pace is controlled by the player which means the music must be adaptive in some ways or another in expectation of anything the player may decide to do, and match up somewhat with their current actions. This is what I believe to be the next step in polishing the video game medium for my personal taste.

@audiobusting: Yup yup, agreed. Infrequency can definitely add to the nuance required for proper implementation of mood music.

I feel that music, especially non-diegetic, if it complements a sequence in a video game or movie and conveys the same emotions or sentiment is, in a way, redundant. That's not always the case though; sometimes musical scores are implemented in creative ways. For example, in Scorsese's adaptation of The Age of Innocence, the music is kind of subdued for the majority of the film, with the purpose of mirroring the rigidity of the social mores of 1870's New York society. I tend to like it when the music is incongruous with the scene or surroundings. Hearing 'How Much is That Doggie in the Window' by Patti Page in the mall in Fort Frolic (the Sander Cohen level in Bioshock) was very unsettling -- of course, that was diegetic music, but still.

@bbalpert: Going off topic, but I feel that this is an interesting question: in the era of silent films, they would be projected with someone playing the piano in the room, often with music that accompanied specific scenes. Is this diegetic or non-diegetic? The music is coming from an obvious source, but it exists outside the film and therefore lacks an in-universe explanation. Or do we extend the world of the movie to include the real man on stage?

Open a chest in a Zelda game and tell me that little song dosent just /get/ you.

@shortbreadtom said:

Non-diegetic. If you define diegetic as 'you can see where it's coming from' then you may as well say all sound is diegetic since you can see the loudspeakers.

My understanding (which again, may be slightly faulty), is that it's not specifically about whether you can SEE what's playing the sound, it's more about whether the sound is coming from something in the scene. In other words, if the characters would also be hearing the sound/music. If a character is in an elevator, you can assume the music that's playing is just the elevator music (and would be considered diegetic). It would probably be a different story if that very same music was playing over a scene of a character out hiking in the wilderness.