Procedurally Generated Music

Watching some of the streams of No Man's Sky got me thinking about the music. I thought the music sounds pretty cool but got to thinking that I really would've loved for it to have procedurally generated music. Music does so much to convey the mood of a particular place and it would be awesome if each planet had it's own unique soundtrack. I mean you could use different modalities that would "match" the planet's level of hostility, using diminished type of stuff for hostile and toxic planets which would contribute to the sense of tension. Or for example a kind of oasis planet full of life and vegetation could have some lush major ambient stuff. You could vary the rhythm perhaps having a more straight feel for lifeless planets and more swing, or triplet feel for planets with life, which may feel more organic.

Not saying it would be easy or that I have the right to expect it. Merely saying that I think it would be pretty cool!

Thoughts?

It has been attempted. I don't know of any actual games that use it. There are many problems stemming from the many possibilities of sound and the narrow amount that are rhythmic or pleasing to humans.

In regards to dynamic soundtracks, which is sounds like what you're describing, it is used in most games these days. It isn't generated on the fly, but most games will have music written for a whole range of emotions, tones and environments then script the game to enact a change.

Merging these two concepts would be interesting but I feel like more people would enjoy a limited set of authored soundtracks that can be changed dynamically than what a computer generates. Computers aren't replacing composers any time soon.

I think the soundtrack is partly generated? Not in the "complete way" like Spore, but as far as I know from various interviews it seems that the soundtrack in the game is generated from all the small samples made by the band, and then stitched together on the fly during gameplay, so it will do some of what you're thinking of with matching the intensity etc. I'd assume. The soundtrack that was just released is just a manually crafted composition using those samples as well, and not necessarily how it'll exactly sound in the game.

Of course, we have no idea how it'll actually be until we play the game :)

I'm talking about actually procedurally generated music, not just dynamically swapping pre-composed parts depending on the situation in the game (fight music, space flying music etc.).

With ambient type music it is actually not too difficult to produce pleasing stuff procedurally. Even playing notes totally at random within for example a pentatonic scale sounds quite pleasing to most ears, since all the notes in a regular pentatonic scale resonate so well together. I agree that procedurally generating music that has a clear motif and harmonic progression etc. is very difficult, but for more ambient type of stuff it is definitely doable. Most music that we enjoy has logical patterns in the way it is composed, for example you could take a given scale or modality and wander up or down it in thirds or fourths or whatever you want. Depending on the intervals used it'll create different moods. I'm not saying the music would be something I'd enjoy listening to for the sake of listening to it, but as a supplement to a game like this might be cool.

Personally I have experimented with using procedurally generated melodies within a given scale to give me ideas for creating music. Generating some random melodies within a selection of notes, then listening back and picking out cool things that happened to be generated to build something hand-crafted from. Though this is different of course, and requires a human curation of the generated material.

For a game like No Man's Sky I feel like an ambient kind of soundtrack is fitting, but sure it wouldn't be trivial to get it sounding good and at the same time varied. I guess it's the same kind of issues you come up against with all the other types of procedural generation. I just love the idea of each place having it's own music, and the possibility of discovering some crazy music no one has heard just by playing the game.

NMS does have generated music

I'm aware it isn't the same thing and that a completely procedural soundtrack might have been really neat, but in this interview Sean claims that'll still happen. That might be marketing speak of course, but I think there'll still be a degree of that, even with a sampled generation.

[Edit: Ah, was beaten to it :P]

I dunno if I trust computers to "procedurally generate" music and have something appropriate/enjoyable/competent come out the other side.

At least when they're generating creatures, it's just attaching a bunch of pre-made parts together into a weird Frankenstein thing-- music has so much theory behind it to make stuff that actually works effectively. I mean, so does character/environment design, which is why most of those creatures look so half-baked and repetitive, with zero relation to their surroundings or habitats... But it's still putting out something understandable enough that it doesn't break the illusion.

You could probably manage music of that level with procedural generation too, but like the creature designs, it'd be shallow and wouldn't carry the impact that a specifically designed track would have.

@jonny_anonymous: Ah cool, I hadn't seen that. Nice to see that they have been thinking about these exact things.

I think from what I understood of the video they probably went with the right approach, thinking realistically. It's hard to know exactly what they're doing from the conversation but it's possible to get an idea. I think I was probably considering something a bit radical, but their discussions in the video sound promising!