Audio Innovations at the Game Developers Conference

GDC, formerly known as the Computer Game Developers Conference, starts in earnest today, and there are scads of audio presentations. Although I’m not a gamer, I always come away from the conference with fascinating insights on the differences between “linear” and interactive music. For instance, in a game, the composer is often more akin to a sculptor than a painter, because the listener’s actions affect the playback—sometimes on the note level. It’s like walking around a sculpture and seeing it from different angles; the sonic sculptor has to account for all the musical possibilities.

I said “start in earnest” because GDC has been going on for two days already, with an initial focus on mobile games. It’s intriguing to think that the synthesizers in cell phones are now as powerful as commercial keyboards from a few years back. (See “Could Ringtones BE More Annoying?!”)

With the spring rush, I still haven’t had a chance to blog about my audio discoveries at NAMM or the Windows Vista Audio Summit, but now there are even more dots to connect, so this could get interesting. Let me know if there are specific GDC sessions you’d like to hear about.