Music in Games Workshop 2026.S1
Hello and welcome to GMC’s intro to music production for games! Here, you’ll see a beginner’s introduction to creating your first video game tracks from scratch to those completely new to music !!! Hope you enjoy ❤️
Presentation Slides:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1p3fPw2x6oMHBX-Bne00aFrsoGlGveYCLYplwgZzhFhM/edit?usp=sharing
Installation Links:
Reaper: https://www.reaper.fm/
Vital: https://vital.audio/
Soundfont Search Sites:
Drum Sample Search Sites:
Familiarising Yourself with your Tools:
Reaper
Reaper is a free Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) where you can produce and export music! You can follow these instructions to install Reaper. Despite the warning to purchase a license, it is only optional — similar to WinRAR.
Navigating A New Project
When you open Reaper, it should automatically take you to a new project. Here is a breakdown of the window you’re looking at:
In Red: The toolbar. Here you can quickly access some tools and controls to work on your track. Not all of them are immediately important. We’ll go through some of the important ones along the way but otherwise feel free to experiment playing with them after the tutorial!
In Yellow: The instrument rack. Here you will add all your instruments to be able to create a new row called a “track” where you can add information of what notes to play and when.
In Green: The timeline. Here you can add information of what notes to play in blocked out patterns for each instrument you add.
In Red: Playback. Here you can play and pause your track. You can also enable looping, record into your instrument/audio track, and jump to the start/end.
In Yellow: The mixer. The mixer is a panel which allows you to edit the volume and many other effects of different tracks of audio. Imagine it as a folder.
- The Master track is the folder in which every instrument lays in so editing the Master audio effects all audio that you hear. Each instrument you add creates a new rack to mix and you can route multiple instruments into a new rack you create to organise them and add effects to multiple grouped instruments.
In Green: The tempo. Here you can set the pace of your song.
- The first item references the time signature which is a bit too complicated to get into here. Just know the standard time signature is 4/4, and changing it will have a large change in how your track feels (3/4 will feel more bouncey and waltz-ey while 5/4 will feel more floaty!).
- The second item is the most important. This number represents the beats per minute (BPM) of your song. A faster BPM is a faster song while a slower BPM is a slower song.
Creating A Melody
To add an instrument, click on the + icon in the instrument rack and it will create an empty instrument like so:
You can click on the “FX” button to add an instrument to the empty slot. Once you click on it, you should see a menu like this:
To begin with, we can start off by selecting “VSTi: ReaSynth (Cockos)” this will load up the default Reaper Synth sound. Be sure to click Add to confirm!
You should then come to a page like so:
These sliders impact the character of the sound produced by Reaper’s synth. In the future, we might make a Sound Design resource where we get to learn about all these settings, but for now, feel free to play with the sliders and explore them after the tutorial!
Your instrument in the instrument rack will now look like this! (Or the black space will be white if the instrument is selected). You can click into the black/white space to add a name to the instrument! For now I’ll call mine “Test Instrument”.
To begin creating the notes for the instrument to play, we need to create an “item”. We can do this by holding control(WIN/LINUX) or command(MAC), and dragging across the timeline along the row of the instrument:
Lets start by keeping it’s length rounded to a bar (in this image it spans 2 bars).
Double-click into the item to begin adding notes!
Reaper will open up a new window for you to edit these notes in:
- You can edit the grid size to adjust the length of the default note. I would recommend setting it to 1/16.
- You can use the sliders to the right and bottom of the main note view to navigate the view and zoom in.
- To the left is a piano which, when tapped, will make the sound of the note they are representing.
- Ignore the items in the upper toolbar. It is unlikely you will need to use them as a beginner.
You can begin adding notes by double clicking onto the sheet, or single clicking and dragging for a longer note. To listen to what you’ve played, be sure to click on the return button before clicking on play. You can also click on the loop button to have your melody repeated once it ends.
To lengthen or shorten an existing note, you can just hover over the end and drag it.
When you close this window, you should see a small version of your melody in the timeline.
Now when you press play on your project you will be able to hear your melody!
From here, you can create new items and repeat your existing patterns to structure out a longer song.
This covers the introduction to your first melody!
Adding Different Instruments
After downloading the installers for Vital and Sforzando listed at the top of the page, you can run the applications to install them as they instruct.
These applications are called Virtual Studio Technology (VSTs) and either act as an instrument or an effect to add onto an instrument in your DAW.
- Vital is a simple free synthesiser plugin with a number of interesting presets for synths, strings, and keys.
- Sforzando is a loader for soundfonts which we will explore later.
In Reaper, you should be able to see Vital and Sforzando when adding an instrument to an empty track.
If you do not see this, open up “Options > Preferences > Plugins > VST” in Reaper and ensure Reaper can identify the folder your VSTs are stored in. Then click “Re-Scan”.
Using Vital
When you select on Vital, you should open up to this screen:
This is the Vital interface. As it is a synthesiser, it contains all the tools necessary to create a ton of awesome unique sounds by editing, mixing, and sampling different sounds. We won’t be doing this here though. You can look forward to a future Sound Design Resource or look up an intro to sound design after this tutorial to learn more!
For our purposes today, you can click on the header at the top, which should say “Init Preset”.
This opens up the preset menu with a ton of sounds you can play around with!
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One day if I get good enough at sound design I might make my own pack of sounds you can download from GMC! But until then, there are a lot of cool ones you can select from here. You may also find other presets online! I don’t know where but I bet its possible!
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Using Sforzando
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Soundfonts are pirated samples of instruments from existing games, turned into their own instruments. You will find soundfonts for many retro games in some of the resources I have listed at the top of this page. Feel free to enter those websites and download some soundfonts of games you enjoy! You’ll need at least 1 to follow along with this tutorial.
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You should have a .sf2 file after downloading. Be sure to put all your soundfonts in a folder altogether! I have mine in “Documents\Soundfonts”.
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Once you have your soundfonts downloaded, add sforzando to an instrument track, and it will take you to this screen:
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Right now, there is no soundfont selected, so sforzando won’t make any noise. To import a soundfont, click on instrument > import, then select your .sf2 file. Do this for all your sf2 files. Now when you click on instrument, you can go to Converted > sf2, and see all your imported packs!
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Adding Audio Files (Non-Midi)
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At the top of the page, I also listed a website full of samples, including drum samples! This is what you will be using to construct any drums in your song. Be sure to download at least 1 pack from the site.
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You can then just simply drag the file into Reaper like this!
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To make more, you can just duplicate it in Reaper with Control + C & V/Command + C & V. As you add different drum sounds, it is important to note that each track should only have 1 sound each. It is bad practice to have different sounds on 1 track, as it makes things difficult once you start mixing the track (which will be explained later in this guide).
To keep things compact, you can select multiple instrument tracks, right click, and select “Put into track folder”
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Learning the Different Elements to a Song
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Now that we know how to use our tools, its time to learn how to actually make a song!
The elements of a song can be divided into the following 5 categories:
- Chords
- Bass
- Drums
- Melody
- Effects and Transitions
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Before we begin, I would recommend turning on Key Snap for beginners to music:
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This isn’t mandatory, but it will make the initial process of trying to create a nice sounding song a lot less frustrating.
(Optional Theory Explanation) A “key” in music, refers to the idea of scales and key signatures. In Western music theory, we divide an octave into 12 subdivisions which makes up the notes you see on the piano. This was chosen as each note an octave up sounds similar, and each of these 12 notes side-by-side sound good when paired with one another. However, sometimes two notes don’t bode so well. These 12 notes can be broken down by selecting 7 notes from them to form a “scale” or “key”. All the notes in a major or minor key are ordered such that when played together in a chord they are more naturally harmonious and sound nice together. Learning more about music theory will help you gain a better understanding of your tools and be able to have a better idea of how to reach an end goal with your music. You know how the rules work, when to break them, and why.
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Chords
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Boiled down, chords are formed when multiple notes are played at once. A chord generally has at least 3 notes, but can really be any combination you’d like! This tutorial won’t dive deep into music theory, but learning about music theory as you practice music production after this tutorial is a great way to grow!
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Chords are a great tool to lay the background of a track to set the atmosphere and emotional drive of the song. Chords generally last 1 bar each, sequenced in a repeatable order. The chords you use to make this order is called a chord progression!
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I would recommend trying out creating a pattern that’s 4 bars long, setting your snap to 1 bar, and creating a loopable chord progression.
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Here is my chord progression! (No copying!)
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Throughout your track you can experiment with chord progressions of different lengths, switchups, keeping it the same, or changin how you play it (Maybe instead of 3 notes running 1 car long, it could be 4 notes tall and ran twice a bar but not exactly at the halfway mark??? Your imagination is the limit!
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Bass
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The bass is the notes played at a much lower pitch. With each octave being a set of 12 notes (when the piano starts to repeat), the bass is usually 2 octaves below the chords. It has a strong impact on feel and groove, so its usually good to have it be similar to the chord progression (though only 1 note this time).
Here is a bassline matching my chords from above!
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Notice how the notes are close to C2 instead of C4 seen earlier with the chords. You can also see how I varied it up. Sometimes keeping it plain with 1 bar, chopping it up, and adding some extra in-between notes.
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Drums
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Drums can be broken down to 3 different components that every element falls into depending on your track:
- A Core
- An Engine
- A Constant
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The core is the backbone of the beat — usually the kick/bass drum. This keeps the drums grounded.
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The engine is the forward momentum given to a beat — usually the snare, but toms can fit in as well!
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The constant holds the energy of the beat — brought by the hi-hats usually.
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A drumloop is then formed and different loops can be patterned across different areas of your beat to affect the energy and momentum in the track. Here is an example of a drumloop I’ve got:
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Feel free to add variations on the last bar of the chord progression or when moving to a new section to keep things interesting!
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Melody
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Lowkey for melody just play around with different notes, different patterns, repeat some stuff here change some stuff there. Stairway up here, staircase down here, flip between two notes here, long, short, awkwardly timed, gaps of no notes, two three notes at the same time.
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When you’re first starting off, its fun to try a bunch of stuff and see what sounds nice without having to think too hard about it.
Trust your ear.
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Here’s my melody!
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As the track goes on, you can sequence and change your melodies here and there, which we will talk about more in the structuring section!
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Effects and Transitions
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Throughout a song feel free to add random sounds that add texture and anticipation to a track.
Using things like risers can also help lead into a transition to another section of your song or a “drop”.
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An easy way to make risers is to reverse a cymbal sound. This is a very bad example cuz the drums I downloaded don’t have a cymbal so I used a reversed guiro with a fade in and an open hi hat
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An alternative but a sad one. But you can use this for background ambience, people chatting, trains, laser sounds, ad libs, anything!
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Producing Music!
Structuring a Full Track
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To create a complete full length song, you aren’t expected to create a midi pattern spanning 100 bards and adding notes the whole way. Music is created by developing different patterns for each sound/instrument, then layering and organising them in ways that can communicate a compelling story.
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To begin, lets analyse the structure of a standard pop-song to see what a very basic overall song structure looks like:
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POP SONG STRUCTURE:
- Intro
- Verse 1
- Chorus
- Verse 2
- Chorus
- Verse 3
- Bridge
- Chorus
- Outro
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As you can see here, there are a number of different repeated elements: Verses, Chorus, and a Bridge. In the very basic pop song structure formula, the chorus is always largely the same. Same lyrics, chords, melodies, maybe with a few slight alterations in the melody or number of instruments in the last chorus to make it hit harder. The verse has a consistent drum pattern and chords. The melody might even stay very similar with lyrics changing. The bridge is the one part which is unique and different to add a bit of intrigue and flair keeping the song interesting.
We can do something similar to this with our song!
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First, we can create a few different variations to some of our elements! Let’s begin with just melody first. We can create a part 1, and a part 2A + 2B which are similar and interchangeable (think variants of one another).
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By sequencing our patterns to have Part 1, Part 2A, Part 1, Part 2B, we can create a much more interesting song that goes on for longer. This can also be used to lead you into a new section.
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Listen to how Toby Fox uses this technique at the start of My Castle Town.
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Bookending
One method of structuring a song that a lot of people like to explore, is — if you like starting off by creating a thick vertical slice of instruments, — you can immediately follow that up with zooming out to the length you want your track to be, moving your stack into where you want to put the climax, then copy pasting the patterns of each instrument around the rest of the track where you want it to go. Maybe the start is just the melody, then after 16 bars the chords come in, then for the high both the bass and drums kick in!
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Mixing
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Now you’re able to create a full stack of instruments and extend that into a full song! Mixing is all about fine-tuning the audio to be more enjoyable and adding a ton of cool effects!
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To start off with the very basic, each mixer will have:
- Volume - To adjust the volume of a track. It is highly recommended to NOT raise the volume above 0 dB as it can cause clipping. If you want to make an element louder, it is usually best to make everything else quiter and/or use a compressor (which will be explained in a bit)
- Pan - Moving the audio to play more in your left or right ear
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You can add effects to each mixer to adjust the sound of your track. A few of the fundamental effects are:
- Reverb - Makes your audio sound like its reflected in a room.
- Delay - Adds a sort of “echo” ish effect where your sound is repeated a few times, softer with each one.
- Drive - Makes your audio sound louder or more crushed. Think an electric guitar vs an acoustic guitar.
- Compression - Raises the quiet parts and lowers the loud parts to make track more level. Helps a lot if some stuff is hard to hear.
- EQ - Allows you to individually adjust the volume of the different pitch ranges of a sound. You can use this to dampen all the low pitch or high pitch sounds, and even clean up vocal recordings.
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Exporting Your Track
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Click export!
For the highest quality audio files, it’s best to use one of .wav, or .flac.
If you want to transfer audio files over a messaging app, it’s useful to use more compressed audio formats like .ogg, or .mp3, though you lose a bit of quality so always keep a high quality export in your storage.
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Growing as a Producer
Analysing Songs
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A great way to grow as a composer and producer is to listen to some of your favourite songs and take note of the different elements which make it up! What instruments do they use? How is it structured? What are the chords, drums, and melodies like?
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Challenging Yourself with Limitations
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Another great way to learn is to use limitations to see what you can do. How many different songs can you make with the same set of instruments? Can you make a track only using 4 tracks? Try learning to make a track in a new genre you’ve tried out before?
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Resources to Learn Further!
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Beginner Music Production:
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Music Theory:
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Complicated, But Fun Music Theory:
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More recommended VSTs:
- Labs/Splice Instrument
- Kontact 8
- Really Good Piano
- Really Good Drums
