Designing Video Game Soundtracks for Beginners

A video game soundtrack is a unique art form—an auditory experience that engages people through musical immersion. For game composer Antonio Teoli, it’s an essential part of good storytelling. He has been composing captivating soundtracks for video games since he was just 16 years old. Over a career spanning both Brazil and the USA, he has worked for companies such as Nintendo, Sega, and Samsung.

In this course, he shows how a great soundtrack can enhance the gaming experience. Learn the composition process to transform your ideas into catchy melodies. Discover the power of chord progressions and the emotions they can impart, before fine-tuning everything into an emotive piece of music. Explore how to engage your audience through the cultural universal of music.

Begin the course by getting to know game composer Antonio Teoli as he shows how his childhood experiences with both music and video games affected his eventual career path. He shares his influences and shows how finding your own references are a key starting point to uncovering your musical identity.

Explore the core elements of the composition process and the questions you need to ask yourself before starting. Learn the basics of Logic Pro X and experiment with its vast array of virtual instruments, before exploring other providers’ libraries to expand your musical arsenal. Discover the importance of chord progressions to creating emotions and learn approaches to creating catchy melodies.

Analyze a game of your choice and use your findings to sketch out your first music idea. Give your idea structure, so you can add elements and layers to it using the software. Antonio shows you the basic principles of musical arrangement, as well as the specific approaches he takes for strings, woodwinds, and brass sections.

Start refining your track by balancing the volume of different instruments and removing any unnecessary frequencies. Create a seamless loop and test the audio output on different speakers, before exporting your project to share with the world. Finally, to end the course, Antonio shares some tips for starting a career in the video game music industry.

Compose and produce music for a game of your choice with Logic Pro X.

This course is for anyone who wants to become a game composer using virtual instruments or communicate better with the composers working on their game.

No previous experience is required.

In terms of equipment, you will need a MacBook, headphones, and Logic Pro X.