Music with Style
Now that you can communicate with your music director, you need to consider the genre of your game. What style of music do you want for your game? A traditional route would be to use the style of music generally associated with that genre. Say you’re making a sci-fi game. Do you want orchestral music like John William’s score from Star Wars or something like Vangelis’s synthesized music from Blade Runner, or do you want to go old school with 1950s’ theremin3 music in the style of the original The Day the Earth Stood Still? Feel free to go in another creative direction: how would a sci-fi game feel with a hip-hop soundtrack? Or a trance soundtrack? Or polka?
Creating a temporary soundtrack for your game will cut down on the guesswork for your composer and give him clear examples of what you want. Finding music is incredibly simple compared to the past, when we had to scour our CD collections or go into “the field” with microphone...