For today's discussion I will be giving a brief over view of Horizontal Resequencing. Horizontal Resequencing is an adaptive scoring technique used in video games.

Horizontal resequencing is a type of composing that is akin to making a playlist of tracks but making sure that they can play into each other. In some cases it may sound like you’re changing the stations on a radio. For most games though you do not want it to be that noticeable. The idea of adaptive scoring is to have the music respond to input by the user or objects in the game environment.

If your music does sound like it is noticeably jumping from one piece to another, one may use transitions to bridge one piece to another if it is changing in tempo, harmony, and what not. (Tempo meaning the speed and harmony meaning the chords and key.) Crossfading and branching scores are alternatives as well to transitions. Each game that employs horizontal resequencing techniques will do so in it’s own way. Some styles may fit better than others. This type of scoring allows for specific areas and actions a user takes to affect the music. The music in this case is following the user’s inputs and adjusting accordingly.

The cross fading score is one of the most common types of horizontal resequencing techniques. I can think of so many games that the music switches between states and only does so by lowering one and then bringing another one up. A lot of times this works well, but sometimes it can be too noticeable. A state is an environment that the player is in. The two most common states in a game is "explore" and "combat."

The music in most games changes when a player is fighting form when they are just exploring a map. Most user’s will not notice or care to notice how the music changes, or they may even lower the music anyway. Being a musician and a student studying video game music composition, I am starting to notice poor implementation in more games. Synchronized cross fading scores help remedy the issue of hearing two distinct cues by having them tempo locked and being able to come in whenever. If the score is non-synchonized, it is best to use a different approach for the new track, but be weary of bad clashes of harmony or rhythm.

The transitional scores, are the best solution for the cross-fading score, regardless of synced or non-synced. The transitional score utilizes cues that are implanted in-between the two states. These little cues can be randomized as well for various state changes so one is not always hearing the same piece over and over when moving between two areas. One of the most common and sometimes best transitions are sound effects, glissandos, and aleatoric phrases. I will describe an example of this. You are playing a secret agent game and you have to sneak into rooms and grab objects. The main sneaky music is what you will hear the most of. However, you can also engage in fighting the enemies if they hear you. When they see you, a cymbal crashes, or a guitar glissandos, or a bunch of strings play random phrases at once. That part is acting as the transition. Immediately after that transition, the fighting music comes up as you engage the enemies. Once completely successfully, there may be another transition to ramp down from the intense fighting to the casual sneaking again.

The reasons these work is because they do not interfere with either of the two pieces that they are going between. As for sequencing and delivering this type of score, there are a few ways. Both FMOD, and WWISE offer a variety of ways to implement this type of score. The main idea though is to have the parts ready in what ever DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) you are using and to make sure there are no pops, clicks, or weird jumps in the transitions. If they are set in the DAW, then ideally you will have less work to do in the middleware engines. This is because many games end up using their own made audio engines to run all the music.