Wesnoth music and the future

[West]

I'm probably not the only one who has noticed that the influx of new music and new contributors have been less than overwhelming for some time now. Out of the handful tunes that has been mainlined the latest year, how many were from new contributors? One?

Looking at everything that's going on the other forums, with new submissions being made daily, music development feels stagnated and marginalized. Like nobody really gives a hoot. As a composer, this makes me lose heart. Why spend time working on music when no one else seem to be doing anything? As a LoM, it also makes me lose heart. Why work on resources for contributors (I have a couple unfinished guides to digital orchestration, for example) when there doesn't seem to be any contributors around? And that's from my perspective, who's been a part of the community for a few years. Imagine what it must be like for a new musician that comes in here and there's crickets playing and tumbleweeds rolling by.

We need to ask ourselves why this is.

Are our standards too high? Are they too low? Do we give contributors too little feedback and encouragement, or too much, or the wrong kind? Is the process of contributing to Wesnoth daunting due to our requirements? Is the current music so good and versatile that people don't see any point in writing more? Is it a problem of attitude, that we don't make new users feel welcome? Or is Wesnoth simply not a game that inspires people to make music?

I don't have any real answers. I wish I did, but I don't. It might be all of the above, or something entirely else. All I know is that this situation 1) harms the game in the long run, as the music needs to be polished and updated just like everything else, and 2) seriously makes me wonder why I'm doing this. I have a feeling I'm not alone as far as the latter goes.

And of course, the billion dollar question: what can we do to solve this problem?

[doofus-01]

For what it's worth, I really doubt it is that no one gives a hoot. If you filter out the noise (which I'm sometimes guilty of contributing to) and stalled attempts, how much more traffic do the other departments like Art really get? Most of the heavy lifting is done by a handful of people, just like it is here.

In any case, I really hope you don't get discouraged & walk away.

Is there a place for shorter things, like more victory & defeat tunes? That would be less daunting for new contributors, and wouldn't require relaxing your standards.

EDIT(I hit 'submit' too soon):

Is it a problem of attitude, that we don't make new users feel welcome?

In my short, misguided attempt at trying something, I didn't get that impression. No one was mean, and you gave a considered analysis. What more could people want?

[Aleksi]

I understand your concerns West. Even though i'm not active, i check the forums daily. From my perspective, the main reasons why i don't contribute to Wesnoth are:

-The GPL stuff doesn't suit me. But it is my fault, as i didn't pay attention to this from the start. Too bad, because my music has matured much and i wish i could contribute more music to Wesnoth...

-I'm working a lots of projects and most are paid... I got one foot in the field, and i'm close to getting the other one. It takes a lot of time, and working on free projects isn't the priority. (Even though i still do it).

Perhaps, some moderators could talk about it on other forums. There are tons of (so called) composers around and that would be glad to join. But expect a real invasion...

P.S. Edit: If the GPL issue was out, and i could use the copyright of my choice, i would be back here in no time. I actually have two pieces close to an end that where made for Wesnoth... Nearly a year old!

[Boucman]

well, first and formost, I'd like to point out that your contributions are absolutely not useless

I can't think of a recent wesnoth review that didn't mention how amazing the ingame music is, usually positively compared to most commercial games.

I mean... name ONE open game with a single piece of music approching the wesnoth quality...

So yes, we have high quality music and thus high quality standards...

However I would not consider that a problem, on the contrary.

I have been folowing Wesnoth for a pretty long time, and I have the general feeling that with the increase of quality, we actually have MORE music making it into mainline. The wesnoth community is pretty small, indeed, especially compared to our art community, but I would disagree that it's neglected, or stagnating.

I don't think that there are that many open-source project that have more than a single music contributor, usually contributing cheap synth music

However there are a couple of things to take into account in your diagnosis

1) it's way harder to criticize music than art

Some would argue that it's actually a good thing seeing the type of uninformed comments we get in the art forums ( ) but still. If I take myself as an example, I criticize art regularly, but I almost never criticize music. It doesn't mean I don't apreciate the wesnoth music, I do (actually it's one of the few game I play regularly and still have the music turned on) it's just that I don't feel proficient enough to bring more critics.

I'm not sure how to get people to participate more in the music forum and not be afraid of useless critics... that's an interesting question, but except discussing the mood of a particular piece or discussing what type of piece is still missing, I don't really see what to do

2) There are very few amateur composers

Again, art forums have much more contributions, but the rejection rate is waaaaay higher. Most artist in the Art workshop will never make it to mainline. We still "train" them, of course, to get UMC stuff, but we can't honestly say that they will catch-up with semi-pro quality like kitty or LordBob (at least without years of training which discourage most contributors)

Now. I have lots of friends that draw in their free time, a few that play an instrument, and none that I know that compose

composing is a much rarer skill. I think that's the main reason we don't have much more contributors. Much less amateur compositors to start with

Here, there are things we can do. A couple of ideas from the top of my head

* Train new musicians "from scratch" that's something only someone with already high musical skills can do, and it will be pretty long. We have to assume that the audience has no musical knowledge at all (no music class, no notion of rythm, not even a basic idea of what the different instruments sound like) and that they have to use free tools (you don't pay for something you're not sure to like)

If you do a basic tutorial with a simple tool, followed by a school like thread where you critic your students work (in multiple steps, starting with melody, then progressively adding orchestration) you might get a few people "hooked" that you can then train progressively

* Get experienced musicians on board : Wesnoth has something to offer to experienced non-pro musicians, an audience... I don't know if there are big amateur composer communities on which we could advertise, you probably know that better than I do, but if such a thing does exist, maybe that's the way to go.

3) Music force you to contribute "Big or Nothing" i.e you have to contribute a 4' piece in high quality instrumental to have a chance to get in. It might help to have some more short tunes, like the victory theme, to help small contributors taste the water

maybe some hero/bad guy speach music for dialogs at the start of scenarios (opposed to ambiance music for the actual gameplay)

or some small jingles for special events (loss of a lvl3 unit for instance)

I'm not sure where else we could add small pieces, but I believe more such pieces could help


I'm sure other people will have more thoughts about music, and fortunately we can get something out of it...

[Dave]

Firstly, I am not a musician and know nothing about music, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

---

I think that in some ways the music community in Wesnoth has been a victim of its own success. Wesnoth has been fortunate enough to have some excellent musicians who have contributed great quality work, and a substantial amount of it. However, for new people interested in joining, what they see is a game which already has some intimidatingly good and seemingly complete tracks of music. What opportunity is there to add?

While with graphical art, there are much clearer 'gaps' in what we have, so clear open areas where people can contribute. I think there's also a much higher barrier to entry for music.

I think though, that the first thing we need to decide is what we want music in Wesnoth to be like? I must admit that from my perspective, we have plenty of music, and it is very good quality, and fitting, and so forth. What more can we do for Wesnoth in terms of music? (These are serious, not rhetorical questions). Do you think we need more tracks of music? Music for some specific purposes? Would we like to offer more music for user-made campaigns?

I think the music in Wesnoth is great, and I honestly don't know how much better it could possibly be. I'd love to hear though.

David

[West]

For what it's worth, I really doubt it is that no one gives a hoot.

Yes, I doubt that too. But the question needs to be asked.

In any case, I really hope you don't get discouraged & walk away.

No, I wouldn't say there's any risk of that. I like the game, and I like composing for it because it forces me to think outside the box (as it's a strategy game, and you can't just write any type of music for it), and it has a good, non-clichéd fantasy world. All I meant was that I wish there was more action around here, that would inspire me to work harder -- and not only on music, but on resources as well. There just seems to be no demand.

Is there a place for shorter things, like more victory & defeat tunes? That would be less daunting for new contributors, and wouldn't require relaxing your standards.

Well we do have victory/defeat tunes, and sure we can have more. But what is stopping people from just posting *something* to let us sample their talent? That's the main question IMO. We have never demanded that anyone should post a piece made specifically for Wesnoth right off the bat.

No one was mean, and you gave a considered analysis. What more could people want?

I dunno. Cookies?

-The GPL stuff doesn't suit me. But it is my fault, as i didn't pay attention to this from the start. Too bad, because my music has matured much and i wish i could contribute more music to Wesnoth...

I wish so too. Unfortunately the discussion about changing the music license sort of just went poof.

-I'm working a lots of projects and most are paid... I got one foot in the field, and i'm close to getting the other one. It takes a lot of time, and working on free projects isn't the priority. (Even though i still do it).

I understand that perfectly well. But knowing that there's a LOT more non-pro composers than pro ones, that can't explain the lack of new blood.

Perhaps, some moderators could talk about it on other forums. There are tons of (so called) composers around and that would be glad to join. But expect a real invasion...

You mean on this forum?

P.S. Edit: If the GPL issue was out, and i could use the copyright of my choice, i would be back here in no time. I actually have two pieces close to an end that where made for Wesnoth... Nearly a year old!

I would love to hear them! And yeah, that licensing thing really needs to be sorted. Unfortunately I think "use the copyright of my choice" is out of the question, but at least I think we could go CC something or other.

1) it's way harder to criticize music than art

True, but I didn't say anything about criticism. That bit has been covered before, and I don't think it's a major problem anymore; more people are commenting on music these days, which is great. What troubles me is that we get so few new music contributors and submissions.

2) There are very few amateur composers

Actually, there's lots and lots of amatuer composers. Good sample libraries and powerful hardware is within everyone's reach these days. Far from everyone is skilled, naturally, but that is beside the point (and will also have to be judged on a case to case basis). This makes the situation even more puzzling.

Again, art forums have much more contributions, but the rejection rate is waaaaay higher.

Good point. Maybe I'm looking too much at the amount of stuff being posted, and forgetting that very little of it gets accepted.

* Train new musicians "from scratch" that's something only someone with already high musical skills can do, and it will be pretty long. We have to assume that the audience has no musical knowledge at all (no music class, no notion of rythm, not even a basic idea of what the different instruments sound like) and that they have to use free tools (you don't pay for something you're not sure to like)

If you do a basic tutorial with a simple tool, followed by a school like thread where you critic your students work (in multiple steps, starting with melody, then progressively adding orchestration) you might get a few people "hooked" that you can then train progressively

Not a bad idea... if I had 10 years to spare and was getting paid

* Get experienced musicians on board : Wesnoth has something to offer to experienced non-pro musicians, an audience... I don't know if there are big amateur composer communities on which we could advertise, you probably know that better than I do, but if such a thing does exist, maybe that's the way to go.

This is a good idea. Unfortunately I'm not a member of any such communities. Suggestions anyone?

[West]

I think that in some ways the music community in Wesnoth has been a victim of its own success. Wesnoth has been fortunate enough to have some excellent musicians who have contributed great quality work, and a substantial amount of it. However, for new people interested in joining, what they see is a game which already has some intimidatingly good and seemingly complete tracks of music. What opportunity is there to add?

This might very well be it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Maybe people aren't aware that we will happily accept all the [good] music submissions we can get?

I think though, that the first thing we need to decide is what we want music in Wesnoth to be like? I must admit that from my perspective, we have plenty of music, and it is very good quality, and fitting, and so forth. What more can we do for Wesnoth in terms of music? (These are serious, not rhetorical questions). Do you think we need more tracks of music? Music for some specific purposes? Would we like to offer more music for user-made campaigns?

Yes, I do think we need more music. I don't see a problem with having twice as many tunes as we have today, really. As new campaigns get added to the game, I think new music should be added as well. Perhaps it is time to start considering campaign-specific music? That would probably give composers a clearer sense of purpose and direction, as opposed to writing 'generic' pieces. Not to mention that the mainline campaigns will get a stronger sense of individuality.

[Turuk]

For what it's worth, I do read through these forums as threads pop up as well, and have even posted in a few, so I would like to add to all the reinforcement that people do care.

Most of it has been covered, but I think the lack of music contributions is a combination of intimidation, lack of knowledge, and just the type of people that Wesnoth attracts. As it has been noted, most of the music on here is very well-done, and if I was someone who fumbled around with libraries and made little melodies on my own, I would find the thought of putting my music up for criticism a bit daunting. Putting together a handful of samples is easy (in actual application), but few people believe that they are any good. As opposed to the art forums, anyone who puts pencil to paper seems to think they can draw, and halfway decent at that, even though the opposite is true. It's fair to say that most of the actual work being done for Wesnoth's art is only done by a handful of people.

As for the type of people, look at how long Wesnoth has been around, and how many high-quality artists have been attracted to contribute to the game. Alternatively, if you look at the music side, Wesnoth was lucky enough to get highly skilled musicians early on in it's development, and has only attracted a few more since then. It does make me sad that there does not seem to be any serious contributions lately, but as with the art community, perhaps this will change in time. It took a long time before any proper portrait work was done, and music does not have the average to somewhat good quality work to be putzed around with in meantime, as the bar was set higher to begin with.

For my own personal input, I play around with music and samples a bit, but I lack both a proper library and any other equipment that I would even take myself seriously, so I don't post anything. I also do not think I have the overall vision to do a longer piece well, and I have no musical training to explain why things should be the way they are beyond just understanding that it should. So it's a bit daunting for users to post in here because lack of knowledge on music probably makes people feel as if they will seem to have no idea what they are playing around with in their tracks.

That can also be a bit intimidating because those of you with musical knowledge may instruct someone to fix this or that using technical language that may be lost on someone while with art, it's easier to point out to a person what is wrong without them having to completely understand art (though most of the actual mainline contributors for art do).

[Dave]

Perhaps it is time to start considering campaign-specific music? That would probably give composers a clearer sense of purpose and direction, as opposed to writing 'generic' pieces. Not to mention that the mainline campaigns will get a stronger sense of individuality.

I think this sounds like an excellent idea. I am sure that campaign developers would love to have individual music specially tailored for their campaign, and it would give their campaign a sense of uniqueness and quality that could not otherwise be achieved.

An idea: maybe when new potential musicians come along, we could try to encourage them to find a campaign they like and work with the developer of the campaign to provide music for that campaign? In fact, often when artists come who clearly have potential but maybe aren't quite up to the quality of mainline Wesnoth (yet) we often suggest they look for a UMC to contribute to. Maybe we should do that with musicians too, giving a suggestion that "we'll also keep an eye on what you do and try to mentor you".

David

[Dave]

-The GPL stuff doesn't suit me. But it is my fault, as i didn't pay attention to this from the start. Too bad, because my music has matured much and i wish i could contribute more music to Wesnoth...

I wish so too. Unfortunately the discussion about changing the music license sort of just went poof.

I agree that a different license for music might be desirable.

Did anyone ever produce a reasonable alternative proposal? If so, I think we should take it to the Wesnoth developer's mailing list and discuss it in detail. I'd specifically like to hear about what exactly musicians think is and is not reasonable to be allowed to do with their work.

David

[scienceguy8]

If I might add something here, I think part of the reason we don't have nearly as many music contributors as we do art or code contributors is a matter of cost.

Code Contributor Minimal Tools
Code editing and compiling program. Cost: free. Apple and Microsoft offer their customers free developer's tools, while Linux users have developed plenty of their own free development programs.

Art Contributor Minimal Tools
Image editing software. Cost: free to a couple hundred dollars.
(Optional) Scanner: $75 to $200.
(Optional) Tablet: $75 to $200.

Music Contributor Minimal Tools
Professional MIDI mixing software: $100 to $500 dollars. As some of the Lords of Music have already made clear, Apple's Garage Band is (supposedly) not suitable for this work.
Keyboard and a MIDI to USB adapter: $150 to $1,500 or more.
Sound/instrument samples: I'm gonna guess no less than $100 but no more than $250.

Unless I have made some grave mathematical error, code and art contributions can be made at little to no cost to the contributor, while music contributions take at least $350 in equipment.

[West]

I think this sounds like an excellent idea. I am sure that campaign developers would love to have individual music specially tailored for their campaign, and it would give their campaign a sense of uniqueness and quality that could not otherwise be achieved.

I think so too. From a musician's standpoint it would also open up a lot of nice possibilities for using reoccuring themes and other things that you can't normally do when writing generic Wesnoth music, as you never know when and where people will be using the songs.

An idea: maybe when new potential musicians come along, we could try to encourage them to find a campaign they like and work with the developer of the campaign to provide music for that campaign? In fact, often when artists come who clearly have potential but maybe aren't quite up to the quality of mainline Wesnoth (yet) we often suggest they look for a UMC to contribute to. Maybe we should do that with musicians too, giving a suggestion that "we'll also keep an eye on what you do and try to mentor you".

That definitely sounds like a plan! However, I was thinking of the mainline campaigns first and foremost, but of course any contributor (present or future) can choose to work on whatever campaign s/he wants, unless someone else is working on it already that is.

I think we're going to need some kind of rule which states that only completed and working campaigns are eligible for their own music though. First of all because I don't think any musician wants to work on a project that never gets finished, secondly because we don't want to be swamped in requests, and thirdly because I would hate to see someone's skills being wasted on some badly thought out project when there are mainline campaigns to be scored. Still, like I said, it's ultimately up to the composers.

Also, I should clarify that the way I'm picturing this is maybe three or four custom pieces for each campaign (maybe more, maybe less, depending on the size of the campaign), not entire mini-soundtracks. There's no need to remove all the current tunes from the scenarios, we only need to wire in a number of campaign specific themes at key points. I think that could work, but if anyone has any better suggestions I'm all ears.

Finally I think this might be just the thing Wesnoth music development needs: a clearer goal and a chance to work more closely with the campaign authors. I will certainly not forbid anyone from submitting one-off pieces, as not everyone will have time to work on entire campaigns, but I think this could turn out great.

Composers and campaign authors/maintainers: what do you think?

Did anyone ever produce a reasonable alternative proposal? If so, I think we should take it to the Wesnoth developer's mailing list and discuss it in detail. I'd specifically like to hear about what exactly musicians think is and is not reasonable to be allowed to do with their work.

No one ever suggested anything IIRC. :/

Unless I have made some grave mathematical error, code and art contributions can be made at little to no cost to the contributor, while music contributions take at least $350 in equipment.

But then we are not really looking for people who have just started with music making, becasue arrogant as it may sound, they will not be able to provide music that we can use within a reasonable timespan. Anyone who makes orchestral music on the computer will already have the required tools though, and that's the people we want. But you're right, this is likely a lot more uncommon than having a decent gfx app.

[turin]

Composers and campaign authors/maintainers: what do you think?

Yay, finally somewhere I can contribute to this thread! I've been watching it since you started it, but I don't really have anything to say to your original questions other than "please keep making music, the Wesnoth sound track's awesome".

Anyway, to the subject at hand: Yes, custom tracks for campaigns would be amazingly cool! I agree with you that having 3-4 custom pieces per campaign would be sufficient; for most scenarios I'm happy to use the general soundtrack, but it would be nice to use a custom piece for dialogue-only scenarios (this would be even cooler if we could time the text to the music, but unfortunately this is impossible - but it'd be pretty cool anyway) and for the climactic campaign events, the equivalent of boss-battles.

So, e.g, for my campaign The Sceptre of Fire, I think it'd be cool to have a "Haldric's Theme" that played at the beginning of the first scenario and in the epilogue, then a "Dwarven Council" track for use in the three council talking scenarios, and a custom track for use in the "Caverns of Flame" scenario would be cool too. Others could be fit in, of course; there could be different but similar tracks for the council scenarios, sharing a lot of motifs and stuff but each reflecting the different atmosphere of those councils; there could be different tracks for the first scenario and the epilogue that shared a similar feel; if someone wanted to be really ambitious they could try to do themes for each of the major characters and work them into the custom pieces that were used in the scenarios where those characters were present; and I could go on. But I'd say the three "Haldric's Theme", "Dwarven Council", and "Caverns of Flame" tracks would be the three I'd request for the campaign itself.

Anyway, I'll stop daydreaming now. The point is, yes, having custom tracks for campaigns would be cool, and campaign designers would be more than willing to work with composers to help make them happen. Of course, campaign designers usually don't have the skills to determine which pieces are worthy of inclusion, so I think any such collaboration wouldn't just be between the musician and the campaign designer, it'd be between the musician, the campaign designer, and the Lords of Music who would try to help the composer get the piece as close to mainline standard as possible, though the standard for campaign inclusion would probably be slightly lower than that for mainline inclusion...

The other thing that would be nice, from a campaign designer's standpoint, is a few pre-set track lists for "underground scenario", "chase scenario", "hold or die" scenario, "revenge!" scenario, etc... I know we can set our own scenario playlists, but there's a lot of different tracks and it's somewhat cumbersome to go through all of them to pick out the ones that would fit for the scenario at hand (I don't have the "feel" of all of the pieces memorized). Though admittedly this is mostly a matter of lazyness. Note to self: go through all custom scenarios and change the music playlist from "default scenario playlist" to a set of tracks that fit the mood of the scenario...

[Jetrel]

Dave and I were chatting on IRC and he noted "I think a big part of the problem with music is that you have to do something 'big'. You can't do the equivalent of one sprite or one animation for music." I think he's right, and I think this is a huge barrier to contribution. Writing a whole song is a huge chunk of work, and ... I mean, what smaller thing could we use than a song? Nothing I can think of.



A huge thing we should do is we should have some prominent, permanent link on the main page saying "We welcome contributions of original art and music to the game" and linking them to the respective forums. It's entirely possible and common to make the mistake of thinking that we consider things finished.



The other thing I see is a sort of "lack of direction". You're doing an excellent job with critiques, and an excellent job with tutorials and such. But I think we've got a big empty spot where the "master plan" should be. Right now, our "master plan" is completely vauge; it's just "We want more songs."

But it doesn't say anything about them. We might do better with a specific list (open-ended!) list of desired tracks, or desired "scenes" to have songs made for them. Sadly, people are dumb and lack imagination without lists like that. It's frustrating, but the biggest thing I did to help fire up art contribution was to hammer out precise lists of "we need this, we need that". It doesn't help with a lot of newbies, but every once in a while someone good (lordbob, kitty) shows up, reads the lists, and starts hacking away. If you don't have that, people just don't know where to start.


So here's a thought:
Ultimately, I think what we should "grow" to is we should have several musical environments which are very different. Right now, we basically (afaik) have one playlist. Instead, I think it would be great to have several mutally exclusive ones:
- a set of songs for a deep spooky "mines of moria"-like evironment
- a set of songs for a mysterious "fangorn / elven-forest"-like evironment
- a set of songs for pastoral, peaceful farmland
- a set of songs for a shining kingdom of knights
- a set of songs for an evil, "mordor"-like land
- Etc; add onto this list whatever you'd see fit.

Each of these environs would only need some 2-4 songs, but the trick is to have just enough that we can have one of these playlists be the only playlist used for a level (barring say, special music for an event or something). I mean, for comparison, each entire faction in both starcraft and warcraft 3 had only 3-4 songs each. It's all we need. And the beauty of this, is you can get some new recruit to "adopt" a given set, and do that whole set themselves.

[zookeeper]

While I agree, just like everyone else, that pretty much all the new music tracks are great and that the soundtrack is generally awesome, I still feel that people are missing that one obvious detail when discussing that: we still have some of those 1.0-era tracks in use! So I kind of agree with the notion that there's a slight lack of direction, since even though people have been contributing a large number of really good songs, all of the old crappy-sounding ones still haven't been replaced. The new music we have is great in itself, but I don't see how someone could get the impression that there's not much more to do anymore as long as they still hear frantic.ogg when actually playing the game. Adding ten new excellent tracks isn't going to change that unless some of them actually fit the specific needs that those old tracks are currently used to fill.

As for campaign-specific music, I'm not so sure. I think it should rather be worded as character or location themes. If one campaign has a good custom track, then you can't really ask people to not use it elsewhere too if it really sounds good. But you can reasonably ask them not to use "Delfador's Theme" or "Wesmere Theme" unless appropriate. Also, really short motifs and such might be a good idea, campaign-specific victory themes for example. In SoF you'd have some dwarvish-sounding victory theme when you win each scenario, in LoW you'd have an elvish-sounding victory theme, and so on. However I don't think that generally limiting some actual story or gameplay music track just to one campaign would work, because if the track is good and fits other scenarios well enough then people will just go ahead and use it in those places as well, at which point it becomes a generic track.