How Sony Makes Music For Your Favorite Games

It can get you pumped up for an adrenaline-fueled action sequence, or lay the emotional tracks for a scene full of important dialogue. But unlike movie viewers, the players have control over many situations they encounter in a video game.

In a game - but especially in an open-world game like Grand Theft Auto or Sony's upcoming Infamous: Second Son - the music has to react to what you're doing so that it doesn't sound mismatched.

You don't want percussion-heavy combat music when you're just walking around taking in the sights, and you don't want quiet, emotional pieces playing while you mow down dozens of enemies in an intense firefight.

Yesterday, I was able to take a tour of Sony's state-of-the-art PlayStation Music Studio at the company's headquarters in San Mateo, Calif., where I met the guys responsible for the music in some of the best games released in the last few years.

Here's what I learned about their process:

This is Bradley Meyer, audio director at Sucker Punch, the studio making Infamous: Second Son. He's responsible for all of the sound in Sucker Punch's games, from the musical score to the sound effects you hear as you walk around in the game's version of Seattle.

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His counterpart at PlayStation is Jonathan Mayer, a senior music manager. Mayer helps Meyer with the logistics of getting the music right, from lining up the right composers and bands for a project to the specifics of deciding what songs are working in a game.

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Once they've settled on a direction, they can bring artists in to their state-of-the-art recording studio to start laying down variations of songs - they make several versions of most pieces, so that gamers don't get bored of the same music after 10 (or more!) hours of gameplay.

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For instance, Sucker Punch wanted to give Infamous: Second Son an electric-industrial rock feel without simply using instrumental versions of existing songs. So the team flew down a bunch of rockers from Seattle, put them up in a hotel, and had them perform their songs live in the PlayStation studio.

Sony Computer Entertainment America

Once they've gotten the actual music recorded, it's time for mixing and editing. PlayStation Director of Music Chuck Doud gave me a walkthrough of their amazing setup and the studio's general workflow. The centerpiece of this mixing room is the Euphonix System 5 board. It's powered by a Mac Pro running Avid's ProTools audio software.

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The projector and audio setup in the studio is so nice that employees sometimes come in here to do their gaming when it isn't being used for one of the 25 or more games PlayStation might be working on at a given time.

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As soon as usable tracks are ready, one of the most important people involved in the entire process can start his work. This is Andrew Buresh, a music editor at PlayStation. He's the guy who makes it so that the music in a game changes appropriately when you enter combat or start a cut scene, making his job a unique combination between engineer and artist.

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You can see the end result of this team's work in the video below, which is the last gameplay trailer for Infamous: Second Son we'll get to see before the game's release on March 21.