This collection of Beautiful and Dark Sound Designs will focus primarily on that genre known as Dark Ambient. Dark Ambient is an emotive composition style used to bring an ‘epic quality’ to cinema and gaming.

“If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go.
Listening to something is an act of surrender.” (Brian Eno)

The Darker Side
Brian Eno is commonly hailed as the innovator of the Ambient Music style.

The darkest of Eno’s early works is ‘Ambient 4 : On Land’ (1982). It is a collage of electronic and acoustic sounds that creates a mysterious otherworld landscape.

Where Ambient Music is concerned with background textures and soundscapes (oftentimes experimental in style) – Dark Ambient as a genre is characterized by greater diversity of musical form.

“Men are but flesh and blood. They know their doom, but not the hour.” (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Welcome to part 2 of our top 20 list ‘o’ Games Themes.

Great design – sound and visual – is an asset that pays great dividends to developers and users alike. The success of an epic game is built upon an epic soundtrack.

We have searched for those themes that stay with you long after the credits have rolled.

The Good Muse-ic.

Diablo Soundtrack – Tristram Village

A real classic score in the world of gaming

The Force / Of Sound

“It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”(Star Wars Episode IV)

The success of Star Wars was underpinned by the creative brilliance of Sound Designer Ben Burtt.
George Lucas’ resolution of diverse story elements – from fantastical characters to futurescape weaponry and worlds – is indebted to the imaginative sound solutions intuited by Burtt.

Sound Maketh the Man
Consider Vader, R2D2, The Lightsabre, The Tie Fighter

The ‘Theory and Hypothesis’ of Make Believe

Humans try to avoid discomfort

Yet the suspension of disbelief is addictive

Screams provide the adrenaline rush we all crave. The dread and powerlessness we experience as suspension builds in a fantasy world is a totally intoxicating mix. The slice/ dice/ fear factor ensures there is nowhere left to hide

Fear is not ‘logic’
Vivid tension is often best expressed via abstracted sound and image. Our innate ‘fear system’ is hardwired to both emotional and biological receptors. Audience imagination must be creatively invoked to elicit the desired fear response

“There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive. ”
(Philip K. Dick)

Sound and Suspension of Disbelief

Sci – fi directors rely on audio to make their movies work. The history of sci-fi cinema reveals a progressively innovative and sophisticated use of sound. Sound design developed as an art form portraying these future visions. Immersive and hyperreal cinematic worlds utilized the sonic landscape to come to life in new ways.

Effects need sound. Imagine a silent light saber in a silent world.