help me categorize my music!

hi!
I'm in the process of writing a short "catalogue" of my music assets, since they are becoming more and more... so i would like to gather them in categories to make the process of finding the right track easier.

so... could you please give me some ideas about how to categorize my music / how to identify the music-game genre / how do you use music inside a game, that you would find useful??


apart the music genre, for now i have identified these categories:

sci-fi
fantasy
horror/thriller
menu / credits music (usually loops that could be used in the title screen or similar)
hold-screen music (maybe when you chose the character, the car, the weapon, in a shop, etc)
casual games
platform games
retro games
highlight moments (if you want to emphasize a moment in the game with a short tune)
win-lose events (e.g. deaths, end level, finishers, level complete, etc)

do you have a better name/ideas for the menu/credits, highlights, win-lose categories?

any help will be appreciated!

 

You already have your music categorized and named fairly well. I'm not sure what I'd do differently.

I don't think you can get more descriptive than to say "menu / credits" and "win / lose," though possibly "highlights" could be embellished as "dramatic highlights." Highlight music tends to be chosen to match the emotional impact of a specific point in the story (conveying feelings of regret, making a difficult decision, running out of time, etc.), and therefore the mood or dramatic aspect is important.

 

thanks a lot for your kind replies!!
since i have a lot of assets of very different genre/use, my idea is to write a PDF/DOC file to help people navigate through my music, in order to find what it can be useful for them.
i think that also my website should be completely rearranged...

so I was trying to gather some ideas!

so do you think that "music for menu / credit" is a good naming category?

suppose you are looking for "in-game" music". If you see "music for menu / credit" as category for a particular, track would you consider it a potential candidate for your "in-game" music even before listening it?

or can you think about a name that include both?

 

When I see "music for menu / credit" I think it is probably tame, casual music with a decent length before it loops.

When I am looking for a quiet interlude piece or ambient music to play for an in-game store, or when viewing player inventory or something, I do indeed listen to the menu / credit samples for that purpose. Everyone knows what "menu / credit" music is.

One thing you might look into changing is to make sure the sound samples are easily obtained by the customer. I noticed going through your Power Bundle in the recent sale that I had to open two extra pages for each asset in the bundle in order to hear the samples. It would have been much better to have all of that directly available in the Power Bundle header. One thing a lot of people are doing these days is providing a Soundcloud panel to click on just below the header, where you'd normally find pictures of the asset. I think that works pretty well.

 

Your suggestions are really useful!
Regarding SoundCloud... Each of my asset is on SoundCloud with direct link from the store, but the power bundle is indeed a collection so I placed links to the single asset included in it, I thought it was more simple... Maybe I'll set up a zip file to download from my website with all the bundled content.
Moreover the presence in the sale was a total surprise, so I had no time to update the asset!

 

What about ones made for racing games? Better if they sound like the 90s. Orchestral ones are for opening intros of competition racing, while rock, techno, rap is for underground street racing counterparts where cop chases are present.

If creating arcade racing games, I suggest that those made in the 1990s fare very nice.

 

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but Alchemy Studio has some excellent Metal Loops that seem to me to have an authentic 90's rock guitar sound. You can imagine you are playing a racing game on your SEGA Dreamcast ...

 

hopeful, thanks a lot!

 

Not to mention the ones on PSX, when it was 1997, and Jacques Villenevue is eyeing his F1 title

 

Game music is an interesting subject. In one way you'd want to categorize it by the various game states Title Screen, Stage Intro, Game Play Music, Success, Failure, etc. But that would not work because a happy puzzler game one would expect title and game play music very different from an action platformer or space shootemup... in some cases. Really it is about the feel of the game I think. Edgy/hardcore, intense/action, lighthearted/cartoony/kiddy, Mystery/Suspense, Epic/orchestral/Adventure, Elevator music/Dept store tunes etc that kind of thing.

If you had those as the main categories and then had sub categories for each with Title, Stage Intro, Game Play Intense, Game Play Calm, Victory, Failure etc that would be ideal I think.

 

thanks Benjamin, that's a really good idea!
combining music mood and possible game use seems a very nice solution!

 

Keep in mind that music can fall into several categories. Like some eerie pieces could be "horror," "intense," scifi," and "fantasy."

Bottom line: I listen to everything.