Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Stuck with half-finished game music ideas? Download the free 6-Level Game Music Composer Roadmap here: bestmusiccoach.com/roadmap?htrafficsource=yt&el=learn-motifs-first-to-understand-how-melodies-are-built
So how does video game music even work? Well, there's teeny tiny ideas. These are called motif, and a motif is the smallest recognizable musical idea. Now, that's not a very watertight definition, but hey, in the world of music, that's about as watertight as things are going to get. So if you can recognize it, it's small, it's a motif. Now, those motifs, we can put them together like Lego blocks, and that becomes a subphrase. And in a subphrase, we have a whole bunch of motifs inside it. Now, we can stack the subphrases together. Those create phrases and also sections of a piece of music. And you stack enough motifs inside enough subphrases inside enough sections, and you're going to get an entire composition, an entire piece of music that's going to be thematic, meaning it's going to be driven by a melody. What does driven by a melody mean? It means the melody is going to be telling the main story of what's going on. And that doesn't mean you have to have your whole composition be that way. In fact, you go look at some modern shooter games, and you will see that there's going to be a moment where we hear a theme, but like 70% of the music is actually not going to be driven by the theme. It's going to be driven by atmospheric elements, drums, percussion, and things like that. If you want to learn more about composing video game music, check out the book, Compose Legendary Video Game Music. It's out on Amazon right now.
Stuck with half-finished game music ideas? Download the free 6-Level Game Music Composer Roadmap here: bestmusiccoach.com/roadmap?htrafficsource=yt&el=learn-motifs-first-to-understand-how-melodies-are-built
So how does video game music even work? Well, there's teeny tiny ideas. These are called motif, and a motif is the smallest recognizable musical idea. Now, that's not a very watertight definition, but hey, in the world of music, that's about as watertight as things are going to get. So if you can recognize it, it's small, it's a motif. Now, those motifs, we can put them together like Lego blocks, and that becomes a subphrase. And in a subphrase, we have a whole bunch of motifs inside it. Now, we can stack the subphrases together. Those create phrases and also sections of a piece of music. And you stack enough motifs inside enough subphrases inside enough sections, and you're going to get an entire composition, an entire piece of music that's going to be thematic, meaning it's going to be driven by a melody. What does driven by a melody mean? It means the melody is going to be telling the main story of what's going on. And that doesn't mean you have to have your whole composition be that way. In fact, you go look at some modern shooter games, and you will see that there's going to be a moment where we hear a theme, but like 70% of the music is actually not going to be driven by the theme. It's going to be driven by atmospheric elements, drums, percussion, and things like that. If you want to learn more about composing video game music, check out the book, Compose Legendary Video Game Music. It's out on Amazon right now.
