A film composer writes to a locked picture. A game composer writes to a system — nobody knows when the player walks into the ambush.
States are moments, not tracks
Start from gameplay moments: Menu, Explore, Tension, Combat, Victory, Death. Each gets its own loop with its own energy. The classic mistake is writing six unrelated songs — keep the key, tempo and motifs shared so states feel like one score wearing different faces.
Transitions carry the emotion
The moment the music changes is what players actually feel:
- Immediate with a short fade (0.3–0.8s) for danger — the jolt is the point
- Next bar for most moves — musical without dragging
- Next phrase with a long fade for relief — victory laps deserve a landing
Grieg understood this in 1875: In the Hall of the Mountain King is literally a sneak state that becomes a chase. We rebuilt it as a two-state adaptive score — get spotted, hear it snap.
Try the loop yourself
Every score page here has a playable demo — a tiny WASD scene where walking near enemies drives the real transition graph. It's the fastest way to develop intuition for what a 2-second crossfade feels like versus a stinger cut.