What is Reactional Music?
Reactional Music offers a collection of tools to enable real-time, note-by-note interactive music in game engines like Unity and Unreal. These tools can combine our fully interactive music format with licensed music and include Reactional Composer, Reactional Engine, and game developer plugins. The musical formats we work with are Reactional Themes and Reactional Tracks.
Reactional Themes
A Reactional Theme is a format for fully interactive music where every note is generated in real time within the game engine using virtual instruments.
From a composer's point of view, you compose as usual in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and then add a structural layer that explains the various parts and functions of the music using regions and markers.
After completing a composition, converting it to the Reactional format expands it with controls for musical modifications. Using our Composer software, the composer sets up a collection of control parameters called Macros, which allow integration with in-game events.
Once inside the game engine, developers can use the Theme to create game mechanics that respond dynamically and interactively to any music in the game, driving animations, effects, and events by matching them to BPM, certain beats or progression.
Simply pick a Theme on the Platform and get full control of the macros and progression of the music inside your game.
Reactional Tracks
On the Platform, you can find hundreds of thousands of Reactional Ready audio tracks from both commercial recording artists and library music catalogs. All of these can be licensed for use in your game, allowing you to achieve a professional-sounding game within minutes.
The Reactional Tracks have undergone thorough musical analysis, allowing them to pair perfectly with Reactional Themes. Essentially, whenever a Track is playing, the Theme will adapt to the Track's tempo and harmony. For instance, a fanfare or action stinger will stay in perfect sync in terms of timing and pitch, regardless of the music.
Test and pair different Example Reactional Themes and Reactional Tracks on the Platform.
A simple comparison of themes and tracks would be the following:
| Theme | Track (Playlist) |
|---|---|
| Generative / Interactive | Audio file(s) |
| Note by Note | Production quality |
| Can adapt to Track | Reactional Ready (musically analyzed) |
| Can be tiny or entire game score | Hundreds of thousands of music tracks |
Playlists
As a developer you can update the music of your game, even after release, without making a new build, just by updating the playlist. On the Platform you can curate your Reactional Tracks in playlists and check-out to integrate in your game.