Planning a Video Game Music Set for a Convention Crowd

The first time I played a gaming convention's Saturday night dance, I built the set the way I would for a club: tracks chosen for energy and key, tempos in a tidy climb. Forty minutes in, the floor was half empty. Then I dropped a straight remix of a Zelda overworld theme and the room filled up in about eight bars. That crowd did not care about my blend. They cared whether they recognised the melody.

Convention sets are booked more and more, by anime and game events, esports finals and studio parties, and most DJs prepare for them the wrong way. This is how I build one now, from where the tracks come from to the technical headaches that only game music causes.

Recognition beats energy, for the first hour

A club crowd judges a track on groove. A convention crowd judges it on memory. People will dance to a slower, odder track if it is the battle theme from a game they played at fourteen, and they will stand still for a technically perfect house track they have never heard.

So the first sorting question is not BPM. It is "how many people in this room will know this within the first eight bars?" I score each candidate from one to three. A three is something nearly everyone knows: Super Mario Bros. overworld, Tetris's Korobeiniki, Megalovania from Undertale, the Pokemon battle music, Still Alive from Portal. A two is a fan favourite from a big series, like Gerudo Valley, One-Winged Angel or a Persona battle track. A one is a deep cut that only the dedicated will catch.

The first hour leans heavily on threes, with twos scattered in. Ones work late, once the floor trusts you, and they get the loudest cheer from the few who know them. That is roughly the same crowd logic I described in building a set list for three different crowds, only with nostalgia replacing genre.

Where the playable versions come from

Original game tracks are often hard to mix. Many were written as short loops for a game engine, with no intro, no outro, and a final bar that leads straight back into the first. Some ship in an official soundtrack as a single pass of about ninety seconds. You need versions that can actually be mixed.

My library is built from three sources:

• Official soundtrack releases, which many studios now sell or stream. Celeste by Lena Raine, DOOM (2016) by Mick Gordon and Undertale by Toby Fox are all available as proper albums and some of their tracks drop into a set almost unedited.
• Licensed remix albums and official arrangement albums released by publishers, which often have club friendly structure already.
• Fan remixes. Communities such as OverClocked ReMix publish thousands of free arrangements, and the quality is often excellent. Check the terms on each one, because free to download is not the same as cleared for a paid commercial gig.

Licensing for live play depends on your country and the venue. In most places the public performance licence held by the venue covers registered compositions, and much game music is registered with collecting societies. Studio parties and corporate events are sometimes stricter, so I ask the organiser in writing which music they have cleared. Sable would tell you to put that in the contract, and she would be right.

The looping problem, and why it is also a gift

Here is the part that surprised me. Game music causes mixing headaches, but its looping nature is also the easiest thing in the world to fix.

Because game tracks are composed to loop, they have clean loop points built in. In a DAW, or even with a looping function on a modern controller, you can extend the first phrase into a 16 or 32 bar intro and the last phrase into a matching outro without anyone hearing a seam. I spend about ten minutes per track doing this before a convention gig, and I make a DJ edit for roughly half the set.

Tempo is the other headache. Older game music often has tempo changes, or a tempo that wanders because it was sequenced loosely. Megalovania sits near 120 BPM and plays nicely. Many 8 bit tracks run at 150 or faster, and some boss themes switch meter halfway through. I group tracks into tempo neighbourhoods and accept that some transitions will be cuts, not blends. A clean cut on the downbeat into a melody the room knows works better than a long blend that smears two tunes into mush. Matching keys is helpful when you can, and the ideas in harmonic mixing over perfect beatmatching apply strongly here, since so much game music is melody first.

Chiptune tracks also bring a sound quality problem. Square waves are harsh at volume. I pull 3 to 4 kHz down a couple of decibels on those tracks and let the bass carry them, otherwise people at the front start covering their ears.

The room you will actually be playing

Convention dances are rarely in proper clubs. They happen in hotel ballrooms with carpeted floors, high ceilings and a partition wall shared with a panel room. Expect a sound limit, often stated in the hotel contract, and expect someone from the venue to check it with a phone app at the back of the room.

The provided sound is often two powered speakers on sticks and no sub. I bring my own small sub when the contract allows, because game remixes with heavy synth bass sound thin otherwise. I also bring a long run of cable, since the DJ table is frequently placed wherever the AV crew had space, not where the floor will form.

Costume matters for the floor too. A crowd in cosplay moves differently: wings, armour and props mean fewer people dance hard and more people dance in place, singing along. Slightly slower, singalong heavy sections land better than relentless peak energy.

Handling requests from people who know more than you

Convention crowds request constantly, and they request specifically: not "something from Final Fantasy" but a particular arrangement of a particular track from a particular game. You will not have everything. I keep a phone note of every request I could not play, and before the next event I find decent versions of the ones that came up twice. After three conventions that list became my best set building tool.

When someone asks for a track that would empty the floor, say a slow piano piece, the techniques in handling requests without losing the room still apply. A friendly "I'll find a moment for it" and a genuine attempt later goes a long way with this crowd. If you are still building your collection, the list in finding great game soundtracks is a decent starting point.

Build a thirty minute test set this week

Pick twelve game tracks you would bet the room knows, score each one from one to three for recognition, and make a 16 bar intro edit for the four that loop most awkwardly. Play the thirty minutes through at home with cuts where blends fight you. If it holds your attention without a crowd, it will hold one with a crowd, and you will have half of your next convention set already done.