What's the difference between composing and arranging video game music? Well, here's my definition for you. Composing is when you create the melody and the chords. In songwriting, this would be called the top line. It's specifically the full melody for the whole piece of music. Now, of course, it's for thematic video game music, not for atmospheric video game music, where you're kind of hanging out and there's no real melody, and there's just areas and wind sounds and a little bit of a cello playing over here. Not that. But when there's an actual theme, a melody that you could sing and recognize, that's going to be the composition, the main melody. Now, that doesn't mean we have a violin playing it or a viola playing it. No, we just have the melody, and then we have the chords, the harmony, the underlying harmony. And again, it doesn't matter what instrument's playing it at this point. That's the composition. Now, the arrangement is when we ask the question, all right, what instrument should be playing the melody and where, right? A flute could be playing the melody the whole time, or we could have a viola come in and play the melody, or we could have a cello play the melody, or we could have a choir sing the melody. So many options. Now, those chords underneath that harmony, how are they being presented? We could present them with an orchestra playing them, a brass band playing them, both together at the same time, a rock band. We could have synthesizers, literally any way of translating that underlying harmony. And within that too, I mean, there's so many places you can go. It's like, well, what rhythm are we using? Or more contrapuntal, meaning there's a whole bunch of melodies at the same time that come together to create the harmony. Or is it actual stacks of notes together? Is there movement within those stacks of notes? How quickly are they going? All that gets down to things like harmonic rhythm and arrangement. If you want to learn more about composing video game music, check out the new book, Compose Legendary Video Game Music. It's out on Amazon right now.