As I mentioned before, this is my entry to Dynamic Interference’s Monthly Sound Design Challenge.
Also, this is the first video with my new logo.
Please, any constructive criticism is encouraged.
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If you’re a sound designer of any caliber, and you haven’t heard of Social Sound Design, you better get over there RIGHT NOW.
Shaun Farley, a regular at SSD, has started a monthly sound design challenge where he selects the base media, and you sound design around it. Today marks the release date of the very first challenge, which he’s posted on his website. This is a perfect opportunity for those of you who are still looking for a project to cut your teeth on, so no matter how green you think you are, I suggest you do it.
Watch for my uploaded video in a month or so.
Tags: Challenge, Contest, design, FreeSound.org, practice, Social Sound Design, sound, sound design
Over the next little while, I’ll probably be posting quite a few sound design videos, as I get things together for my demo reel. Uploading them early gives me a chance to take any constructive criticism I receive and apply it to the sound design before I render a final version of my reel, and I feel like it gives me the best chance for success in the long run.
My first video is a redub of the 38th cut scene in Silent Hill 3. In the video, the protagonist, Heather, finds an unconnected payphone ringing in a rusty locker… This is only 30 seconds long, but that’s all I need for what I’ll be using it for.
This is my first attempt at hosting anything on Vimeo, as well as my first rendered video with Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10.0 (Seriously, Sony… shorter software titles PLEASE), and my first use of the free convolution reverb plugin SIR, AND the first thing I mixed / mastered on my new Tannoy 601p monitors. I’m not entirely sold on the particular impulse I used in the locker, so that may change as I get closer to my finalized reel.
So, without further interruption, I present my SH3 Redub.
Silent Hill 3 Redub from Dave Matney on Vimeo.
Constructive criticism is encouraged and appreciated.
Tags: design, FreeSound.org, SH3, Silent Hill, Sonar, Sony Vegas, sound, sound design
This is a tech-heavy post, specifically regarding XNA, XACT, and the in and outs of video game sound design.
This post isn’t for everyone.
Up to this point…
All the sound in Siphon Spirit has been implemented using the basic soundEffect.Play(); functions for all the sounds within the game, which has given us — specifically me — very little control on the audio within the game. Play, stop, loop, and volume — all with their own quirks and downfalls. Two audio files played simultaneously would never sync, things looped with an audible seam, and if I wanted to add pitch variations to common sounds, I had to make that many sound files and play them at random. So, not ideal.
Luckily for us…
XNA Game Studio comes with a built in audio engine with far more flexibility and functionality than can be achieved with code alone. Seamless looping: check. Automatic pitch variation: check. Ability to pan: check. Take audio control away from the coder and give it to me, much to his chagrin: check! And, like everything else XNA, it’s free. Not just free to download and use on projects that will never make money, like fMod and WWise, but free to every XNA project you ever build.
But…
XNA documentation is awful — Not Microsoft-awful, but awful in general — and the sections on XACT are less informative than the rest of it. To figure any of it out, you have to be both a programmer and a sound guy, and you pretty much have to have the code and the audio library open at the same time to get things working correctly. In our case, that means I work on the audio library at the same time as our programmer, Curtis, implements the code, and we tackle any bugs that pop up via IM, Dropbox, and Google — because, like I mentioned, XNA documentation sucks, and all of our solutions have actually come from 3rd party / frustrated-user tutorials. And, like all things Microsoft, sometimes things will work in one build and not in the next, even though nothing was changed.
So…
- Why not use fMod or WWise? Because we want to make money, but don’t have the initial flow to pay for licensing.
- Why not use the built in sound functions, and just live with it? Two words… seamless looping. Actually, scratch that.. more control.
- What about *insert other audio middleware / library here*? Because, honestly, I don’t know of any other.
In conclusion
XACT will, I believe, reveal itself to be time well spent. Not only can I put this experience on my resume, but the feel of Siphon Spirit, and any other XNA game I work on will benefit from the headaches I’m suffering through right now. And it’s actually really nice to feel like I’m part of the creative process beyond just the assets I’ve been creating.
And the real reason I wrote this post…
Was to link this blog post by Kevin Gadd about simple dynamic audio within XACT. If I didn’t find that, everything XACT related would never have made any sense. If you found this post because you’re frustrated with XACT, check out that link.
Tags: composing, design, Game Design, Music, sound, sound design, xact, xna
This last weekend I had the privilege to participate in the 2010 Global Game Jam, held at our local branch of ITT Tech building. It was a lot of fun, overall.
This year’s theme was “Deception,” and the area restraints were “Trades, Raids, or Maids.” Some teams were formed before the opening night, which I feel took away from the overall experience, but those teams still had the experience of cranking out a game in 48 hours.
I was officially part of one team–made up of Tim Tillotson, Mark Schmelzenbach, and Jacob Kinney– at the start, with a self-imposed time limit of being done at Saturday by noon, which worked just fine for me, because I wanted to do audio for as many people as I could. We cranked out as much as we could, and when noon came around we saw that we weren’t close to finishing our project, but we saw an end in sight, so Mark and Tim both agreed they could work ’til 3, which we worked to and had to simply cut our losses; it was close, but it still wasn’t a playable game. With Tim saying he was going to work on it a bit more that night –which he did– he, Mark, and Jacob all went their separate ways, and I stayed behind to do sound for anyone else who wanted it.
I could give you tons of stories, but I’ll just get onto the games and audio.
First up, is The Ant Thieves, the game that my team put together. You can play it here.
I am really happy with my audio for this game… I took The Ants Go Marching, and blended it with the James Bond and Mission Impossible themes, for an ant-spy feel. I made two versions, one with a subdued chord progression and one made to feel victorious. As for sound design, I pitched up a scream sound and made a “stomp” sound with some impacts and a drum, then added some distortion.
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Next up, Treasure Raiders is an XBox 360 game with a rock-paper-scissors mechanic and some campy art. It should be mentioned that none of the people on their team were artists. I hung out with these guys almost exclusively after my team left. You can download the Windows version of the game from the link above, or you can wait for it to show up in the XBox Live Arcade (it won’t be free… but all the money is going to charity.)
I had a lot of fun writing the music for this project. They wanted something like Castle Crashers, giving the game a cheesy epic feel, and I was loving me some French Horns when I wrote the music. As for sound design, I tried to use musical instruments for as much of it as I could, to keep the campy feel, but had to resort to recorded sounds for the combat.
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Third up is Dust Bunnies. I really don’t know what to tell you about this team. They were mostly ITT Tech students, with two exceptions. Every time I went into their room, I never knew what to expect; someone could be sleeping on the floor, or someone could be rapping, and over the Saturday-to-Sunday crunch, they had rap music videos projected on their wall. It was a blast, and you can play it here.
These boys didn’t know what they wanted… they first asked for elevator music, and then something by Ry Cooder. By the end of it, they had settled on a Sim City-sounding reggae tune that I had actually cast aside, because I didn’t think they’d want it. I’m glad they did, though.. I always ove writing reggae. For sound design, I took two vacuum tracks, layered them, and trimmed them so the start and stop would be shorter, and cleaner.
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Finally, I did sound design for two additional games.
For the first one, Maid of Discontent, built entirely by one man, the sound was almost an afterthought. He had asked me for two sound effects earlier in the night, but he insisted it wasn’t a big deal, so I focused on everything else. If he hadn’t had trouble uploading the file, I don’t think I would have even been able to get the two sounds in. Yeah, that’s right… two sounds. A coin dropping into a vending machine, and a door closing, both FreeSound sounds that I simply cleaned up and balanced out.
The second sound-design-only game, and final game I worked on, was ConRaid, a fun flash game where you hide crowns from raiding orcs. I feel I had more making these sound effects than any other project, due to their simplicity and speed. I simply played guitar, then bitcrushed and downsampled them ’til I was happy. Because of their melodic roots, they give the game a sense of having a soundtrack, even though there’s not one there. You can play it here.
Oh, and one more thing:
The games posted in this entry use the following sound files from Freesound (http://www.freesound.org):
Woman Scream AAA, Thijs loud scream, from thanvannispen
Wilhelm from SweetNeo85
Scream Boom 01 from studiorat
Scream from analogchill
banda fort sample from snog
Door Creak Short from Percy Duke
Single Coin Return from tweeterdj
I’ll happily do this again, next year.
Tags: composing, design, FreeSound.org, Game Design, Game In A Day, Global Game Jam, IGDA, ITT Tech, Music, sound
Recently, a friend of mine from the local IGDA and Utah Indie Game Dev groups and I have started a game development “company,” if you will. Our focus, right now, is to create portfolio pieces for us and everyone involved, which will get us more exposure in the future.
I can’t really tell you much more, because there’s not a whole lot out there, but I’ll get something up eventually.
In other news, financial troubles have shut off my internet at home, which has shown to be a problem on the composing front: Native Instruments’ products, which I rely on fairly heavily, check their registration every time you start them up via their Service Center… basically, without the internet at home, my products only show as unregistered, and aren’t working. (If any of you know a solution to this, I’d love to know.)
So, my music, at least computer based, has taken a back seat to writing, which only requires a pencil and paper.
Tags: Akoustik, Battery, Business, design, Game Design, Komplete, Kontakt, Kore, Massive, MonkeyEgg, Music, Writing
Sorry for posting these so late. As for my weekly non-music update, with how busy I was over the weekend, I don’t have much to report.
Today’s links focus more on finances and freelancing than music, sound, or game design. Why? Because I think that most people starting in these fields don’t consider themselves freelancers, or don’t know where to look. In the future, watch for blogs, from me and probably others, based entirely on this idea.
Also, there’s a bit on writing; I would love to be a writer, and one day I may just do some writing other than what’s required for game design, but the reason I’m posting these links is because I feel they offer good advice for anyone within creative fields.
Expect future Weekly Weblinks to feature more on freelancing and business as well.
Also, I have a folder full of links for upcoming Recommended Readings, but I try to limit these (10 links today, and it feels right). If you want or need more information, don’t
hesitate to ask in the comments.
Game Design
- Make Your Own Games. Tadhg Kelly compares gaming companies, both independent and corporate, and compares them to bands and orchestras. I feel this is a great article, but it misses the idea of jazz bands, and small just-for-fun classical ensembles, where they’re still driven by discipline and often have sheet music and such, but still have the chaotic and crazy that garage bands have. I feel his comparison should go as follows: bands are hobbiest programmers, jazz bands are the independent gaming studios (following just enough of the rules and midsets to make it work, but still taking risks without a safety net). (@ Gamasutra)
- The Fatal Flaws of Flash Game Design. This article, by Erin Bell, is a grab bag of good game design (obviously) and freelance (not so obviously) tips for anyone starting out. (@ Gamasutra)
Business Related
- How To Increase Your Workspace Productivity. Is your workspace fighting against your creativity and workflow? Fix it. (@ Unplggd)
- How To Budget For An Irregular Income. I can’t stress this enough: as a starting musician/composer/sound designer you are –not- going to make ends meat. Even when you become established, unless you’re working in-house, you’re not going to have a steady income. J.D. explains here how to budget effectively for the slow months. (@ Get Rich Slowly)
Freelancing
- What the Carnies Can Teach You About Freelancing. Exactly as the title suggests, by James Chartrand. Incredibly useful read. (@ Men With Pens)
- 60+ Resources For Entrepreneurs To Step Up and Take Charge. More reading for anyone who truly wants to start out in any business. Even if all you want to do is flip burgers, you’re still selling yourself and your time. (@ Applicant)
- 3 Steps To Building A Profitable Business Using Twitter. Professional relationships are built these days in 140 characters, or so Twitter would have you believe. Chris Johnson explains ways to take your relationship beyond tweets, and build connections. It will be interesting to see how Twitter plays out, whether it’s as revolutionary as everyone wantsto believe, but for the time being there’s no harm in trying. (@ TwiTip)
- 5 Must-Have Qualities to be a Top Freelancer. Like most freelancing tips, this is just good business sense laid out in plain English. As a composer/musician/designer you have to treat yourself like a business, or you won’t go anywhere. (@ Freelance Folder)
Writing
- Write When You Think You Can’t. When I first read this article, I thought it was ways for breaking writers block, which it obviously is. But then I reread it and noticed, at the
top of the page, that it’s more about writing when you’ve never written before, and how to start. Good for anyone doing, or who wants to do, creative work. (@ Dumb Little Man) - Accept What Is – Don’t Judge as Good or Bad. I wish I’d read this yesterday. On Monday night, when Brandon and I were trying to speed-write a
song, I wanted to give up because the piece wasn’t perfect. Then we laid it over the video, and it was everything we were hoping for. Often times, we’re shooting for something better than we need, and we let it bring us down, when really all we need to do is accept it. (@ ZenHabits)
Tags: Business, composing, design, Freelancing, Game Design, Music, Writing
It seems that every blog has a weekly roundup of sorts, posting related (or semi-related) links from around the web. So, to give this blog validity, I think it’s a good idea to follow suit.
It’s been a busy week for me, as I’ve mentioned before: I’ve been staying up ’til midnight or later working on music for Brandon Irwin, got sick, built a fence (where, during clean up, I was able to source out a couple BEAUTIFULLY squeaky hinges), and got right back to writing music. Game Design Concepts has taken a back seat to a heavy workload at my 9-5 (I’m taking a break from that, right now, just to write this), and PARPG and the GAME have followed suit against the approaching Churches deadline.
I can’t pretend it’s been all work, though, and to accent that, I present to you this weeks links.
Music to Listen To:
- He Who Brings The Night. A sweet song I stumbled upon today, by Thomas J. Bergersen. Give it a listen, and let him, and me, know what you think. ( @ nemesisII )
- Peace Piece. A set of videos related to Peace Piece, by Bill Evans. I’d love to play piano like that, and I’d never heard a bowed vibraphone before. ( @ the music of sound )
- Fun. My brother, Steve, mentioned this band to me, claiming I wouldn’t like them because they’re too eclectic. (This’ll show him!) Fronted by Nate Ruess of the now-dead Format, this band is super… um… fun. ( @ Fun )
Music to Read About:
- DRM is Dead. In the early 2000s, I ripped all 200+ CDs I had onto my computer, trying to get with the times of moving to digital media, using Windows Media Player, which added DRM by default. A few years later, those CDs were stolen, and the computer I was holding my music on died (the motherboard, anyway)… A few years after that, I hooked up the old hard drive to retrieve my old music and found the DRM had expired, and I could no longer use music that I rightly owned. Long story short, if DRM had never happened, I’d have a lot of music I’ll never have again. This couldn’t come soon enough. ( @ Gizmodo )
- Trent Reznor: What To Do as a New / Unknown Artist. The music industry has changed, and is changing; Nine Inch Nails’ frontman lays it all out how he feels new and unknown artists should do to get themselves out there. ( @ hypebot )
- Why the Academy is Scaling Back Best Original Song. Not only has the music industry changed, and DRM died, but the film industry is moving away from original compositions in favor of paying rights for popular songs. (Even when they don’t fit. I’m looking at you, 21 Guns, by Green Day, in Transformers 2). John Piscitello sums it all up pretty nicely, and even throws in a Marylin Monroe video to spice things up. ( @ Film Composer Blog)
Game Design
- Game Criticism, Pollock, and Taste. Brenda Brathwaite explains that game critics try to judge games using odd, often outdated or unrelated, methods, and often rely completly on their particular taste for the game. ( @ Applied Game Design )
- Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value, and Meaning. A free eBook discussing how video games can both be “well played” as a book can be “well read”, as well as it can be “well played” in a sense of “well done.” ( @ lulu )
- Weapon Balancing Based on Gameplay Situations (part 1). Daniel Helbig introduces us to a way of balancing weapons within video games. ( @ Rational Game Design )
- Designing Games that Don’t Suck. Jason Bay breaks down the use of in-game weapons, objects, and puzzles, suggesting how this can help everyone make better games. ( @ Gamasutra )
- How to Pick Indie Game Collaborators. If you’ve worked at all on indie games, or really ANY project, you’ve run into the the types of people within this article. Russ McMackin lays it all down as a way for us to know, up front, who to avoid working with and how to avoid them. ( @ Game Career Guide )
And here I thouht I wouldn’t have anything useful to share. 
Tags: Brandon Irwin, Churches, composing, design, Game Design, GDCU, Music, PARPG
Ah, first entry. Unless you’re one of my personal friends, or find me incredibly interesting –assuming I’ve written more than just these few words– I’m honestly surprised you’ve stumbled across this page. It’s not that I find myself boring, but as the unspoken rules of the blogosphere go, reading the first few posts of a new blog is about as taboo as wearing nothing but a pink corset to a business meeting. (It flies in some circles, but most it’s just unheard of.)
So, how did I get here? Passing all the nitty gritty that gets us all here (it’s not that kinda blog!), my story sounds pretty similar to just about every other non-prodigy musician’s, writer’s, designer’s, or composer’s story. I started at a particularly young age, producing absolute drivel, but I have a supportive family that felt lying to me was a good idea. They said “I love it!” and told me to keep it up, and I did.
Piano lessons, public school band classes, Dungeons and Dragons with friends, an overactive imagination, various jobs to pay the bills, various bands to build my musical arsenal… I didn’t write much, not traditional writing anyway; that was my brother’s area. For those of you without siblings, that means I never considered writing as an option, but that didn’t mean the ideas never came, only that I never learned to polish them.
I started writing music for short films, church projects, and that lead me to sites like indiegamer.com, which lead me to PARPG.net, a project that I’m currently working on. I signed on to write music, and when the other composers started moving in, each with more experience, I opted to move into sound design. Being so early in the design process, and hanging out in the forums, I started contributing story ideas, with people taking note and seeming to enjoy what I was putting out.
I began reading game design blogs, hoping to find some direction I could move in PARPG, and I came to realize that all of my D&D games and overactive imagination were priming me for this.
This blog will serve as a progress report for everything I’m learning, and doing, concerning music, sound, writing, and design.
Here’s to moving forward.
Tags: composing, design, IndieGamer, Music, PARPG, sound, Writing
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