I’m happy to announce Aaron Marks as our October’s guest on Designing Sound. A multi-disciplinary audio professional with background in music composition, sound design, field recording, and more. Author of “The Complete guide to Game Audio” and teacher at The Art Institute of California. A very kind person ready to share lots of cool things with us this month.

Bio

Best known for his book, The Complete Guide to Game Audio, Aaron Marks is not only an outspoken advocate of great audio in games, he is an accomplished composer, sound designer, field recordist, voice over artist and owner of On Your Mark Music Productions based near San Diego, California. As if that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, he is also the lead author of the book, Game Audio Development, and is part of the audio production faculty at The Art Institute of California – San Diego teaching the art of field recording and sound for interactive media.

Music has always been a part of Aaron Marks’ life – but it wasn’t until 1995, when his overgrown hobby became On Your Mark Music Productions, that he began selling it to the world. Aaron started with the Southern California radio and television scene composing jingles and scoring public service announcements. Although he set his sights on Hollywood, he fell headfirst into the game industry instead where his sound design and voiceover talents also exploded – leading him to music, sound design, field recording and voiceover credits on over 120 game titles for the Xbox and Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and 3, Wii, Dreamcast, CD/DVD-ROM, touch screen arcade games, iPhone/iPad, Class II video slot machines, Class III mechanical and video slot machines, coin op/arcade, online and terminal based video casino games and numerous multimedia projects.

Through the years, Aaron has written for Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra.com, Music4Games.net and the Society of Composers and Lyrists. He wrote an accredited college course on game audio for the Art Institute Online, is a member of the AES Technical Committee for Games, was an AES Game Audio Workshop chairman, was on the launch committee for the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) and is a popular guest speaker and lecturer at game related conferences and academic functions.

Aaron currently divides his time between his love for all things audio, his family and their eclectic menagerie of farm animals.

About OYM

On Your Mark Music Productions is a provider of music, sound effects, field recording and voice overs for the video game, television and film industries with clients such as Codemasters, UbiSoft, Konami, Universal/Vivendi, Activision, Microsoft and Electronic Arts. In operation since 1995, Aaron Marks and his cast of creative characters, have provided audio for over 300 combined projects and proudly continue the pursuit of the ultimate soundscape. With the recent addition of composer, arranger and orchestrator Mark Scholl, OYM rounds out their sonic arsenal and offered services with 2 Emmy Awards, 15 years of live touring and performing experience and a premier drummer/percussionist.

Awards

• GANG Award, Best Game Audio Article, Publication or Broadcast – The Complete Guide to Game Audio
• GANG Award, Best Game Audio Article, Publication or Broadcast – The Use and Effectiveness of Audio in HALO: Game Music Evolved

Selected Works

• The Complete Guide to Game Audio, 2nd Edition – author
• Game Audio Development – lead author
• bittosHD, bittos+, bittos-e, bittos – composer, sound designer
• Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising – field recordist
• large variety of video casino gaming devices – audio director/composer/sound designer
• Sprint Mobile network daily audio news segments – voice overs
• Colin McRae’s DIRT – voice over direction and recording
• Tom Clancy’s ENDWAR (PSP/DS) – composer
• The Settler’s – Traditions Edition – composer
• The Settler’s II – 10th Anniversary – composer

On Your Mark Music