Andrew Quinn, sound designer at Splash Damage, was kind enough to speak to Designing Sound about his work on the recently announced mobile strategy title RAD Soldiers on the new social label WarChest. The music for the game was produced by Marc Canham of Nimrod Productions.

DS: Can you tell us a little about how you got into game audio, and your audio career so far?

AQ: I always had an interest in sound and music. In my youth I played guitar in local bands, recorded music with friend’s bands and generally made a racket. This messing with sound and music led to me studying a BSc in Creative Music and Sound Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University. During the course I got a chance to delve into post-production and more importantly game audio in the third year and I really enjoyed it. I stayed on another year at Leeds to do an MSc in Sound and Music for Interactive Games under the expert tutelage of Richard Stevens and David Raybould.

After I graduated from the masters, I really struggled to find a job in the games industry. Luckily, the university was looking for a part-time lecturer on their audio course and they took me on. As it was only part-time it gave me a bit of time to work on my own projects and get a portfolio of work together. One project I got to work on was the Game Audio Tutorial book by the aforementioned Leeds-based lecturers Richard Stevens and David Raybould. I ended up creating the tutorial levels and sound library bundled with the book.

That summer I decided to attend the Develop audio track in Brighton to do a bit of networking and generally get my portfolio about. I must have done something right as a few weeks later I secured a couple of interviews and later a job offer.

I joined Splash Damage just before BRINK shipped and I’ve been there just over a year now.

DS: Is there an area of sound that you’re particularly drawn to?

AQ: My main focus is sound design and implementation, that’s what I do. I particularly enjoy creating creatures and weapons.

DS: How did you approach pre-production for a mobile title such as RAD Soldiers? How did this differ from your work on a console title?

AQ: Pre-production for this title was very short. The game had already been going a little while when I was brought on, there was quite a bit of concept art, some of the characters and environments were being worked on and some of the base gameplay was already in. After I joined the rest of the team and I spent some of time working on the overall direction of the sound design and music. I came up with some style examples for the music and did a few pre-sonics for some of the ambience and weapons. I also wrote a document with some initial ideas for cool little audio systems we could have if we had the time to implement them.

In general though it’s very similar or I should say my approach is very similar, but scaled down. For instance, rather than ten variations of a knife stab or punch, we’ll have two. Instead of having all the characters speak localised dialogue, we’ll have very general barks, grunts and vocalisations that could be interpreted in any language. We may not have the same amount of time or budget as a AAA game but I still approach every sound with the question “How do I make this as good as possible with the resources available?”

DS: How large an influence did the Strategy genre and multiplayer aspects of the game have on your decisions?

AQ: We took a bit of inspiration from some strategy games, the Command and Conquer series and Worms being two notable examples. This was more their tongue-in-cheek approach to rather than a particular style.

DS: How do you approach communication with the other disciplines on the team? How closely do you work with the other departments?

AQ: During development I was sat with the team working on a pair of headphones rather than hidden away in a studio, so communication was pretty easy and free flowing. The team has always been fairly small (at its largest 8-10 people), so there was never the issue of not knowing what other people were working on or doing. It created a nice dynamic where you could iterate relatively quickly on content and make the game better.

DS: What do you feel is the hardest part of creating sound for interactive media on devices such as smartphones or tablets? What were the main creative / technical challenges you faced in achieving your vision?

AQ: Delivering a compelling and interesting audio experience on a mobile device is quite a challenge, however there were a few things inherent in the game that helped. The asynchronous turn-based gameplay meant that the amount of sound playing at any one time was largely predictable. This enabled me to orchestrate events in a semi-linear fashion, so the overall design ended up being pretty clean. The mix never really gets too busy which can be a problem in strategy/multiplayer games and would be an absolute nightmare on a mobile device. Additionally, for the most part the game has a fixed perspective and player view, so we didn’t have to deal with shifting distances or multiple player perspectives on the same actions which would have complicated the mix and increased the amount of sound playing back. So in the end we managed to avoid quite a few headaches that can be inherent of strategy and multiplayer games.

One of the major issues we encountered was caused by the devices’ ability to only decode .wav or .mp3. Wav is obviously really nice, but for most instances, the size of the file is just too big for a mobile device. Most of the implementation work in Unity was done on a PC that compresses sounds in Ogg, which is lovely. The Ogg compression seemed to hold up pretty well, even at ridiculously low bit rates. However when the build gets deployed to a device, all the sound gets re-compressed into MP3, which created all sorts of interesting problems. Listening back to the sounds on the devices was night and day; there was aliasing, artefacts and all sorts of other compression nasties. The guns and ambiences were particularly affected by this. In the end, I had to spend a bit of time working out what sort of compression values didn’t degrade the quality on a sound by sound basis. In some cases the Mp3 compression bit rate had to be a great deal higher than the Ogg versions to get the same quality.

Strangely, the usual game audio memory limitations haven’t seemed to be as much of an issue as they usually are. The devices themselves have a decent amount of memory, and being sensible about the amount of sound used has meant we haven’t had to go through assets purging quality. Saying that, it’s not like we have skimped on the amount of sound – in fact, we managed to squeeze over 1000 sounds into the base game.

DS: What are the Splash Damage audio team preferred tools for working with? Do you have any software suites, plugins or apps that you use regularly?

AQ: We use Sound Forge/Protools and a combination of Waves, GRM Tools, McDSP and Sound Toys plugins for content creation. Implementation in RAD Soldiers was done within the Unity Engine with some extra custom in-house audio components. On our other projects we’re running an Unreal-Wwise combo.

DS: What do you feel is the most satisfying part of creating sound for games?

AQ: Sound for games poses a unique challenge that I really enjoy. Not only do you have to create the sound asset but you also have to make it work in an interactive environment. When you have hundreds of events, states, parameters, dsp’s and files being triggered dynamically, just getting a sound playing back in-game as intended is a big win.

DS: Do you have a favorite sound or audio system from any game?

AQ: I can’t really put any one down, but I can mention a couple that impressed me recently. Mass Effect 3 did a great job of selling the scale of the war happening around you in the ambient audio, and the big audio events featuring the reapers were really cool. Portal 2 just generally impressed me audio wise, the gels had some really cool little music systems attached to them and the processing on GlaDos’s and Cave’s voices were really great. Oh and Battlefield 3 in its entirety (damn you, DICE, I want my life back).

DS: What was your personal favourite sound or audio system from RAD Soldiers that we can look forward to?

AQ: I had a lot of fun with the weapon and ability audio, it’s mostly hyper-realistic, overdesigned stuff. They were really fun to create.

Another group of sounds I enjoyed creating was for the UAV character. He’s a plucky little robot that enjoys nothing more than a bit of casual leg humping. The sound of his voice was made using a recording of a screwdriver being fed into a little plastic desk fan and some processing with Sound Toy’s Crystallizer.

Under the hood, RAD Soldiers is pretty simple. There were a couple of little audio systems that I was pretty keen to get in from the start of the project. One of these was a simple ducking system to try and make the big events shine through. It’s essentially a very basic snapshot system that allows us to duck a group of sounds when another sound is playing. We can define the attack, duration, depth and release of the snapshot, and snapshots can layer on top of one another. It’s something that big, grown-up engines have been able to do for a while that I wanted to have.

Oh and seeing as the game is set in London, it would be a shame not to have a working Big Ben!

DS:What developments in game audio would you like to see in the future?

AQ:There is some interesting research going on into sound propagation, I’d like to see some systems that approach real acoustic modelling appearing. However with that, I’d still like to be able to tweak and tune how sound plays back within a space rather than having a one stop reality model.

DS: Thank you for your time, Andrew. We look forward to hearing the game in action!

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Rob Bridgett, audio director on Prototype 2 issues a rallying cry for the mixing of the audio discipline with the rest of the studio, and opening up the closed studio space to collaboration -- perhaps even suggesting a fundamental change in studio structure.]

Read more at Gamasutra

Featuring Rocksteady audio director Nick Arundel, and foley artist John Roesch and gun recording expert Bryan Watkins

Click here for the video

Michael Bross is an award winning composer, sound designer and audio director who has worked on such popular video game franchises as Oddworld, Ratchet and Clank and WWE Wrestling, and he is currently working on free-to-play FPS MMO  ‘Firefall‘. Through my own work on Oddworld HD remakes, I has the chance to chat with Michael, who was kind enough to answer a few questions for Designing Sound

Designing Sound: Can you tell us a little about how you got into game audio, and your audio career so far? Can you tell us a little about what you are currently working on?

Michael Bross: I was first hired by a small game company called Paragon Software as a composer in the early 1990′s. I ended up doing sound design for them, too, and learned that part of my work on the job. I’ve been working on a couple projects this year which includes an Insomniac project. That’s all composing work. I’m also doing a bit of audio directing a project for Rumble Entertainment called King’s Road. Plus, I continue to write music for Firefall.

DS:  Is there an area of sound/audio development that you’re particularly drawn to?

MB: I go through phases. At times, I’m drawn more to sound design while others I’m drawn to music.

DS:  As an experienced Audio Director, how do you approach pre-production for a project? (defining aesthetic, creating a palette, communicating vision)?

MB: I spend a lot of time understanding what the game is about. I also talk with the key people on the team and we bounce around ideas about what kind of audio experience that we’d like to create. From there, I begin to gather a lot of reference material from games, film, TV, music along with any other sound sources that are inspiring and related to what we’re doing. I, or my audio team, may do some sound or music prototyping at this stage. There are also a lot of technical aspects to plan for a game, too, so I’m laying groundwork on that.

DS:  What are the main creative / technical challenges you faced in achieving your vision? Do you find the same challenges occurring on different projects?

MB: The main challenge is creating a production pipeline that allows creative people to focus on being creative and less on dealing with technical process.

DS:  How do you approach communication with the other disciplines on the team? How do you keep audio in peoples minds?

MB: By understanding who they are and how they contribute to the development process. How to keep audio in people’s minds? It’s a proactive effort for sure, but understand that great teams know that audio is important.

DS: What do you consider to be the hardest part of creating audio for interactive media?

MB: Production crunches, especially at the end of projects. It’s the time period where there are too many things to do and not enough time. At the same time, it’s also an exciting time. Adrenaline runs high.

DS:  You have worked on a wide variety of genres within games, from platformers Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, to upcoming MMO first person shooter Firefall, through to sports / fighting with WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2011. Are there any unique challenges each of these genres poses?

Each has had its own unique challenges. With the Ratchet and Clank project, my focus was less on technical aspects and more on the creative, so really with that, my challenge was to pay respect to the soundtrack work on past titles while also trying to give it a refresh. With the WWE title, my role was to help them transition to new audio technology and pipeline, so it was more about making that happen and less about new content.

DS: You have previously been involved in creating music for films such as ‘Black Dahlia’ and ‘Ripper’. Is there a big difference in how you approach composing for games versus music for linear media?

MB: Actually, those projects were video game projects, too, but they were FMV-based games. The industry went through a period where it experimented with using live-action elements within a 3D world during the 90′s. We don’t really see that kind of game anymore.

DS:  What do you feel is the most satisfying part of creating sound for games?

MB: Working with talented people and being in the trenches with them and aspiring to make something astounding.

DS:  What are your preferred tools for working with? Do you have any software suites, plugins or apps that you use regularly?

MB: I use Pro Tools for sound design and Logic Pro for both music and sound design. I use an array of different plugins, but in general my favorite effects are those that manipulate pitch. Lately, I’ve been playing around with Izotope’s Iris plugin. It’s one of the more creative plugins I’ve come across lately. It’s like playing with crayons. I love it.

DS: On your last project, is there anything you would approach differently?

MB: On my last big project, I wished I would have had more time to go back and revise some of my mixes.

DS: What developments in game audio would you like to see in the future?
Closing the gap between content tools and implementation tools.

DS: Thank you for your time Michael

A collection of blog posts, and a special edition of the Game Audio Podcast, have been coordinated by Damian Kastbauer and David Nichols on the dense subject of racing game audio. The remarkably in-depth studies (which feature video examples) rip apart audio techniques for the racing genre, investigating subjects such as tire squeals, surface types, camera perspectives, and of course, the sounds of the engines themselves.

From the Lost Chocolate Blog;

These informal game sound studies aim to expose the technical side of game audio by making an assessment of current generation titles. The assessment is then used as a way to better understand the differences in approach, aesthetics, and progression of techniques across a small sample. By turning the focus onto emerging details that arise during the course of the study we are able to identify area’s of significance and interest that help communicate the current state of the art. These finding are then represented in a content-rich report that includes: videos, article links, and specialized interviews. The goal is to help raise awareness for the technical side of sound design and help in the understanding of what is often not very well represented in current literature.

Check out the study in all it’s glory at the following links:

Vroom Vroom – A Study of Sound in Racing Games ( Introductory article in Game Developer Magazine )

TrackTime Audio blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Lost Chocolate Blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Game Audio Podcast – Racing Game Sound Study (with guests Mike Caviezel, Mike de Belle and Tim Bartlett)

The latest edition of the Game Audio Podcast is out, wrapping up a variety of subjects from GDC 2012 with special guest, Michael Raphael of boutique,royalty-free sound library provider Rabbit Ears Audio. Our  hosts also discuss the GANG awards, FMOD Studio, and newly emerging procedural plug-in formats for audio middleware, such as AudioGaming‘s AudioWeather.

You can check out some of the GDC talks mentioned, plus a wide variety of other GDC audio track content here

Listen to the Game Audio Podcast

David Nichols, of the Track Time Audio blog, has posted a second part of his interview with Nick Wiswell, the Audio Director at Turn 10 and audio overseer of the Forza Motorsport games. In this part, Nick discusses how his team used FMOD to implement the audio, how they sourced rarer vehicles, the complexity of Racing audio, and working with Lance Hayes on the UI sounds and music to create the atmosphere the team was looking for. The full interview can be read here, and you can view part one of this great interview here

TTA: Racing game audio is, as I understand it, very unique in the video game world (much like the racing genre is rather unique). It seems like it takes the right kind of person who’s really into cars to produce a great racing game. Do you feel this is the same way for racing audio? Are there particular challenges unique to racing games compared to other genres (technically and/or creatively)?

NW: Creating audio for racing games has a very different set of challenges to creating audio in most other types of games.

Most games require lots of one shot sounds for things like character movement, footsteps, weapons, VO, world objects and object interactions etc. with a small number of constant sounds for moving objects, vehicles or background ambience.

With a racing game most of the objects in the game and making sounds created from many layers of continuously changing sounds.

Read the rest of Nick Wiswell returns for part 2! on the Track Time Audio blog. ( Thanks David!)

Kpow, the folks behind the audio design of 2011 hit LA Noire, have published an insightful analysis of the audio systems created in FMOD Designer and used in the game, illustrated by picture maps. The post also discusses how the team pursued the 1940′s aesthetic, and the care and attention used to construct the in-game  reverb definitions. The whole article can be viewed here on Kpow’s website.

This game was a massive undertaking. We put a lot of effort into making the audio detailed and realistic, with as much depth as we could.  As it was set in the 1940′s, we made sure everything was period specific, and sat well in the world.  All the interaction sounds were given texture and tactility, and made to sound “in the world”.  We used a lot of outboard gear to get that fat, rich, and occasionally old tube, broadcast equipment quality to many of the sound. We strived to provide a rich, varied and detailed audio representation of the world that was exciting and period specific, and we are incredibly happy with the result and the reception our work has garnered.

Creating The Sound For LA Noire

GDC Vault has published the presentation materials from GDC 2012 online for free. There is a great wealth of information from a wide section of the game audio community, starting with Darren Korb‘s excellent keynote speech on his experience of creating the audio for Bastion in a New York closet. Thanks to Kenneth Young for tipping via the #gameaudio hashtag on Twitter!

All free Audio Track sessions are listed and linked below for your convenience;

(Video)

Build That Wall: Creating the Audio for Bastion – Darren Korb

(Slides)

80,000 Lines, Three Lessons Learned - Ariel Gross

Audio Boot Camp - Scott Selfon, Garry Taylor, Jason Graves, Martin Stig Andersen, Alistair Hirst, Sergio Pimentel, John Byrd, Bernard Rodrigue, Mike Caviezel

Authoring Soundscapes with User Generated Content and Automatic Audio Classification - Jordi Janer

Digital Orchestration for the Video Game Composer - Fletcher Beasley

From Minsk to London: How to make a live orchestra production in Europe happen - Pierre Langer

How To Ship a Game With Voices In 10 Languages? …On the same day? …And Keep It Consistent? - Alexandre Piche

Journey vs Monaco: Music is Storytelling - Austin Wintory

Orchestral Recording at Abbey Road for Lord of the Rings: War in the North - Craig Duman, Inon Zur, John Kurlander

Racing Games: A Semi-Formal Sound Study - Damian Kastbauer

Real-time Sound Propagation in Video Games - Jean-Francois Guay

Spot the Difference: AAA vs Indie VO Techniques - Michael Csurics, David Gilbert

Squeeze Play: The State of Ady0 Cmprshn - Scott Selfon

The Art of Non-Music: Crime Shooter Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days - Mona Mur

The Dynamic Audio of Vessel - Leonard Paul

The Emotional Puppeteer: Uncovering the Musical Strings that Tie Our Hearts to Games - Marty O’Donnell, Brandi House

The Weight of the World: creating massive destruction audio for  Red Faction: Armageddon - Stephen Hodde

What We Learned About Practical Audio By Going To Disneyland - Dwight Okahara, Chris Olander

In this second part of Damian Kastbauer’s exclusive interview with New Zealand based music producer and audio designer Jeramiah Ross / Module , they discuss how important the team dynamic is for development studios, working with coders and space-rock opera. You can read up on Part One of this gargantuan interview here and check out his latest album release Imagineering here

I feel like there is a ton of potential to tie things together and experiment, from the mix perspective.

That’s something I did with [PlayStation 3 game] Shatter. I did it with the stereo field. The music is really wide, I need all that space in the middle for sound effects, you know! I basically used lots of instances of the Waves Stereo Expander, and tried not to over-phase everything, but keep everything nice and beautiful, that the effects are all mono and on-key with the music and everything else, all humming together nicely. I wanted it to feel like you are looking out over a horizon and the music is everywhere and the sound design is right there.

I actually think a lot of my mixing and production approach comes from my time in radio audio production.I was always fighting against that bloody radio compression to get the best sound I could. Radio compression is extremely strong and just squashes everything, and so i eventually found a way of mixing that suited that kind of stupid compression. I found I could get great mixes without having to kill off all the dynamics. I love things that breath sonically. Sometimes I don’t even use any compression.

How do you bridge the gap in communication between the developers expressed needs and your position as the audio professional?

It’s similar to being in a band; if you think about being a musician or audio person and you think about working in the video game industry, if you switch the roles of your drummer to being your programmer, your bass player to being your designer and establish those kinds of relationships and treat the whole thing as a band trying to perform a really awesome piece of music. that seems to me personally as a great way to mentally approach the creative & production process and in terms of establishing these relationships with people who may not be as tuned in to your discipline as you might be. That’s the challenge! It’s just as important. It’s not easy. As everyone knows when something isn’t working sonically. But pretty much, like myself, everyone I work with share the same goals. to create something cool that people like that suits what it’s been made for, so with that in mind that is the wood and nails holding the bridge together, bridging the gap and connecting both sides.

Right, and it’s a process to get everyone “tuned in”…

Totally! The key thing is that human beings will instinctively feel when things are right, and people will know when things have the right creative energy.most things that people react to, and that people enjoy or love are usually of some form of passion.

The key thing you can do as a creator is get into a situation where you are working in a creative environment that is really open to expression and creative ideas which will create good energy within the product or project. Its like if you’re playing a keyboard part, and you’re really enjoying it, that’s going to come across in the music. If you have that kind of fun, creative, open approach during audio design and during the creation of your audio projects, then people are going to feel that. It’s just the way it works.

That’s actually what happened with Shatter. I just got lost in that world, and wasn’t even thinking about it half the time just doing it.  It was a very small core team that just explored this exciting tangent for 18 months and Shatter just happened to come out of that (laughs). It’s one of those things that happened. There only pressure in regards surrounding schedules and everything came at the end when we ran out of time but the team was all in it together and we really believed in what we were making. There was a strong sense of it being something really cool that helped drive us all across the finish line. It was one of the highlights of my creative career so far without a doubt.

Yeah, with everything coming together simultaneously it takes everyone to pull it together.

I am such a strong believer of that. It can get really hard, and really full-on when you’re balancing deadlines and schedules and so on and that’s part of the beast.

The best way to approach that is, just do what you can to make it sound the best you can. Obviously there are other conditions involved, such as budgets, health, family, time but as long as you are in a situation where you know your tools and you can establish these creative relationships with the people around you to create this awesome thing. You end up in a situation where your doing something like Motown records where you’re just pumping out these awesome great hits because its fun to be involved in and your audience is enjoying it.  That’s how it should be…in a perfect world of course.

It’s the team dynamic that makes the game.

There is a lot more to being an Audio designer than just the Technology and the technique; it’s also about the whole creating an emotional response thing too, so you have to find balance and compromise between those thing to bring the creative vision to life, which is a really exciting thing to do. But yeah, it can get really draining on you emotionally as you’re pushing constantly all the time, but then again it only exists because of what other people are creating and my role when I am working in video game audio is mostly a very servant one. Creating audio for elements created by other people to work for the audience to enjoy which is why I really have leaned on the Usability department at PikPok but I try and make the whole thing fun for myself and hopefully that translates across. There is a lot of fun to be had with a bunch of good people creating crazy stuff for other people to enjoy. That’s what you need to tap into as that’s what it’s about really.

Speaking of,  The most fun I’ve ever had recently on a project was ‘Monsters Ate My Condo’, that was just insane! It’s an iOS title created by PikPok for Adult Swim. Working the Producer We went for a really fun, catchy J-pop style. That whole thing is really hilarious actually, because the lyrics of those tracks are actually in Japanese. We used Google Translate and we typed in what we thought the lyrics should be, and through some mutual friends we found a lovely Japanese girl who had a great voice  so we invited her in to the audio studio and she did the track in one take, as well as helping us refine the translation so that it made sense in Japanese and sounded like a bad English translation of Japanese, You know how sometimes the translation and its wrong, its kinda like reverse bad subtitles but poking fun ourselves.

I also did a number of tracks in different styles for specific monsters, like the giant crab is a kind of lullaby, a campy unicorn that spurts rainbows out of its horn has some cheesy 80’s rock, and a broken robot puppy which is my favourite because it’s like a crazy dubstep version! I did that version by beatboxing the tune and then replacing that recording with synths in Ableton.

I then used an iPhone and a synth app called bebot and put it against a guitar pickup and started making all these crazy noises of this broken, angry little robot puppy (laughs)!

There was also a Green dancing Bulgarian Monster in shorts which I was quite surprised how well that came out, considering it was all just MIDI instruments running through guitar amps. there was also this ‘Megazone’ track for when players reached a bonus area, which is kind of a Motorhead ‘Ace of Spades’ style track It all just got completely out of control which was great.

That sounds awesome!

It was. It was insane! The whole intro menu track was actually placeholder, but we ended up using it anyway! It needed a vocal in the middle, so I just went “MONSTER! CONDO! RRRAAARGHH!” into the mic as placeholder as a demo for the Producer to listen to and it just worked so we just left it there. I didn’t even play the guitar parts properly, I was just mucking around with that kind of ‘Ren & Stimpy’ vibe. And because I gave our vocalist the demo she learnt her vocal parts to the placeholder guitar, which sounded really cool! The bass was one single take, and the drums were just played on a keyboard. The whole track came out with a really cool, loose vibe. It was a neat experiment in just letting loose and going with your gut instincts .

There are some other cool things too; I generated lots of really cool 1980s 8-bit sounds. we just made positive and negative tones rather than having to match each type of message. We completed this project in 2-3 months; 12 songs, the effects and all the audio and sound design

Each individual condo building has its own sound effects which I created by throwing wooden objects around the studio. I cut up the individual impacts and put them in random events in FMOD and touch detection on the buildings so when you drag them you are also dragging the sound.

We even had a professionally trained opera singer come in to perform the part of the Fat Lady singing on the game over screen! She was about to have her first child so she wasn’t offended by playing the part of the “The Game is over so now the fat lady is singing” bit. She is such a lovely person.

I also composed a cool 8-bit style piece of music for the results screen as a homage to Shatter. The credits screen is this rainbow man in white underpants that dances to a country track. I managed to get away with all that craziness and get in into the game(laughs).

In terms of the amount of audio, the amount of styles of music and different sound effects, it’s been a really cool project to work on & has had a great response because all 4 elements are at their strongest, Design, Gameplay, Graphics and Audio and that’s something PikPok games is really known for because of the great talent at the studio in all the different departments.

What tools are you using outside of the game environment?

I try and work as much as I can with external stuff as I love playing with real things. I’ve got some outboard gear, but essentially now its all done in Ableton Live or Pro Tools. Over the last few years, especially since becoming an audio/sound designer, I have found myself leaning on Pro Tools a bit more, because it offers a smoother experience in terms of editing and sound design and region editing and working with motion picture content.

I’ll essentially create a whole sound project and not even go near the game, so that I can export it all out and chuck everything in FMOD and hook it all up. I’ll get Designers, Coders or Producers to throw me lists of sounds that they think the game might need and go back and forth a bit and  work against videos and concept art and then I’ll go about my merry way to try and create that through whatever means and change it around to suit. Ableton Live gives you a lot more options for sound design, as its easier to bounce stuff around and is a lot more streamlined in regards to busses, groups and chaining. I did all of the work for Shatter in Ableton Live including all the sound design.

How do you like the Ableton workflow?

Ableton is every paint brush you need for music and sound. It still needs to sort itself out with video and dual monitor support, having to flick constantly between 2 views to mix is a pain.  video scrubbing is not as good as protools and a few other things that protools does nice (exporting separate Regions/clips all at once would be great in the timeline rather than one by one) But It’s really all the same. The goal is to create lots of audio files and music that work with the game. And you could do that with a 4 track reel to reel and a freeware editor if you wanted. Might take a bit longer.

Overall, Live is really cool, Groups, Automation, Effects, Bus, Bounce, Freeze, Mix, Instruments and Render it’s all there and then some. The stuff I love the most  is the ‘Max for Live’ toolset which gives Ableton a “Mad Scientist in a audio Lab” feel in terms of things you can create.  MAX/MSP is very much like a lot of the API’s and middleware found in games and similar to what I am use to with FMOD so I have been looking at ways in which we can control other things, create our own stuff. I talked to FMOD a year or so ago and I asked about OSC (Open Sound Control) control and I actually think they have that support in the new FMOD Studio.

Yeah, that would be rad!

OSC is such a great platform, with so many options. You can create your own hardware devices and tune them in the way that you need to. If you want to build your own 24-channel mixer out of whatever  you need to, you can just send the data out and in for hardware and software control and that’s really useful.

How strongly are you driven by the Visuals ?

Video games are so heavily reliant on the visual element, and the audio serves those visual elements. Essentially, in games you are mostly making sounds for something, so its a very serviceable medium in that respect. You know, ‘this character needs to talk’ or ‘this event needs an explosion’, that kind of thing. The visuals & design tell you what they need, and in that respect I’ve always had strong visuals in my mind when making music, so I just make the music to the pictures in my head, and that’s what i love doing. I’m really influenced by architecture, geometry, colours, shapes, moods and abstract concepts like that. It is never anything specific, I’m not trying to create the sound of a lost girlfriend or trying to attract personal attention.(laughs) It’s more abstracts and observational moments in time and space that fascinates me creatively, and it’s why I really enjoy working in this medium, because you are creating worlds for people…Windows into other places. That’s what it’s about for me.

My latest album that I have just finished is like that, in the way that it is imagination music basically. I have been creating these detailed audio paintings; I have a strong visual image in my mind as I’m composing, I see audio quite visually. I’m think I’m really lucky in that sense.

Do you listen to many soundtracks for games?

When I did Shatter wasn’t very much aware of what was going on in the world of game soundtracks. I think that fresh approach really helped out, I came at it like a album and a musician, but was scoring the emotional journey of a machine exploring other worlds. I love the music out of Mass Effect series; it is beautiful, but at the same time i can hear everything that it’s paying homage to as well.

I can hear all those influences. Sometimes it sounds like Blade Runner meets something like the Inception soundtrack (laughs). You know, those two very strong elements. One of my favourite bands of all time is Pink Floyd and every time I pick up the guitar I have to resist the urge to just play David Gilmour guitar solos (laughs)

Are you planning a space rock-opera?

(Laughs) That very much might happen! I love guitars, and I love drums, and I love the whole band approach, but also i love the synthesised, futuristic approach too. No comment! (Laughs)

I’ve been listening to a few bits and pieces that are floating around, like Machinarium. That’s beautiful. And Night’s Sky was another one that I came across that I really loved.

Rez I also liked, in terms of interactive stuff and of course Limbo as mentioned before, which reminds me I have to finish it!

And speaking of interactive audio and working with coders.

Those things are very tricky to achieve if you are a mostly a content creator as you are relying a lot on other people to help bring your vision to life. Unless you happen to be an super ninja audio coder or something (laughs)! That takes time to research and develop those tools, finding that balance between being that audio creative and understanding the dynamics, psychoacoustics and psychology of sound, but then mixing that with an person who can program the heck out of anything, its always going to be a good thing.

You can be the composer, and you can write the best music ever for your game, but if the audio coder or studio or person you deliver too doesn’t understands that musical or audio vision then it can go wrong and just not sound as awesome as it could have been.

That person is implementing that vision and the success of that vision. They are almost if not completely responsible for the audio as you are. I’m really lucky that I have people that I trust that  help me bring all of my work to life. That relationship is really essential.

Right, building systems to support composing styles or technical aesthetic.

That’s essentially where you are moving more into the realm of Audio Design where you are literally becoming the architect, and building that vision as best you can with the resources given to you. And that’s become one of the enjoyable part of the process for me as time has gone on. I feel like a Director for film sometimes that needs that scene and that shot to make it all happen. I really love it.

I’m finding myself doing that along with the content creation, the design and implementation. But working with the coder is such a strong essential part of the process of all of that. It’s great when Creative and Technical are racing side by side on the same road heading towards audio awesome town.

Where do you see things going in the future?

As more as time moves on you know like, “we’ve done this with movies, we’ve done this type of thing with games and we’ve got these types of things that have been done with sound before. So where can we go now?” With all the current media and technology changes you’re going to see more interesting stuff happening like 3D audio beyond 7.1 somehow maybe holographic audio?

Whatever happens with the visual component of technolgy 3d or whatever, Those types of things are going to need more interactive and more immersive audio to support those more immersive visuals.

I think that We’re at the 90% mark of our current entertainment technology and what we’re using to support these creative visions us humans have so until the technology goes further we’re going to see a lot more interesting things come out as a part of that.

Part of what will happen is that people will need all this extra code support for new technology so coders will become a lot more commonplace and people will be exposed to that side of it a lot more. seeing that blend of the creative and technical. the emotional and metal.

While making the process more accessible for sound designers and composers.

Yeah, definitely.The options and tools now are definitely a lot better than they were are few years ago. Game audio is almost now becoming like using Ableton live or Pro Tools and that’s exciting.

A lot of people working in the creative industries on interactive media content will be able to achieve those things on their own through various tool sets and middleware and interfaces to the buckets and bolts but right now it’s very important that you have your coder working with you to help deliver your sonic visions in the interactive audio space.

But pretty much looking ahead…The future is complete media immersion somehow.

What are some of your creative processes and how do you manage it?

In regards to working on projects there is always a scrunch at the end, but that’s because game audio is so desperately, heavily, reliant on things working properly when the scope is large or time is tight it can get pretty wild.

Just finding that compromise and balance between what I need to make versus the time I need to implement it and other things like space, delivery and memory budgets to factor in as well. It’s a challenge. It’s also about managing your creative energies as well, getting yourself into the right mood so you can pump out music constantly is no small task in itself. Its like a creative exercise you have to go through.

You really have to switch focus, or find a way to creatively pull out of that feeling or genre and put yourself into another one. There’s a lot of creative stuff that goes around doing this stuff, but I don’t think it gets much attention because its not as flash as maybe something that’s technical. It’s the creative management that’s just as essential to being a full time audio creative as well.

Exercise, eating and sleeping properly, Stretching, hanging out with friends, spending time with family. Doing other stuff non audio related, Have some fun, big walks ! Relaxing, laughing at yourself. Those are some of the most important things. That stuff is the gas in your tank. I learnt the hard way but luckily enough I did learn this.

But in regards to work, It’s something that fascinates me because it your job and you have to come up with the goods no matter what. If you’re working in Television. Games or Movies and you’re working with Music, it needs a certain emotion to suit what it needs to. Like I was saying earlier, people react to projects imbued with passion. Just trying to tap into that emotional reservoir and deliver content that has that emotional feeling to it can be just as hard as trying to use a set of tools that might not be doing what they should. But I think if you can find ways to let the emotion drive you while technically leaning on your tools. You can get whatever you’re working on to a good place.

My advice is to let love for what you do drive the need to keep exploring the world of sound and what it can offer both creatively and professionally, while pushing towards something people will enjoy listening to and you yourself had fun making. It is what it is all about really.