GameSoundCon 2019

I had a blast at GameSoundCon 2019. Once again I was honored to serve on the advisory board and to co-chair the ludomusicology/sound studies track, this year with Dana Plank.  Dana did a great job live tweeting the academic conference, if you want to catch up on what we were doing.  GameSoundCon really is my favorite conference of the year for a number of reasons, and I wanted to share some of my highlights from this year as well as encourage anyone reading who has any interest in the conference to consider attending in the future.

While I was of course excited to hear the talks Dana and I selected for the academic track, hearing Sarah Pozderac-Chenevey speak about the music of Metal Gear Solid, watching Martin Leung transcribe from Super Mario Galaxy live, Ryan Thompson discussing about the sounds of the SNES, and many others.  But honestly, my favorite day is the other day of the conference, where I can dart from room to room and hear any variety of presentations on very different topics.

Below I list some of my favorite quotes from GSC 2019 with some of favorite people I met.

With Elizabeth Zharoff

Elizabeth Zharoff speaking about upcoming AI developments in voice commands and video games:  "What if you yell at someone when you should speak to them normally?  Imagine yelling a spell incantation when you should simply speak it normally and thus the enemy is able to block it."

Marc Strait speaking about audio accessibility in gaming: "Why can you adjust the brightness on your TV to optimize your gameplay and suit your eyes the best, but not alter the audio profile to suit your ears?"

With Vincent Diamante 

Hearing Tom Salta speak about his use of leitmotifs in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

Gender and Safety panel: "How do we ourselves act once in positions of power if we never had good role models as we came up?"

Will Roget's inspiring keynote with a cameo by U-M alum Nico Millado as Scorpion 

Will Roget: "Long term commitment in people and projects is more important than short term networking and gain.  Invest in people and connections and you'll reap dividends over the long term."

At the speakers dinner with Marty O'Donnell and Video Game Pianist Martin Leung

And I loved what Marty O' Donnell said to me: "I'm a big fan of yours!  It's great to have you working in and around this field."  Excited to have some of his music recorded and coming out later this year.

All in all, GameSoundCon is such a great time.  I hope that I might see some of you at one in the future.  If you have any questions about it, be sure to ask away.

Guest Post: Student Andrew Lipian attends the Video Game Scoring Workshop at NYU Steinhardt

I'm excited and delighted to have my second guest post of my blog's history, again by my student Andrew Lipian.  He's been working on this one for quite a while.  Again, I think it's great to hear about these current experiences for students who have attended them.  Here he describes his experience during the past summer in the Video Game Scoring Workshop at NYU Steinhardt.  

NYU Summer Workshop in Game Audio is a Wwise Choice  - Andrew Lipian

Before the snow melts, flowers bloom, and the school busses whir to a stop, up-and-coming game composers will be thinking of how to enhance their audio chops this summer. They need look no further than the Video Game Scoring Workshop at NYU Steinhardt, led by game composer Tom Salta and his team of fellow audio pros.  These included Gina Zdanowicz - founder of Serial Lab Sound - who lead students through the technical side of creating adaptive music systems in Wwise, and Jason Kanter - Audio Lead for Avalanche Studios in New York City - who gave a presentation on sound design and joined in discussions regarding the business of game music.  

Bolstered by such a well-rounded team, this program was unique from others. Composers usually sign up for similar workshops to master the machinations of Wwise or FMOD –audio implementation tools – but this program takes it a step further. As part of NYU’s “Screen Scoring Summer Workshop” offerings, students travel from global destinations such as Japan and Israel to attend a week-long intensive workshop offering one-on-one training in Wwise by NYU faculty and staff. During the week, however, the entire group actively observes each new iteration of their individual interactive audio projects which get critiqued and modified by Salta over the course of the week. I had occasion to audit the 2018 class, watching the students’ creative processes unfold until they caught lightning in a bottle, leaving with a fully functional and implemented game score. 

New York University’s workshop succeeded due in no small part to the inspired choice of NYU alum Tom Salta (HALO, Killer Instinct) to head the project, bringing his years of industry accomplishments to the fore. He shared his various experiences and career journey from touring with Pop music stars, record producing, transitioning to composing video game music to delivering his recent TEDx talk. Everything Tom imparted was solid gold, and he even walked students through his process of creating music for games like “Prince of Persia.” 

Notably, what Salta had championed with this program was unprecedented for NYU.  

“This new focus on music for games was unheard of back when I was here,” Salta explained. For the first program of its kind at NYU, though, it was a resounding success – here’s how it worked:

The students downloaded “Angry Bots,” the game they would implement their music into with Wwise. Angry Bots is a third person shooter with a solid-snake-like character, thanks to the creative voice overs scripted and recorded by fellow instructor, Gina Zdanowicz, infiltrating a Robot Laboratory as the lethal machines attempt to terminate him. Each code he cracks opens a new door, creating opportunities for the score to develop as he delves deeper into the labyrinthine facility. After also downloading Wwise, the students are then asked to begin sketching music for the game using their Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs). The entire class witnessed their peers develop and conceive music in a linear fashion – structured with an A and B section with a loop, for example – into horizontal resequencing, where specific in-game actions “trigger” the next music track. For Salta, watching the students master this concept was a highlight of the course. 

“This was the first time many of the participants ever ventured beyond linear composition -- as in music for TV and Film -- into the non-linear world of video game music,” Salta notes; “The music needs to account for all sorts of gameplay possibilities, yet still feel like a unified, continuous piece. Seeing a student’s eyes light up when they finally understand this is unforgettable.” 

The students – ranging from High-School to seasoned professionals – created scores as diverse as the nations they hailed from. One memorable moment occurred when a composer’s use of a trailer rise (consisting of several string instruments rising to crescendo with tremolos) surprisingly fit the action every time it appeared. Another came when a student from Japan envisioned a lighthearted, comedic element to the level – opting for a jazzy track smacking of something from “The Naked Gun.” Every one of these ideas changed the feel – even the identity – of the game; a reminder of the important influence music has in shaping the playing experience.

None of this would have been possible without the see-what-sticks approach of Salta and his team, who created a learning environment which encouraged inventiveness as much as it spurred technical mastery. All this was part of the plan.

“When I first spoke to NYU about putting this workshop together, my dream was to create a ‘bootcamp’ of sorts that would walk participants through the entire gamut of what goes into creating original music for games. I wanted a hands-on, interactive experience where students would be able to create original music from scratch and put it into a playable video game by the end of the week. Not just talking about the concepts but actually doing it.” 

Most assuredly, it was this atmosphere that lent so many international students their most formative experience in game scoring to that point – and that same atmosphere will continue drawing throngs of ambitious composers to NYU, ready to harness the powers of this interactive medium in immersing the next generation of gamers. These skills, Salta adds, are a must-have for those aspiring to a career in game audio. 

“For anyone coming into the industry now, it’s important to have proficiency in the entire 

game audio pipeline as it will open up more opportunities. Composers who know both the compositional and technical aspects of game music implementation will have a leg up on those who just know how to compose music.”

As the industry changes, the skills one is “expected,” to have, versus those which are “desirable,” shift. These days, if you want to work in video game music, you are expected to know Wwise or FMOD and understand audio implementation, a skillset this course specializes in teaching. 

When today’s composers are ready to take their skills to that next level, Tom Salta and the NYU “Scoring for Videogames” Workshop are there to give them the tools they need to succeed. 

*Program dates for the 2019 NYU Scoring for Videogames Workshop are June 30 – July 5. 

Current News: Day 2 at GameSoundCon

So I've just finished up my second day at GameSoundCon.  I'm a bit exhausted from the experience, but really glad to have been here.  It's really an amazing experience that I think anyone who's interested in thinking about and getting into game audio should attend.

I started the morning with a hands-on Wwise training class.  This was undoubtedly one of the coolest things that I did at the conference.  As a teacher of music technology, I know there's nothing like getting down and dirty with the software to understand how it works.  Led by Robert Brock, the session starts by getting the current version of Wwise and some sounds on a flash drive to install on your laptop.  Then, in an hour, you learn some of the very most basic of the features by giving sounds to a gunshot.  The demo is available on the Wwise site and is called Cube.  This training was great because it's something that I can show to my students.  I'm definitely planning to explore more of the Wwise demos in coming weeks.

After the hands-on training, I headed to a session entitled "Integrating Game Audio with Unity" led by Steve Horowitz and Scott Looney.  This session caught my eye because my engineering friends who teach game development at UM use Unity, so anything I can learn about how sounds work in that engine is of interest.  Several of the examples they discussed came from their book and the corresponding app that goes with it, so I was familiar with them already.  (I haven't reviewed the book yet because I want to play around more with the examples and training first.)  Their session opened my eyes to how much there is to learn in with regard to Unity and sound integration.  The session felt a bit rushed and I was glad to hear that they offer whole day long courses on the same material.  Hope I can either catch one of those in the future.

Before lunch, I caught a demo of Dolby Atmos which was superb.  When I bring my students to tour the sound facilities in the Duderstadt at UM, one of my recording engineer friends at UM, Dave Greenspan, has been talking to my students for years about the importance of height in sound and mixing.  Atmos is basically that to a huge degree.  Speakers above make an incredible difference in sound and I loved seeing it demoed both in games and movies.  Afterward, I snuck in a bit late to Penka Kouneva's session on budgeting and recording live instruments for games without large budgets.  It was definitely an interesting session with lots of good information-- particularly in her discussion as she surveyed friends/colleagues about how they made music work on tight budgets.

Not only does Brian Schmidt do an amazing job of coordinating this entire event, but he gives a great talk as well.  I'm so fortunate that he was one of the first people who I came in contact with when I started my game audio journey years ago.  Thanks Brian for finding me on my blog!  His talk on Casual/Mobile games was informative with lots of details I can share with my students.

Probably my favorite part of today (aside from the raffle where I won a GameSoundCon t-shirt) were the roundtable discussions at the end of the day.  The first roundtable discussion was with composers Garry Schyman, Austin Wintory, Adam Gubman, and Tom Salta.  The second was with audio directors Paul Lipson, Guy Whitmore, and Steve Horowitz.  I thought I'd just jot down a few of their quotes that I found most interesting in the chat.  I've got a ton more than it's useful to share here, so these are just a few highlights.

First, here's a picture I took from my seat during the composers' roundtable.

"If I get stuck, 9 times out of 10 it's because I'm not having fun anymore."  -- Tom Salta

"Don't let technology get in the way.  Don't let interactivity limit your creativity."  -- Garry Schyman

"Writing the first note is the biggest challenge."  -- Adam Gubman

"The industry is like this convention: everyone sharing a space together.  It's about relationships.  Contribute to the community.  The industry is accommodating to all different personalities and skill sets.  Find your place in it.  Be authentically yourself."  --Austin Wintory

"Audio programmers are instant hires right now.  They're unicorns."  -- Paul Lipson

"We need to break the freelance gap-- and by this I mean that freelance workers don't see the game.  I don't hire composers who don't deliver their material in Wwise or otherwise implemented."  -- Guy Whitmore

"If you're thinking of getting into the industry, do some research: what's a company where you'd like to work?  What kind of titles would you like to work on?  What languages and software do they use? What does their music sound like?"  -- Steve Horowitz


In this second picture, you can see George Sanger, Michael Csurics, and Marty O'Donnell just in front of me enjoying martinis as they take in the audio director roundtable discussion.  Wish I'd thought to get one during the break between the discussions!

All in all, I have to say GameSoundCon was incredible.  The networking is powerful-- meeting others who are thinking and learning and interested in what you are.  I definitely refined some of my thinking about game audio and got some awesome hands-on knowledge.  The knowledge wasn't earth shattering for me, probably because I've read and studied so much about game audio so far.  However, I'd definitely recommend GameSoundCon to anyone who is interested in game audio as an early step toward learning more and meeting folks working in the trenches.  I'll suggest to my students that they attend GSC for as long as I teach video game music!