/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>>29250

C418 happened to be chatting with Notch in the Tigsource IRC and they happened to pair up. Not a common occurence, but I believe that sort of meeting is the most likely to be a good experience.

Grant Kirkhope got a musical degree and was a professional trumpet soloist, ended up in a metal band for a decade, had no success. A friend who got hired by Rareware as a coder suggested he send a demo tape, so he did, every month or so ("I had nothing better to do"), and after about a year they hired him on.

In general, without developing personal contacts, a portfolio and regular new demo tapes seem the way to go. Most of the interviews I've read are one or the other, I've never heard of musicians placed through agencies or anything; if that were an option we wouldn't be here, after all.

Have a small collection of your best, and keep making a little something every week, with a few medium/long term projects you gradually add to on the side, depending on time.

>>29251

System Shock 1&2 have both been big music influences on me, once I learned of them. I've tried to recreate a few tracks from #2, with very limited success; here's the only one I've released:

https://xenmen.bandcamp.com/track/onboard-the-von-braun

Sonic Spinball, old Sierra games, the early C&C games, Croc, and N64 titles are my musical foundation, then I spent ~10 years on Newgrounds because of my "I won't pay for music or pirate it, and I won't listen to music that's for sale" policy. I've listened to a lot of weird shit over the years, smalltime artists on Newgrounds have been my second wave of inspiration. My favourite guy is Pervokative (formerly Zen0n, I still haven't succeeded in duplicating his style, either composition or synthwork. I could recommend tons of other artists, but his stuff has a lot of rare qualities combined, it's dense learning material):

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/86082 - Neurostyque

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/226872 - Wungeye

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/240603 - Die-hilation

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/229401 - My Bass Growls

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/257449 - Fat Man Stomp

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/357926 - Galactic Apes

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/359718 - Scatterbrain

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/169408 - Atom Bomb

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/167467 - Appropriately Strange

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/227188 - Brain Malfunction

^~2:00-2:40, these kinds of transitions he does *really* made an impression on me, it reminds me to not "set it and forget it", rather to always try throwing in a few automation lanes and keep the instruments evolving throughout the track.

^There's a lot to learn from his mistakes too, mainly in the mastering (This more for everyone else than you specifically; hey guys don't just throw 3EQs and limiters on everything, it'll all sound like garbage)

Can you link your portfolio/soundcloud? I can never get enough ambient music

https://ultimae.bandcamp.com/album/elsewhere

https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/album/cthulhu

(continued)

>>29252

Ableton, though I used to use Fruity Loops. DAW choice really boils down to comfort and workflow, and I like Ableton's warping (I like it a LOT).

It was only after trying out FL, tons of trackers (Rosegarden, OpenMPT, NanoTracker, and way more) and experimenting for years before I got a good feel for what sort of workflow I wanted, and how to gauge what DAW would best suit me.

I rely heavily on Kontakt packs lately. I've easily spent 2 grand on samplepacks (in addition to Ableton and FL licenses). If you want a *specific* sound, and you can't just record it yourself or you can't do advanced FM synthwork, you either pay out the nose or you're out of luck.

There's a lot of good free stuff out there, and if you learn your tools you can convert samplepacks designed for one tool to another. Thus:

http://www.afrodjmac.com/

^Learn from this guy, learn as much as you can. He's one of the best free sources, both tutorials and sample material. There's lots of free VSTs out there too, but before you start messing around you should read the wikipedia page (about VSTs and anything related you come across, and just keep spreading out and learning). The better you understand what you're working with, the harder it is to fuck up, and the easier it is to identify your own weak spots *AND* how you can fix them. Way better to do that research early than to wander blindly.

On the side, for a long time I've wanted to reverse engineer my favourite soundtracks and document them. I've made many attempts at Sonic Spinball over the years, for example, but just this month I'm finding myself satisfied with the results. I'll make a webpage with MIDI tracks and some notes about the original composition in a bit. Composition is finally spot-on, better than any MIDI versien I've come across or any of my previous attempts, instrumentation is subject to change:

https://xenmen.bandcamp.com/track/toxic-cavities

^I had been trying for a few years to do this for Perfect Dark, but that soundtrack is a bit too big and finding/recreating the samples/synths has been a bit too hard, so Sonic Spinball is coming first.

PS, I've been using Landr for the last month to master my tracks, the lazy way out. Frankly it worked pretty well, I like how most of my tracks turned out after putting them through landr. I can't afford to hire an audio engineer or the time to learn everything myself, so it's appropriate for that much.

http://landr.com/

I'm not renewing because I make music too slowly, my verdict is it's worth using on a budget before you put out a final soundtrack, or if you want to use their mastered versions of your tracks as a reference while trying to improve your own mastering skills. Definitely "good enough" to warrant dropping some cash, *if* you've got a backlog of tracks you can put through it.

>>29250

>>29300

I've thought about this a bit more since the other day; it boils down to what lifestyle you want. If musician-for-hire is the lifestyle you want, then you've got to resort to hard hustling. Decide on a market niche to fill and mass produce music, then do whatever you can to penetrate the market. "Game Musician" is still not a well defined occupation, except for shovelware and addiction-software (eg 'phone games' and PopCap). If so, I hope you're comfortable making genre stereotypes tracks nonstop.

If you just want to get a soundtrack in one game, but not put your whole life into gamedev, here is one of the better places to do that. Anywhere devs are posting demos (not just discussing development but sharing demos, those guys are more approachable); post tunes and try to chat up particular devs.

Here's some relevant interviews:

http://fizmarble.com/2013/01/11/an-interview-with-music-composer-waterflame-castlestorm-castle-crashers/ *

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/21/behind-the-sounds-hotline-miami-and-ftl/

http://lacedwithwax.com/interview-el-huervo-on-hotline-miamis-legacy-vinyl-and-why-its-best-to-steal-art/

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2g1gx3/i_am_moon_an_electronic_musician_you_probably/

Most of these guys, or the interviewers, put a whimsical twist on the story, but they've all been full-timing their art. Prunty even moved just to be closer to devs and GDC, and it took him more than a decade before he could go fulltime. If you can release at least a track every day-or-two for a decade, you *will* get contracts and notoriety like Kevin McCleod, but it's an all-or-nothing thing. Either it's something just to do on the side, maybe become part of one little game's score, maybe another, maybe even make more than $50 in the process, or you throw your whole life towards breaking into The Industry. It's doable either way, but you have to know what it's worth to you, I've seen a lot of people wash out.

Hotline Miami - M|O|O|N - http://music.musicofthemoon.com/album/moon-ep

> I'm a two time high school dropout and one time community college dropout. I'm really banking on this music thing working out lol

How much are you gambling on your musical success?

Castle Crashers - Helix6 - http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/21749

> http://helix6.newgrounds.com/news/post/263681

> 2009

> After a long hiatus, I'm going to try to make a comeback. A few months ago I was ready to get married, get locked into work, have the cars, buy the house, blah, blah, blah.... That's now over. I'm single - no license - don't know where I will live. But - this is an opportunity to rediscover myself, and rebuild. I hope I can get back to my original passion - writing music. Expect a new post soon. I am going to try to start from the ground up and find the skills I have lost over the last year. I know I can still write - and now I have the circumstances and time to inspire it. I hope those who've been following my music will come back and check to see what's next!

Hypothetical: If you lost your home, lets say in a fire, would you still be making music somehow within a couple months? That's roughly the emotional/personal investment you'd need. Absolutely doable, but shit happens and if you're prepared emotionally you can work through it.

>>29252

Another thing for any people relatively new to music dev, here's some major strategies I've learned that work well for introverts:

- Remember to update old accounts so people can find your new shit. You may not think anybody still remembers that post you made 15 years ago on the OC Remix WIPs forum or that MIDI you put on vgmusic.com, but there's someone out there. They might not ever say a word to you but they're out there, and they'll share your shit around as soon as they find your new stuff. Same holds for your MySpace or Soundcloud or whatever.

- Stick to content-centric platforms like bandcamp. Resist the temptation to talk about why you're late posting music etc. That'll just make you discouraged when you're still not posting music as often as you want. Don't talk, just release, that keeps you production-focused and not drama-focused. The less you announce, the better.

- When you want to make music and are stuck for ideas, give yourself arbitrary extreme *CONTENT* limitations, like using only three instances of one synth for the whole song, making a percussion soundfont entirely from blowing-into/flicking/licking your mic, using a single (~1-7 second) sample for the whole song and distort it differently in each track, or writing a single loop and then warping it with effects to create the whole song ( https://soundcloud.com/void-pointer/void-pointer-grijsheid ). Avoid track length goals unless you already know of and like Tangerine Dream.

- Try and recreate instruments from your favourite music, but *SEPARATELY* from your main music dev projects. It's a deep rabbit hole, so pace yourself. You can spend months recreating the sonar ping in Kirkhope's goldeneye soundtrack and still not be satisfied. Expect regular disappointment and roll with it; your real objective here is to better learn your synths/samplers, not necessarily to actually recreate the sound. At first. After a few years of scattered attempts you'll have a better success rate, but expect most sounds to be too hard for you to actually reproduce at first. Keep moving on, you can return and reattempt later.

read pic related and now I want to start. But I'm pretty much just a classical composer (little to no DAW experience).

Actually, the only musical influence I can really pin down for me is the sound of my own hitting the piano for fun. The thing I have most trouble at is writing in any style of music other than the usual sound of my hammering.

I've been trying to work out hypothetical games I could compose tracks for, determine genres I could emulate, etc. Recently I've been eyeing the idea garage sale thread here, for instance. But the vast majority of my composition sessions degenerate into hitting the piano for fun, pulling horsehair across a cello for fun, uttering mysterious chants to myself for fun, etc.

What do? I've been fooling with Caustic 3 and that's been fun, but I don't know how to think outside of my classical music box.