Sifteo Cubes: Radically Simple

I wrote music for an advertisement for the new Sifteo Cubes – a new tactile gaming platform.

IndieCade 2012: Indie Game Developers

Ashton Kutcher and ThrashLab produced a short video featuring Sifteo's Chroma Shuffle – a 2012 IndieCade finalist.

Keep an ear out at 3:20 for a familiar tune:

The next step is terrible...

If only you'd remember before ever you sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won't even underline that. It's too important to be underlined."

-J.D. Salinger
Seymour, an Introduction

Chroma Shuffle at IndieCade

Very excited that Sifteo's Chroma Shuffle is a 2012 IndieCade Nominee! (Music and sound by yours truly)

Updated Music Reel!

On Landing the Dream Job

Applying for work in a creative field is a stressful, intimidating process. There is an insane amount of competition for the relatively minuscule amount of work (which is a good thing for you content producers!); some applicants are highly-skilled and talented, while others will be weeded out early but still add dead weight and noise to the already-bloated pool.

Ariel Gross, Studio Audio Director at Volition, Inc., a sonic branding company, sheds some light on his hiring process and has some great advice in bettering one's chances at landing the dream job:

First of all, I want to see that you have a purpose for wanting this job. Not what you’re doing (e.g. your resume and demo). Not how you’re doing it (e.g. your web site or blogs that show how you do what you do). But why you’re doing it...

Secondly, I want to see the potential for growth. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been around the block, either. There are as many titans of the game audio industry as there are newbies who realize that this field changes so quickly that you still need to be able to grow and change...

And thirdly, I want to see that there’s more to you than audio...There’s so much more to being part of [a] game development team than being a good audio designer or than knowing how to make things sound right in Wwise. Maybe you have some game design sensibilities. Maybe you’re able to make people laugh. Maybe you play an instrument... I’m not just trying to look at you as an audio designer, I’m trying to look at you as a complete human being. The bigger picture I can see, the most interested I may become [emphasis my own].

In audio (and elsewhere), we often talk about the 'signal to noise ratio', or the amount of desired audio signal compared to the level of background noise. I like to use the same analogy when I'm critiquing my own reel and cover letter. "Will this stick out above the noise of the other applicants? How can I ensure that it does?"

While Gross writes from the perspective of in-house audio (the rarest of birds), his advice holds true for music contractors and everyone looking for work in a creative field. He confirms what we hear so many times: make sure your work is the best it can possibly be, approach it with openness and curiosity, and treat your personality and interests as your greatest assets.

Read Gross's full post here

The Grimm World of Limbo

I just finished playing through the indie hit Limbo for the first time (yes, I'm a few years late to this party). I loved the grainy black and white, multiplane camera aesthetic, as if a 1940s-era Disney brought to life the creepy violence of the original European fairy tales they recreated. Characters in the game react to you with unwavering hostility, seeming to stem from their own fear of the world they inhabit, in which everything is a threat.

The game's sound world is just as bleak. Beds of ambient gloom form a murky sonic backdrop, while the foreground sound is marked by its whip's-crack precision, punctuating your repeated death with a rusty exclamation point.

Dampness and decay dominate the first half of the game – decades of dirt fall like rain from rotten logs, and gooey liquid pours from limbs cracked off of giant insects. Abandoned industrial machinery provides the violence in the second half.

The game is DARK.

But also, like a fairy tale, enchanting. The puzzles are stimulating and rewarding, the physics feel great, and even the multiple attempts necessary to get through the more difficult sections feel less frustrating because of the fast pace of gameplay. And best of all, the sound and music make the hairs on the back of your neck tingle like crazy.

Limbo Composer and Sound Designer Martin Stig Andersen reflects on his approach:

I’ve never been fond of the traditional Hollywood soundtrack having a clear divide between music and sound design, as purely non-diegetic music tends to take me out of the experience." (source)

And to me, he succeeds. The world of Limbo feels rich and cohesive – the mood is consistently gauzy and dim throughout the visuals, score, sound design. It seems that all you want is to go home, but it's clear from the start that you have a long and dangerous journey ahead.