Soundtrack To Life

Something very cool about walking home with a clear view of the full moon and Clint Mansell’s Moon soundtrack playing in your MP3 player.

Upcoming Eminence Concert!

I have mentioned before that I am a regular stalker of Eminence - an Australia-based orchestra specialising in performing music from anime and video games.  Their performances are unparalleled, and they regularly bring in absolutely A-list guest composers.  Essentially, in the relatively small corner of the world that is Australia, they are a godsend to games and anime music fans long-resigned to their jealousy of the events held overseas.

Thus, I come with great news!  After a year of silence, Eminence is returning to Sydney to perform Memories of Fantasia on July 16 as part of the SMASH! anime convention at the Sydney Exhibition Centre.

There's no news on a setlist as of yet, but based on the title it is very likely to be a rehash of previous Nights of Fantasia.  This is not a bad thing.  I have my fingers crossed for an encore showing of Secret of Mana's Meridian Dance.

As a side note, Eminence badly needs help with their marketing.  Not even a  mention on their website!  This is the second concert is a row I've discovered through purely accidental means.  I am upset at your lack of advertising, Eminence.

Feet, and the Sounds They Make

There's a fantastic long-term thread of discussion running on footstep sound implementation in games going on here:  

http://www.gameaudioforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2014

Every sound designer working in games should definitely give it a gander at some point.  It's one of the basics that rarely gets much thought or attention, and is in fact often considered something of a chore, like the grocery shopping of sound design.  Some people, of course, elect to simply eat out, while others go shopping at the fanciest deli in town.  It's fascinating to read all the great justification behind all the different preferences and viewpoints.

I myself belong to the school of thought that footsteps should be very low in the mix and inaudible 90% of the time.  To paraphrase one of the posters that put it best, in real life you only really notice footsteps when:

1.Staring at your feet

2.Wearing hard soled shoes on a ceramic or tile floor

3.When someone's wearing high heels

4.In the snow (marshes/mud/puddles would also apply here I expect)

5.On a catwalk (though truthfully, that's more the catwalk's movement than the foot impact)

6.If there's a squeak or some other audible abnormality in the shoes

7.When running

Only half of those are likely to apply in any given game - and I would even argue that running footsteps, depending on how far back the camera is, could be done away with.  Of course, you have to take into account a lot of other influencing factors such as gameplay and style and overall mix.

But for NPCs especially, I think the mix works better with no footsteps (again with the exceptions, barring oversized NPCs).  It's valuable memory (and voices) spent on something you'd want to mix out of existence as soon as more than two NPCs wander into the vicinity, or anything happens at all.

If you're lucky enough to be working on a game with ninjas, of course, the point is moot.  :)

Advertising An Audio App for Android Alliteratively

Pimping this Android app for our awesome audio programmer at work.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.singlecellsoftware.caustic&feature=search_result

It is, as some of the comments say, like having Reason in your pocket.  Definite value for money here.

...Lately I mostly seem to be using this blog to shill links.

Stealing Like An Artist

Wanted to share this cool link.  It’s for artists, really, but I think it applies to sound designers too – there’s just as much art as there is science and technology to our work.

http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/

Otherwise, very busy at work.  No matter what you try in order to get ahead, the sound work always explodes at the end of a project, you just can't get around the conundrum of late design changes and everyone else doing their final implementations at the last minute.  Consequently, I am not allowed to get sick/injured/experience creative block for the next three months.