Recording Workshop in Melbourne

Had the opportunity to head down to Melbourne for a sound recording workshop a week or so ago held by Stephan Schutze.  Stephan hired out a studio in Docklands for the day to record some things that aren't easy to record normally, like flaming torches and arrows and dry ice-on-metal, etc.

This is a quick picture I snapped of the space - impressively large!  Once the doors were closed it was wonderfully insulated from outside noise, but of course that massive expanse of concrete made for some incredible reflections!  I'll be curious to see how many of the final recordings that compromise.  Although the reflections sounded fairly epic in themselves, I kind of wanted to record an impulse response of it!

A lot of the workshop wound up covering familiar ground, but it was definitely a lot of fun just listening to someone be so enthusiastic about sound recording and share some of his recording anecdotes.  I think if the same workshop turned up three or four years ago it might have saved me a lot of lessons learnt the hard way!

There was far too much material covered for me to remark on at length, but the biggest points of interest I took away from it were:

1. Dry ice on metal is a very cool combination, and I have to find a way to play with this myself sometime.

2. He showed off a neat hack using a pair of lapel mics and a drilled-out manikin head as a cheap binaural microphone solution.  I'm extremely curious as to what the recordings of that one will sound like and how effective it is versus an actual binaural microphone.

3. Safety first!  Made me think twice about smashing up that vintage TV that I've been lugging around since University days.  Vaccuum tubes involve some fairly toxic chemicals, who knew!  Also when it comes to miking up a car, taking not only moving parts but heat into consideration, as well as wind noise not just from the car's movement but from within the motor itself.

4. For field recording, specialist groups will get you further than more generic approaches.  An interesting angle I hadn't considered before, but obvious in retrospect!

5. Splitting signals, having one channel running hot and the other at a much lower volume for safety.  This is something I normally try to do when recording with multiple microphones, but the idea of multiplying out the signal was an interesting one I'll have to explore at some point.

Perhaps I'll have more food for thought once the videos and recordings come out, but overall, it was a good experience (and also great to catch up with some of the other audio people present).  It's pretty rare to find any sort of audio workshop happening in Australia - plenty for music production but precious little dedicated to other audio disciplines!  So major props to Stephan for going out on a limb and organising it.

Recording all the fun and weird things

Been feeling a little bit scatterbrained lately!  That's my only excuse for not updating this blog for so long.  It's a poor excuse, I know, and likely to be repeated.

Part of my professional development goals at Sega is to record something at least once a week, and it's been really awesome so far. Back when I was with KMMGames I did make an effort to record when I could, but it was largely a mixture of opportunism and need.  The audio room was in the less-than-ideal position of being wedged between train tracks, a construction site, and the QA room, which meant I was limited to either waiting for a quiet moment or only recording very loud sounds.

No such issues at Sega!  The rooms are very well insulated which makes it extremely convenient to set up a quick recording session, even if only a single mic for five or ten minutes.  It's paid off very well so far, with a rapidly growing library of sounds, many of which have already been useful.

Here's a picture of just last week's recording props:

A bit of soft discarded plastic from a popped plastic ball, a wind up toy fan, and a bunch dried clay bits that were leftover from a sculpture I made when I was in an arts-and-crafts kind of mood after cutting through Lincraft one day (incidentally, the source of all my arts-and-crafts moods).  They sounded kind of interesting when I was gathering them up to throw them out, so instead stored them in a bag and put them with the rest of the junk I packrat for potential recording.

Useful discovery - bits of solid clay actually make very good rattling bone sounds.  With a little bit of processing and layering I think you could make a pretty good sound set for a skeleton out of these.

One advantage to recording your own sounds where possible which has come up with this is not only how many more variations you can record - because however good the libraries are, it's rare you can get more than a couple of decent matching variations from the same sound set - but also the potential to play some of them like instruments.  To drag the sounds out, or make them short or punchy, soft or violent, or use them on or with a wide variety of surfaces.  One thing I've been learning to do better is to not just record the obvious sound a prop makes, but to wring every single possible sound out of it.

Just some of the things we've recorded in-studio lately have been rubber and leather gloves, squeaky toys, paper and plastic bags, balloons, silly putty, soft furry slippers, a vampire cape, and a jaw harp.

It's been a lot of fun, too!  If I were to come up with an art analogy, recording sound is like working directly with paint and clay, as opposed to working in photoshop or 3DSMax.  You can get really great results either way, but there's something very satisfying about dealing with the raw materials, even if it's often more clumsy and uncontrollable.

Succeeding Quickly VS Failing Quickly

An idea I was introduced to recently was the concept of 'Succeeding quickly' as opposed to the more popularly spruiked 'Failing quickly'.

'Failing quickly' is one way to explain a popular method in the creative side of the sound design process - for those troublesome sounds which you might not already have a very clear idea for.  It can also be described as 'throwing things at the wall to see what sticks'.  It's like rapid-fire brainstorming in sound design terms.

'Succeeding quickly', on the other hand, is more a case of working on a series of sound effects quickly, dumping the ones you get stuck on in favour of moving on to new ones.  The idea is that rather than spend a day on a sound you just can't seem to nail, you move on to the next sound, and then the next sound, some of which you will probably get first go.

I'd always thought the former method the best approach.  After chewing on the idea for a while though, I think there's a great deal of merit to the latter approach.  Without putting a name to it, this is what I will naturally do on any project which I have free range on.  Certainly this was my approach on Happy Feet 2, where audio milestones were few and non-descriptive.

The advantage of this was that time didn't get wasted troublesome sounds.  I could move on, take care of the low-hanging fruit, and often when I revisited the sound effect the next day I would have much better luck.

Some of it was simply due to being creatively refreshed - lots of artists or writers will tell you how some days they can spend hours on a piece and then the next morning do the same work in minutes (a phenomenon I've noticed that diminishes with experience, but can still occur to the best of us.)  Another reason might be because in the intervening work I've found some inspiration or fallen it into a creative groove.  Either way, at the end of the day, the result is you have more bang to show for your buck (literally, as the case may sometimes be) and a lot less frustration.

Of course, this is more useful is the earlier stages of a project, when there a long list of sound assets that need to be made.  Later on you don't have the luxury of moving on to another sound, because the sound that is giving you trouble needs to be designed yesterday.  That's when the 'Failing quickly' approach can come in handy again.

Anyhow, this is one of those things which is fairly obvious when you stop to think about it, but I'd never actually stopped to think about it before, and putting it down in words helps in figuring out the why and how.  And with that, you can decide which approach best fits your current needs.

Happy Feet

Happy Feet 2 (the videogame) has been out for a while now. It was the first project I ever tackled completely solo (from a sound design point of view of course).  For a budget game in the openly reviled sector of kid's licensed games, it has reviewed decently, although considering the last time I checked most of those reviews seemed to be in foreign languages it's hard to tell for sure.

I had planned to make a big blog post about the challenges involved with mixing a rhythm game with an adventure game, or the rationale behind some of the design decisions, some of the localisation challenges, or even a post-mortem on all the things I'd wished I'd done differently with fresh ears and a little bit more distance and wisdom (and more than a few facepalming moments). Now that I've reached this point, however, this picture is all that comes to mind:

I hope I never have to use maths to sync sounds to an animation ever again.

Risk in Sound Design

Caught up with one of my old colleagues a week ago and we inevitably got to talking shop.  The sound design scene in Australia feels very small sometimes so any opportunity to exchange thoughts and tips is always eagerly seized upon.

One thing we were talking about which gave me some good food for thought was the role of risk in creating stand-out sound design.

The ultimate challenge for a sound designer is not merely being a good sound designer, but a great sound designer.  And the thing that separates the two is more often that not the one who takes the risk.  There is the way that you know will sound 'right' - the sound and mix that you are certain will work, because it's tried and true and audiences have been trained to accept it.  I think there's a lot of merit to this approach, because sometimes the audio isn't there to be the star, and all you need is something safe and functional.  There's a common saying in sound design, which is 'if you've done your work right nobody will notice it'.  Also known as 'bad drummer syndrome' - you only notice the drummer in a band if they're bad.

However, if this is all you do, you run the risk of falling into being a 'good' sound designer instead of perhaps a 'great' one.  This is where the risk comes into play.  It's the work which does something different that is most often remembered.  The one which chose a novel approach to the mix, which maybe chose unusual sound effects for mundane objects, which pushed the envelope of originality.  Creativity and originality are traits which are often lauded in the sound design profession, but I think it's far better to describe these traits as 'risk-taking'.

Thinking about it in regards to game audio, I think this can manifest most strongly in implementation.  When technical factors become involved, it's very easy to choose the easier solution, the one you know will be implemented correctly and will work and sound right.  But in doing so you often throw away the opportunity to go one step further and do something really impressive.  It's a trap I've often fallen into in the past, especially on projects when I've been frustrated with a lack of code support and so will reach for the basics first and only then try and reach for more ambitious implementation.  While this is a good approach in theory - you have the safety net of at least being able to do the bare necessities - in practice it's more likely the most basic option is the one you will eventually end up with.  It's a far better bargaining position if you reach for the most ambitious option first, and if necessary then work your way down.

Of course, the biggest issue with taking risks, is that sometimes you will fail.  You have to be prepared for that, too.  But just like investment, the biggest risks can also pay the biggest dividends when they work out.

Anyhow, there's a bit of what's been occupying the stream-of-consciousness the past week.

Video Games Unplugged

Wow, have not been updating this blog at all.  Lately, much of my spare time seems to have been eaten up with things like computer woes and paperwork and all those annoying life errands that pile up after being neglected for so long.  This has extended to all the movies and TV shows and games I want to play as well, though I did at least get the opportunity to play Journey (PSN) and cannot recommend it highly enough. It's one of those moving game experiences that people will talk about for many years to come, in the same company as titles like Shadow of the Colossus and Ico.  It had a wonderful soundtrack and beautifully polished, understated sound design, which I am heartened to see as a trend with these venerated titles.

Regardless, the topic I'm writing about today is far more pedestrian - a brief report of the Video Games Unplugged: Symphony of Legends concert performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in conjunction with Eminence over the weekend.  By the 'in conjunction with Eminence' part I am assuming Hiroaki did much of the organising, Philip Chu did the conducting, Eminence provided the arrangements and MSO performed it.  I did not recognise any of the other core Eminence members amidst MSO's ranks, and most tellingly Hiroaki did not perform himself, which was somewhat disappointing.

The show itself was excellent, however.  There were some complaints about a feedback hum throughout, though from where I was sitting it was not at all obvious. MSO did a much better job than expected, actually - historically, a lack of familiarity and respect for the source material has led to some less-than-stellar adaptations of video game music.  Play! at the Sydney Opera House a few years ago was very good, but they definitely didn't get the dynamics right, something which has long set Eminence apart from their peers.

MSO rose the occasion wonderfully, though.  Only in some parts did it feel as though perhaps some instruments were being drowned out, usually by the choir of all things, which more typically suffers from the opposite problem.  The soloist they brought on board was stunning, and deserved all the accolades she received.

I didn't have a program handy, but the setlist by memory, in no particular order, went something like this:

Halo Theme (extremely good, couldn't have asked for a better opening)

Gravity Rush suite - I want to play Gravity Rush so badly now.

Starcraft II and Diablo III themes!  Very cool to hear Diablo III before the game is even out.

Shadow of the Colossus: Couterattack - My only complaint is that Counterattack is only two minutes long.  That is not nearly enough Shadow of the Colossus music.

Civilization IV Baba Yetu!  Another piece I absolutely never expected to hear.  This one was quite nice as it was a different style and stood out as a breath of fresh air amidst the other pieces.

Skyrim - The choir for this was awesome.  It was also prefaced by a highly amusing skit and animation.  See here.

Two pieces from Bioshock!  Pair Bond and Elanor I think they were called.  This was briefly marred by a crying baby.  Who brings a baby to an MSO performance?

Warcraft Suite - this was from the special collection Eminence did a couple of years back.  Very good to hear live.

Secret of Mana: Angel's Fear and Seiken Densetsu 3: Meridian Child - were far and away the highlights for me!  I couldn't believe they did Meridian Child!  It's long been on my wishlist of pieces but I had long given up on it, since SD3 so rarely gets a look in.  Look, someone was kind enough to load it up on to Youtube.  (Along with everything else too!  Go check it out, even though it's of slightly dubious sound quality.)  I think my favourite thing about these concerts is when they go to the trouble of creating an orchestral arrangement for older soundtracks.  It's the aural equivalent of having an old 2D sprite game remade in photo-realistic 3D.

Two pieces from Assassin's Creed - these were excellent, the vocalist in particular was amazing.  The second piece was more rock, which again was a nice departure from the style of the evening.


God of War and Uncharted also made appearances - the former was appropriately epic, the latter very well executed but somewhat forgettable amidst its brethren.

They also did a stack of pieces from Soul Caliber.   Way too many really, made sense since they had Junichi Nakatsuru as a special guest (he has a habit of coming to Australia for these things - and in fact, secretly bought a ticket to Night in Fantasia 2009 and sat in the audience so he could hear his work) and also were hosting the fighting game championship.  I'm somewhat surprised that nobody figured out to turn down the sounds or music from the game to allow the orchestra to play though.  They fumbled that one.

Also, naturally, FFVII: One Winged Angel.  Lovely as always, but guys, there's heaps of music from Final Fantasy, do a different one!  They have enough for a dedicated concert series, for god's sake.  There is always the dilemma that there may have been many first-time attendees who would be excited at hearing it, but it would be silly to play Beethoven's 9th at every single classical concert, surely?  ...I am complaining but I still enjoyed it.

Encore was Metal Gear Solid 1-3 medley.  A repeat from Night in Fantasia 2009, but an awesome one.

And one last bonus worth noting: The event was hosted by Wil Wheaton and the PvPOnline guys!  They were fairly amusing, although a tiny part of me can't help but wish there was less of them and more music.


One of these days I'm going to write up my dream set list for a video games concert, with the rules that I must not have heard the pieces live before.  Considering the recent track record of my wildest video gaming dreams coming true (Dissidia, Theatrhythm, Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright...?), it's worth a shot, right?

The Last Story just got a bit more interesting

Just a quick post to break the drought - the latest 'Iwata Asks' feature Nintendo ran on their website featured a particularly interesting interview about the Wii title The Last Story, the most recent collaboration between Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, most famous for their work on creating the Final Fantasy series.

The interview can be found here.

What I found particularly interesting was the discussion about what sounds like a great deal of interactive music - not exactly fresh ground in games, but I'd be especially curious to hear what Uematsu has come up with, especially given the prominence of melody in his work - melody often being the first thing sacrificed in most of the truly interactive music systems I've seen implemented in games so far.  The Last Story has now earned its place on my 'must play' list.  One last outing on the Wii I suppose - for once, the game is rather aptly named (although we all know how that 'Final' Fantasy thing turned out.)

I was also quietly amused by their discussions about the 'future need of audio directors' in games.