GAME AUDIO BOSTON
Game audio meetups across the country have become an industry cornerstone for growing an enthusiastic community of game composers, sound designers, and developers interested in learning more about interactive audio. We aim to bring this kind of community together locally in Boston through Game Audio Boston (GAB). At monthly meetups, we discuss the design of sound and music for games, share technical advice and tutorials, explore new tools, and encourage industry networking. Each month will feature a presentation on a given topic, as well as guided round-table discussions.
Next Event
Tuesday November 26th, 2019
Game Audio Boston - Making Of Kine's Audio!
Join us this meetup with composer Mitchel Wong as they explain the journey and systems of composing for Kine and its modular soundtrack. Kine is a narrative puzzle game about three instruments on their road to stardom, and it launched earlier this year on October 17th on the Epic Game Store, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and was a Google Stadia launch title. As a game that was musically themed, its audio is an integral part of it, with in depth systems to support the game. Join us as we take a deep dive into how this award winning audio was created and iterated upon over its 2 years.
Mitchel Wong is a composer and sound designer local to the Boston area. They are a co-organizer of Game Audio Boston and besides composing for Kine, they are also working on Chibisu's Costume Combat, Stratagem!, and Watch This Space.
Past Events
Buzz Burrowes and Eric Brosius discussing the development and inner workings of Harmonix's latest project, DropMix
Michael Sweet gives a rundown of the audio toolset in Unity, with a focus on his work in the upcoming game Walden
Eric Hamel gives a detailed post-mortem on composing the score for A Matter of Murder
Buzz Burrowes and Eric Brosius discussing the development and inner workings of Harmonix's latest project, DropMix
Monday October 28th, 2019
Game Audio Boston - New Synths & Audio Effects for Retro 1-Bit Sound with Kurt Werner
If you are interested in retro-styled video game music and audio, or the creative constraints of 1-bit sound on its own, this talk is for you! The sonic capabilities of many early computers (Apple IIe, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, &c.) were extremely limited: a single digital CPU pin wired directly to a speaker or audio jack. Traditionally, using these "1-bit" audio systems (also sometimes called "beepers" or "PC beepers") has meant sticking to a narrow range of timbres: mainly square waves, pulse waves, and impulse trains. In general, it is difficult to achieve polyphony or layered sounds with these systems, and they lack standard audio effects like filtering, EQ, and feedback delay. In this talk, I will first review some of the classical approaches to 1-bit music. Second, I will demonstrate my own process for composing 1-bit music in a modern workflow, using Ableton Live with custom DSP code written in Max For Live / MaxMSP / Gen~. Finally, I will describe the design of some of my custom 1-bit synthesizers, audio effects, and mixers. Special emphasis will be placed on a new variant of sparse noise I developed called "Crushed Velvet Noise," which is especially useful for 1-bit music.
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Dr. Kurt James Werner does research related to virtual analog, the history of music technology (especially analog drum machines), 1-bit music, & sound synthesis. As part of his Ph.D. at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), he wrote a dissertation entitled "Virtual Analog Modeling of Audio Circuitry Using Wave Digital Filters," using the classic Roland TR-808 bass drum circuit as a case study. As a composer, he works with chiptunes, musique concrète, circuit bending, algorithmic/generative composition, & breakbeat. He spent several years in Northern Ireland as a Lecturer in Audio at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) of Queen's University Belfast, and just started a new position as a Research Engineer at iZotope, Inc. in Cambridge, MA.
Wednesday September 25th, 2019
Game Audio Boston - Procedural Audio: Synthesizing Your Game
Join us for a discussion on procedural audio featuring a look at Tsugi Studios' new procedural sound design tool GameSynth. This software is designed to help make procedural audio more accessible both in the design process, and a plausible solution in the shippable product. Not only can this flexible engine be used to synthesize sound effects, but it can also be integrated as middleware into the game engine to generate audio at run-time. Join us for a deep dive into the future of procedural audio for games.
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Eric Hamel is a freelance sound designer, composer and jack-of-all-trades game developer in Boston. His work has been featured at PAX, BostonFIG, Google Play Indie, and IndieCade. He is also co-founder of Boston-based indie studio Worthing & Moncrieff. As a graduate of both the Boston Conservatory and the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, Eric continues to explore interactive storytelling in the digital arts.
Tuesday August 27th, 2019
Game Audio Boston - Lightning Talks
For our next Game Audio Boston (GAB) meetup we are calling on YOU to submit a 10-minute lightning talk. Submit your idea using the form at the link below. This is a fantastic format for dipping into niche topics that might otherwise not fill an entire talk, or to offer quick tips, tricks or design techniques. If you'd like to submit a talk, please fill out the form here.
'See you there!
Tuesday June 25th, 2019
Orchestration: Three Topics
Join us for our June meetup where Jared Burrell will discuss three topics related to orchestration: prepping for live players, similarities between live and VST orchestration, and differences between the same.
Jared Burrell is a Boston-based composer, trumpeter, and orchestrater. He has played music on five continents and most recently helped with score prep and additional orchestrations for thatgamecompany's newest project, SKY. When he isn't doing music, Jared plays Magic: The Gathering and designs his own pencil-and-paper RPG.
Tuesday May 28th, 2019
Finding Your Voice: Innovations in Voice Skins
In this talk, Terry Chen will provide an in-depth look at Modulate voice skins-- voice changers that offer real-time sonic customization in an online setting. We'll look at existing voice altering technology and examine the fundamental elements of building a next-level voice changer. In this session, we'll discuss dataset collection, signal processing and offer a real-time Modulate demo.
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Terry Chen is the VP of Audio at Modulate, a startup leveraging machine learning to pioneer the next generation of voice customization. A Boston native, Terry has served as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and Corporate Strategy Associate at K-Swiss Global Brands. With over a decade of audio engineering experience, he currently leads Modulate’s audio team, blending classical signal processing with revolutionary machine learning algorithms. He is deeply passionate about building ethical safeguards into AI technology from the ground up. Terry graduated from UCLA with a BS in Environmental Science.
Tuesday April 30th, 2019
MIDI Polyphonic Expression: A Deep Dive
For years technology has enabled musicians and composers that use MIDI to add expression to single monophonic lines via various controls. For this talk Guy Dupont will take us on a deep dive into one of the most exciting developments in MIDI technology: Polyphonic Expression (MPE). This recent MIDI enhancement enables multidimensional controllers to manage multiple parameters by assigning each note its own MIDI channel. Join us as we take a look at MPE technology and its capabilities.
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Guy Dupont is a software developer, audio engineer, and creative technoloist. He is currently leading teams of mobile application developers at Intrpid in Cambridge.
Tuesday, February 26th, 2019
Game Audio Boston Presents Lightning Talks
Join us for our February meetup featuring Lightning Talks presented by you -- the Game Audio Boston community! For those who haven't been to lightning talks before - we will have a series of quick 10 minute talks in rapidfire succession. This is a fantastic format for dipping into niche topics that might otherwise not fill an entire talk, or to offer quick tips, tricks or design techniques. 'Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, October 30th, 2018
Behind the Sci-Fi Sound Design of XCOM with Adam Schneider
In a talk led by audio designer Adam Schneider, we’ll take a detailed look at the process of creating unique, larger-than-life sound design for the science fiction genre using real world examples from the most recent XCOM games. The talk is intended to provide valuable insight for experienced sound designers, newcomers to sound design, and composers looking to bridge the gap. We’ll start by breaking down design concepts and theories, and then move onto topics including layering techniques, incorporating synthesizers, and how aspects of music composition can be utilized when creating sound effects.
Adam Schneider is a Sound Designer and a Composer with ten years of experience in the video game industry. He has worked on franchises such as XCOM, Skylanders, Marvel, Transformers, and Guitar Hero. He is currently a full-time employee of Firaxis Games and most recently provided music and sound design to the XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - Tactical Legacy Pack, as well as the accompanying XCOM Legacy soundtrack.
Tuesday, November 27th, 2018
An Essay on LOD in Interactive Audio with Maximilien Simard-Poirier
LOD (level of detail), is a concept that has been around for a while, not only in games to optimize graphics, but also in literature, and even in gestalt psychology and psychoacoustics. Interestingly enough, examination of games and other interactive media shows that sound designers are using LOD-influenced methods when settings up distance and orientation-based optimizations, dynamic mixing rules, and other sound design systems.
Why is it that we don’t hear about LOD as a formal concept for interactive audio design? Could it simply be the terminology that is not well adopted yet, or is it something deeper? This session will look at LOD from an interactive sound design perspective and try to answer these questions while exploring how to bring new layers of depth in our sonic landscapes.
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Maximilien is an avid interactive audio designer for games and VR. He is currently based in Montreal and holds the Sound Designer in Residence position at Audiokinetic. Max holds a bachelor’s in Digital Music from the University of Montreal, and he has worked on a plethora of projects throughout his career. Some of his credits include: Time Machine VR, mobile smash hit Pewdiepie’s Tuber Simulator, and other distinguished contributions such as the soundtrack of Resident Evil VII. As a passionate musician and gamer, Max always aims to push the envelope with interactive media, and contribute to the community by sharing knowledge and experiences. Max is a frequent game audio and virtual reality lecturer. His most recent speaking credits include: Montreal ComicCon, Symposium IX, Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS), Concordia University as well as the University of Montreal.
Tuesday, January 29th, 2019
Basic Audio Implementation for Sound Designers and Composers with Maxime Gautier
In this talk Maxime Gautier will explore the basic techniques of audio implementation (using code) in Unity3D. The talk will feature workshop elements so have your laptop ready with Unity version 2018.2.14 installed (see the link below) if you intend to follow along. No previous implementation experience needed.
You can download Unity from their website: https://unity3d.com/
Originally from Paris Maxime Gautier is a composer/technical composer and technical sound designer, finishing Berklee School of Music. Focusing on interactivity and system-based compositions, he has designed scores, sound effects, and environment for VR/AR as well as for more traditional platforms.
Tuesday, September 25th, 2018
Under the Hood: Native Audio Plugins for Unity with Nick Thompson
In this talk we’ll dive straight into the fundamentals of digital audio and digital signal processing in a musical context. We’ll establish an introductory understanding of the numbers and the math underlying digital audio and use that to take an intuitive look at a simple musical filter. At that point we’ll switch gears into a hands-on workshop to apply our new knowledge to building a native audio plugin for Unity, start to finish. The workshop portion of this talk will assume a small familiarity with general software programming and the Git version control tool, if you plan to follow along on your own machine.
During the workshop portion, if you want to follow along and build your own plugin, you’ll want to have a few things installed ahead of time:
1. Unity
2. XCode (OS X) or Visual Studio (Windows) for building native C/C++ projects
3. JUCE, and the Projucer. We’ll be using a soon-to-be released feature of the Projucer, thus you’ll need to install JUCE from the `develop` branch of their source repository: https://github.com/WeAreROLI/JUCE/tree/develop
Steps to install JUCE (with Git from the command line):
git clone git@github.com:WeAreROLI/JUCE.git
git checkout develop
Now you can open the appropriate project file for the Projucer project (from the root of the directory):
MacOSX - extras/Projucer/Builds/MacOSX/Projucer.xcodeproj
Windows - extras/Projucer/Builds/VisualStudio2017/Projucer.sln
Once open in your respective IDE, you can build the project and run the Projucer from there.
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Nick Thompson is a Boston-based electronic musician and the founder of Creative Intent, an audio plugin company exploring the boundaries of music software with a focus on modern design and inspiring sound. Outside of music and programming, he’s an avid ultimate frisbee player and plays with one of Boston’s own competitive club teams.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2018
An Introduction to Procedural Music for Games by Michael Sweet
Many games have utilized generative and procedural music in their scores including Spore, and MiniMetro. Have you ever wondered how to create generative music and integrate it into your own games? In this workshop we'll use the graphic music programming language PureData (pD) to create a simple generative music patch, then integrate it into the game development engine Unity.
This is a hands-on workshop, so if you're interested in creating instead of just watching, bring your charged Windows or Mac laptop loaded up with the following software:
3. Context Sequencer (follow the instructions on this page after you've installed PureData)
4. GAB_PD_Unity_Workshop.zip (note: this has been tested on Mac 10.13.6, and Windows 10 64 bit)
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Over the past two decades in music Michael Sweet is an accomplished video game audio composer for more than 100 video games. Michael currently leads the development of the game scoring curriculum at Berklee College of Music. As a composer/sound designer his latest games include Walden, A Game about the life of Henry David Thoreau, and The Night Journey an experimental art game which tells the story of an individual’s journey towards enlightenment.
Tuesday, July 31st, 2018
A Study of Bartók Harmonies with Jared Burrell
Béla Bartók is widely considered one of Hungary's greatest composers and the father of ethnomusicology. Cinema and video game composers have been influenced by his work for decades. Join us for an evening devoted to how Bartók has shaped modern music. We'll examine Bartók's work and explore useful techniques for harmonizing chromatic material -- including practically any motive you can think of in a way that builds upon tonality. The ears that can comprehend tonal harmony can also comprehend Bartok's axial harmony. We'll explore techniques that allow you to write unconventional music that still leads the ear of the audience in such a way that they won't get lost.
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Jared Burrell is a Boston-based composer, trumpeter, and orchestrater. He has played music on five continents and most recently helped with score prep and additional orchestrations for thatgamecompany's newest project, SKY. When he isn't doing music, Jared plays Magic: The Gathering and designs his own pencil-and-paper RPG.
Thursday, June 28th, 2018
Procedurally Generated Sound Design with Jean-Luc Sinclair
Join us for a discussion of procedurally generated sound design with Jean-Luc Sinclair. Jean-Luc is a seasoned sound designer and composer, having had collaborated with some of the most influential artists of his time, from Trent Reznor to The Scissor Sisters, Zach De La Rocha from Rage Against the Machine and co-producing an album with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. Currently, Sinclair is a Faculty Member at New York University's Music Technology Department and Berklee College of Music's Eletronic Production and Design division.
Tuesday, May 29th, 2018
Chip-Tune Off the Old Block: A History of Chiptune Music
Since games have existed, so has game music. Though it has evolved plenty over the past few decades, some people today still like to compose in the method used over 30 years ago. The music of the the 8-bit era is often called chiptune music, but what exactly does that mean? In this talk we'll be going through a brief history of chiptune music, as well as where today it stands and when and why one should use it in the modern era. Though it is not a comprehensive tutorial of how to compose this form of music, there will be plenty of advice of the tools and strategies to use and how to begin. This talk is aimed primarily to composers but will also be accessible to non-musicians.
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Mitchel Wong is a freelance composer and sound designer that is extremely passionate about all facets of gaming. He has spent 15 years playing the trombone and acquired a Bachelors in Music from Ithaca College, where he ran a Gamers Club and conducted the Ithaca College Gamer Symphony Orchestra. He's very active in the local Boston game dev community and is currently working on projects with local and indie devs as a composer and sound designer.
Tuesday, April 24th, 2018
An Evening With Videri - Roselie Samter
Join us for an evening with founding member of the Videri String Quartet, Roselie Samter. She'll be discussing the quartet, providing an insight on their process, reflecting on how they approach their original arrangements, and offering feedback and advice for video game composers.
Roselie Samter, viola, earned her Bachelor of Music in viola performance at Eastern Washington University and her Master of Music in viola performance at the Boston Conservatory. While at the Eastern Washington University, Rosie was the recipient of the Yarwood Award for the most outstanding graduate in the EWU School of Music. Rosie has performed all over the United States and Canada, and has also toured Greece and Cyprus with singer Nikolas Metaxas. Rosie placed first in the MusicFest Northwest competition's unaccompanied Bach
division. She has played with the Tuscaloosa Symphony, Cape Ann Symphony, and Brookline Symphony, to name a few. However, her true love is chamber music, a passion which motivated her to become a founding member of the
Videri String Quartet. Rosie attended the Meadowmount School of Music for three summers, studying
there and at the Boston Conservatory with Patricia McCarty. She also spent a year at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta, Canada as an artist in residence, where she worked with Joel Smirnoff and Joan Kwon. Her other teachers include Lenny Matczynski, Dr. Leslie Faye Johnson, and Dr. Philip Baldwin.
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Tuesday, March 27th, 2018
Ready for the Metaverse:
Immersive and Interactive Experiences in Virtual Worlds
What’s happening in virtual worlds now that consumer VR is available? How is spatialized audio part of the new immersive virtual worlds? Just returned from speaking at GDC (and recent visits to High Fidelity), Lori Landay will give an overview of the past, present, and possible futures of virtual worlds and shared VR. Topics will include: social interaction, avatars, first- and third-person perspectives, environment, interacting with objects, quests, games, and “scripting hijinks”—when people goof around with the affordances of the virtual world. We’ll take a spoiler-free glimpse at Ernest Cline’s book Ready Player One and the about-to-be-released movie based on it. Are you ready for the metaverse??
Dr. Lori Landay is Professor of Visual Culture + New Media Studies, an interdisciplinary teacher, scholar, and artist whose creative and critical work explores themes of transformation in audiovisual cultural forms, technology, and perception. Over the past two decades, Lori's artistry has led her to create award winning interactive installations, virtual art, animation, creative documentaries, digital video, and music videos which have travelled the globe. Lori's recent focus is on XR, an umbrella term for extending reality through emerging technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, motion capture, AI, automation, and in her model of the “new realities,” social mediations of reality. She is a leader in BerkleeXR, the curricular, pedagogical, and programming initiative at Berklee, the Faculty Adviser for the student organization BerkleeXR, and a founding member of Women in the Next Realities, a Meetup group in the greater Boston area. Lori is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Brookline Interactive Group and the Public VR Lab. Her current project, The Immersive Tools Project for Autism and Music Education, is funded through grant from the Berklee College of Music, and is conducted in collaboration with Rhoda Bernard, Ed.D., Managing Director of the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs. www.lorilanday.com @loirl
Tuesday, February 27th, 2018
An Evening of Audio Driven Game-Play
This evening GAB offers a "double feature" of talks that examine the relationship between sound and game-play. Tag-teaming the topics of sound design and music will be Oscar Coen and Eric Hamel, respectively. When discussing sound design, we usually focus on things like immersion and aesthetics. It's easy to forget that sound can have a much more drastic effect on game-play, making the game easier, or even harder! So how can we approach sound design with game-play at the front of our minds? Can this also be true for game music? We'll also look at some of the experimental ideas of designing the system of a musical score to drive game-play. Using the design of the game soundtracks for W&M's A Matter of Murder and Austen Translation, we'll explore how music can also provide the attentive player an advantage during play.
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Oscar Coen is a Sound Designer based in the Greater Boston Area who makes sounds all day. He is currently working at the MIT Media Lab on several projects as part of the Fluid Interfaces group, as a TA at MIT, and as a freelance sound designer for games.
Eric Hamel is a freelance sound designer and composer as well as audio director at Boston-based indie studio Worthing & Moncrieff. As a graduate of both the Boston Conservatory and the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, Eric continues to explore interactive storytelling in the digital arts.
Tuesday November 14th, 2017
Game Audio Boston Presents: Lightning Talks!
Our December meetup is Lightning Talks! For those who haven't been to lightning talks before - we will have a series of quick 10 minute talks in rapidfire succession. This is a fantastic format for doing quick dives into niche topics that might otherwise not fill an entire talk.
This month's lightning talks include:
- Homegrown Kontakt Instruments (and how to organize them with GitHub)
- The Beauty of UI Sound Design
- Homemade Magic - Magical sound design with things you can find at home
- Audiophobia: Using game audio to achieve the three types of fear
- Sound as Domination
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As per our new meeting schedule, we will conveine at 6:30pm, and talks will start promptly at 7pm. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!
Tuesday January 30th, 2018
Better Know an Audio Programmer with Ethan Fenn
Do audio programmers really exist? What do they do? Can I do those things too?
In this high-level talk, Ethan Fenn will probe the answers to these questions. We'll look at examples of the broad range of problems audio programmers solve. There will also be some practical tips for working with programmers, and some ways to approach learning to code and becoming more well-rounded in the craft of game audio.
Ethan Fenn has been in the game industry since 2004, doing a range of jobs with "programmer" and "audio" in the name. He was an audio programmer at Harmonix in the days of Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, and Rock Band. Afterwards he was part of the initial three-person team at Fire Hose Games, an independent game developer in Cambridge that will be ten years old this summer. At Fire Hose, in addition to wide-ranging general programming responsibilities, he was the audio lead, doing composition and sound design for Fire Hose's games. Ethan's latest venture is the audio software company Polyspectral, which will soon be releasing its first product, a multiband compressor plugin for Wwise.
Tuesday November 14th, 2017
A Look Behind The Scenes of DROPMIX from Harmonix
DROPMIX is the latest game from the makers of Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance Central. DROPMIX is a dynamic and fast-paced music-mixing game. Players blend popular songs from award-winning artists to create mind-blowing mixes. Harmonix is a Boston based game developer who has been focused on creating music games since 1995. Project leads Buzz Burrowes and Eric Brosius from Harmonix give us a behind the scenes tour on how the game was created.
Buzz Burrowes is a 23 year game industry veteran, and is currently the Lead Audio Programmer at Harmonix Music Systems Inc., the developers of Guitar Hero I & II, the Rock Band and Dance Central franchises, and now DropMix. He has been with Harmonix for 8 years. Buzz began his game industry career at Sony Computer Entertainment America, joining SCEA prior to the launch of the first PlayStation in 1994. During his tenure at Sony, Buzz developed the audio drivers used in all first party games, and was at various times the Chief Audio Engineer, Lead Audio Programmer, and Sr. Director of Tools & Technology. Prior to Sony, Buzz was a recording engineer based in Los Angeles.
Eric Brosius has been in the video game industry for 20+ years. He is currently at Harmonix Music and has been the Audio Director for most of his 12+ years there. He has been directly involved with many Harmonix’s games, including Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Fantasia, and DropMix. Before Harmonix, Eric worked for 4 years at Irrational Games on titles such as BioShock, System Shock 2 and Freedom Force, and before that at Looking Glass Studios for 7 years working on games such as Thief, Terra Nova, and System Shock. Eric has played in several Boston bands over the years, most notably Tribe in the late 80s and early 90s. He is currently in two bands: Eddie Japan and Dark Wheels.
Tuesday October 17th, 2017
Basic Business Skills for Composers, by Li & Ortega
As creatives, “business” is often what we consider to be the dreariest part of developing our careers. This is often because "business" is perceived as a singular, monolithic, and difficult thing, as opposed to what it truly is - a holistic combination of many small (and often easy) tasks, executed thoughtfully. When we break it down to the simple and often very human
elements, business development becomes less intimidating, and perhaps even fun! In this talk, we will be addressing some essential aspects of business development for the working composer, such as building a self-propagating network, authenticity in branding, and clearing up the common misunderstandings behind pricing yourself appropriately.
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Xiao'an Li has been engaged to create music for products by Wooga and Fox Digital Entertainment, Hasbro, Playstudios, Mobilityware, Earplay, American Greetings, and more. He bamboozled his way into a founding partnership at Li & Ortega, and is the Music Director of East Coast Scoring. He also co-founded Business Skills for Composers, a Facebook group that provides over 3600 composers worldwide with essential business knowledge and an interactive learning environment.
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David Ortega has been active in the game industry for 26 years. He produced all music for Ubisoft’s highly successful franchise “Just Dance Kids 2014”, followed up with “Disney Dance Party 2” for Xbox One. He holds a Master of Music degree in composition, and a Doctorate in Psychology, providing a rare intersection of skillsets that allow David to provide elegant project
management with effective communication and workflow navigation on both the client and
vendor sides.
Tuesday September 19, 2017
Sound Design in Games - Q&A with Jerry Berlongieri
Join us for an informative Q&A session with game industry veteran and all-around audio guru Jerry Berlongieri. We will come prepared with a series of questions for Jerry, but the conversation will be steered by the group. It should be a very insightful evening!
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Jerry Berlongieri, a 20-year veteran of the video game industry, has provided music, sound content and direction for a number of top franchises such as Call of Duty, Skylanders, Spider-Man, Descent and James Bond. He has worked on projects for a wide range of companies including Disney Interactive, Hasbro, THQ, Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft. He currently serves as audio director at Ghost Story Games, a Take-Two Interactive studio.
Tuesday August 8th, 2017
Composing For Impact: Creating an Effective Soundtrack with Cliff Anderson
What distinguishes a memorable and effective game soundtrack? What creative practices and collaboration techniques can heighten the impact of a game’s audio elements — and specifically, its score? In this talk, award-winning composer Clifford Anderson will provide practical tips and strategies for creating a stand-out soundtrack that can help any game deliver the best possible experience. While the primary focus of the session is on composing, much of the subject matter is applicable to other aspects of game audio and design as well.
Cliff’s credits include the scores for acclaimed indie games, films, and other projects as well as numerous speaking appearances. He was a core member of the team which created Berklee Online, the world’s premiere online music school.
Tuesday July 11th, 2017
The Dos and Don'ts of VR Audio with Cesar Suarez
This presentation will cover the Do's and Don'ts in getting started with VR Audio as well as some of the basic and "standard" techniques being used in VR games today. It will cover topics from Attenuation Curves to Multiple approaching of audio emitter placement, to alternative ways to think about music in VR. It will look at some in game examples from ROTU VR, a musical adventure game from ROTU Entertainment & Media, Ltd using the power of the Unreal Engine.
Cesar Suarez is a Film Scoring graduate from the Berklee College of Music and currently works as a subcontractor for Fastestmanintheworld Media (Underworld Overlord) and is the Audio Director at ROTU Entertainment & Media, Ltd.
Tuesday June 20th, 2017
Game Audio Boston Presents: Lightning Talks!
For our next Game Audio Boston (GAB) meet up on June 20th, 2017 from 6-8pm at the Berklee Learning Center (150 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA) we are calling on YOU to submit a 10-minute lightning talk. Submit your idea using the form at the link below. Presentations should be kept to 10 minutes each.
Monday May 22, 2017, 6pm - 8pm
A Matter of Music: A Post-Mortem on Composing the Score of A Matter of Murder with Eric Hamel
This presentation offers a unique look at writing a musical score that corresponds to game mechanic. In the form of a post-mortem, we will explore the design of the A Matter of Murder game soundtrack. Featured at the Boston Festival of Indie Games and the Google Play Indie Game Festival, A Matter of Murder is a procedurally generated puzzle-mystery game for PC, Mac, iOS and Android. Eric is a graduate of the Boston Conservatory and the Entertainment Technology Center, and serves as game designer and audio director at Worthing & Moncrieff.
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Monday 22, 6pm-8pm at Intrepid Pursuits, 222 Third Street, Cambridge, MA
Friday, April 14, 2017, 6pm - 8pm
An Inside Look at the Unity Audio Toolset with Michael Sweet
The presentation will focus on the advanced audio capabilities of Unity with implementation examples from the game Walden. Currently in pre-release Walden, A Game is a first person simulation of the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. Michael is the audio director for the project composing the music score, and recording sound effects as well as implementing the audio. The game was developed by the USC Game Innovation Lab in cooperation with the National Endowment of the Humanities. Michael is also the Artistic Director of Video Game Scoring at Berklee College of Music.
After the presentation, Game Audio Boston will host an open discussion about future audio meetings, and the Boston area audio community.
Friday, April 14, 6pm-8pm at the Berklee Learning Center, 150 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA