NFX posted on November 04, 2008 10:03
[ This article was reprinted with permission from Sunburn. It was originally posted at Future Producers. - Admin]
There's an often relatively unobserved side of the music and audio engineering world that many enthusiasts of their craft are unaware of. I often see most gear "geeks" chasing their dreams of becoming an established producer or working their way up in a studio environment to work alongside big acts in the genre of music they're the most fond of but I don't see many people looking outside of that box to maybe settle for something they'd really enjoy also. When one takes a step back and observes this music industry, they'll see a flood of competition and people marketing themselves left and right with the ratio of quantity to quality being extremely out of balance. Let's face it, it's really hard to get recognized, sometimes even if you're good at your craft.
What if I told you that, you, the person who's very passionate about tweaking knobs, making things sound sweet and fluid and just loves drooling over audio gear could make an established, lucrative living off of doing what you love? It won't be the music industry, but an industry that destroys the revenue and profits of both music and movies combined: video games. If I've got your attention, then read on because I've only just begun to describe to you the power of this industry. Now, let me tell you my story.
I started fooling around with electronic based music and hip hop at the age of 12. It wasn't until I was 15-16 that this was an obsessive hobby then it turned into a full on "I have to do this with my life or I'm going to die" thing by the age of 19. Does anybody else here ever feel this way? I'm sure. You joined this badass forum, didn't you?
Needless to say that along my journey I picked up a few handy skills in engineering. Most of them came with a trained ear, reading articles on the internet and forums like this.
I ended up going to school at Full Sail University in Orlando, FL back in 2006 for Recording Arts. Initially I wanted to get into music but I had the sinking feeling that the competition was way in over my head. Did you know that there are over 2,000+ grads a year from that school just graduating from Recording Arts alone? Let's not forget all the other music technology related schools out there. The competition is fierce and the job market is very, very tiny and quite saturated.
I started hearing about video game audio from teachers. They would mention that there was a rise in video game audio jobs emerging. I started to get the itch and began my research and this is what I began to discover.
1) The video game industry is growing every year, despite the economy.
2) There are game studios all over the country. The top dogs are located in California and Texas, however, there are some elsewhere.
3) A game audio salary starts typically around $35-45k depending on the studio and can get up to over $100k based on more experience and location of the developer.
4) In addition to good salaries, it's common for developers to have perky benefits such as health, dental, profit-sharing, vision, relocation reimbursement, 401k, stock options, free memberships to gyms, food provided on-site for lunch/dinner, discounts on video games, free video games and oh, god I can't go on...or can I?
5) Audio people get taken care of for established studios. You want it? You got it. Ask for new software, hardware or anything that's going to help you do your job better, if you have enough reason the studio will usually buy it for your office no problem. This will let you play with new toys as soon as they come out. Omnisphere anyone?
6) YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW A SINGLE LINE OF PROGRAMMING CODE!!!!
What does an audio job entail? Well, for most studios it's going to be sound design and implementation. Sound design is anything you hear in the game. From gun shots, to the ambiance of the wind to crazy sci-fi noise and interface audio. If you go to an audio school like Full Sail you learn entry level things about sound design and how to accomplish that, so I won't delve too hard into it. Implementation of these sounds differs from studio to studio, but usually its not too hard of a process.
There are some studios that do in fact have in-house composers and music makers. This is somewhat rare in the industry, as it is easier for companies to outsource composers usually. Lucky for me, I ended up landing a gig at one of these studios that actually does in house composition, Volition Inc.
When I was almost done with Full Sail, I got the job by noticing there was an opening on the website for Volition, Inc. I already had a fabulous website (www.sunburnsound.com) to encase my music portfolio in. I emailed them about the job and in seconds got a notice back. They were interested and asked for a sound design demo. That weekend, I hustled into making a sound design demo by taking trailers from www.gametrailers.com, loading them into Pro Tools and stripping all the sound out and replacing the sound design with my own. They liked it, I scored an interview and the rest is history.
The first game I worked on was Saints Row 2 (Release Date Oct 14, 2008). I got to do some hip hop instrumentals for it which was really cool and a whole lot of sound design. One thing I got the huge privilege of doing was the Volition logo that splashes across the screen whenever you boot up the game. It was a lot of fun.
Right now I'm working on Red Faction: Guerilla and I've been lucky enough to do 15-25 minutes worth of music (mostly ambient) with it. It's great!
What I love about my job is it strengthens my ability to make things sound good. Not only that but my music writing skills have jumped and I'm getting my creative work into the hands of millions of people. It's very rewarding and fulfilling. It's something that goes around the world.
Ok, I'm tired of typing for now. If you have specific questions that I didn't go over please feel free to ask. I'm very positive about this kind of a job and am willing to help anybody better understand it. This was a very brief overview of a much larger picture. Hope this was informative to someone! Thanks!
Joshua Davidson
Sound Designer/Composer
Volition, Inc.
www.sunburnsound.com