Sounds like Guns N’ Roses is the latest big news in Rock Band 2. This, just on the heels of the Guitar Hero: Aerosmith release.
So it appears to me that the music business is healthy and doing well for musicians in more ways than ever. It may be true however, that the music business is not as healthy as it once was for the music business.
I’ve been mixing a fantastic live set of Frankie Ford live at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley. I say the set is great, partly due to the music and incredible musicianship, but also in large part, to it being a live performance.
There is as much between song commentary, comedy, antics and personality by Frankie during the set as there is music. Frankie puts on a true show in every sense of the word. Much more than a back-to-back performance of songs.
In listening back I’m reminded that in many cases there is much that the studio album recording format does not capture. This seems especially true in genres like jazz, blues, and gospel for me. I’m sure that can be said about many others too.
The soundtrack for the North American version of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was announced on Tuesday. With an eclectic mix of some of the best names in music around, the soundtrack blends indie dance rock, electronica, classic rock and brand new remixes by some of today’s hottest bands.
Headlining the soundtrack is an in-game exclusive version of Weezer’s “Automatic” from their upcoming album, remixed by LA Riots. Other artists include The Mars Volta, DJ Shadow, Thin Lizzy, and The Klaxons.
I did a surround mix of the Weezer track for the game as well as some of the in-game mastering. This game looks amaaaazzzing! Can’t wait until it comes out next month.
I attended Audio Boot Camp today at GDC. Scott Selfon from Microsoft kicked off with a comprehensive “Introduction to Audio for Games” that included some insightful historical components.
Jay Weinland gave a great presentation showing off Bungie’s internal audio tools. They were fantastically impressive albeit, shown in the context of creating audio for Halo… Jay also referenced some cool benefits they got by licensing some plugins from Waves to use in-engine for mixing the game. In particular, setting up Waves plugin presets in Pro Tools and having them translate perfectly in the game engine.
Charles Deenen from EA covered many areas but seemed most passionate about evangelizing better in game mixing. Beyond volume, beyond DSP, we need to reference information from more data points in the game to create “great” adaptive mixes.
Charles made good sense to this enthused mix engineer. Accessing hundreds of points to create a top notch virtual mixing engineer in the game shouldn’t be far off, I hope…
Wed 13 Feb 2008
My good friend and brilliant engineer, Rob Castro, spotted this query on the cover of Mix Magazine:
ATTENTION: GAME SOUND DEVELOPERS
We’re guessing you didn’t always work in videogames; we know a lot of you have roots in music and post. Tell us why you made the switch to the game world, and the name of the first title you worked on. E-mail us at mixeditorial@mixonline.com.
So… I thought about it for just a minute, and responded:
WHY I MADE THE SWITCH TO THE GAME WORLD
I grew up engineering in the collaborative recording environments of the ’80’s and ’90’s. Studio multiplexes that fostered groups of creative people working on multiple projects simultaneously, water cooler talks, and a healthy, competitive industry. With the advent of desktop recording, the process of making music became more isolated for the creators. With less collaboration came less innovation.
I became interested in the videogame industry because I saw the collaborative environment that motivated me to get into music recording in the first place. Huge teams of energetic people pushing innovation and technology to their limits. It’s those elements that I believe are the making of great change, and artistic creation.
