In this series of five video essays, I break down what makes video game music interesting, focusing on the first chapter of the Final Fantasy 7 remake. The series is geared towards individuals with low to no music theory background to give them a better appreciation of music in games.

It is a solo project, and all writing, recording, video editing and production was done by me.

An audio re-imagining of the opening cutscene for the 3rd Colossus - Gaius.

This soundscape is crafted with a collection of rock, silt, and sand samples, cabinet hinges, metal sounds and wood groans.

While the original game used low frequencies and reverb to create a sense of distance, I wanted to create a more intimate encounter with something of a massive scale—especially since the game play involves the player being up close and personal with each boss!

Snowblind was created by a 2 person team for the Senscape Adventurous Jam over 2 weeks, and we wanted to play to our strengths - creating an evocative atmosphere and mood to support a fully voiced story. A majority of my time was spent on script writing, vocal direction, audio processing, and entering the data for the voice narrative into spreadsheets.

We set out to create Point Hope as a heavy narrative, moody horror game. We had 15 voiced characters and leaned heavily on sound to create a moody atmosphere.

Case Study | Voice Direction in the age of COVID-19

We had already decided on a narrative-heavy game with full voice acting when our area was placed back into full lockdown for the pandemic. Suddenly, all of the voice direction had to be done remotely. I organized a few changes with our writer to make sure that the main character’s voice was the only one not heard through a radio or a recording.

Accounting for poor audio quality

Only two of our voice actors had access to a high-quality microphone and recording area. For the rest, I had them send me their raw, unedited recording through whatever equipment they had available and gave remote coaching on how to set up a quiet space with a closet or blanket fort. While the quality of recording varied widely, I applied a processed effect for distorted radio or old cassette tape recordings to help make them all feel like they belonged in the same world.

Directing from a Distance

I set up a discord server to act as my ‘remote recording booth’ and added a bot to record discord calls. I managed over 15 voice actors in that server, scheduling times for recordings that worked for them as well as our writer (who was actively working on the script when recording started, due to the time constraints of the project). A recording session involved me remotely coaching the voice actor on the lines, shared via Google Doc, as the Discord Bot independently captured each voice on the call as a separate wav file. This allowed me to give real-time feedback to voice actors and offer suggestions for better quality recordings remotely.

DETRITUS is a spaceflight shooter, and for it I used FMOD to create a multi-layered adaptive soundtrack that made use of a randomized drum track, music tracks that triggered to warn the player of low health, and a custom “intensity” spectrum that adjusted the instrumentation based on the number of enemies on the field, and if the player recently defeated a boss. I worked closely with the lead programmer to request states to use as triggers, but scripted the FMOD integration myself.

As an arena spaceflight shooter, DETRITUS allowed me to craft a number of sci-fi lasers, explosions, and crashes that didn’t necessarily need to mimic real life. I also got the opportunity to do some voice acting work, crafting a pleasant yet sinister information system to give a little insight into the world.

I was given a lot of freedom for the soundscape of De-Railed. Taking place entirely on and around a train making its way across the country, I chose to design the soundtrack around a single American folk song: 900 miles. Each piece has callbacks to a vocal recording which plays at the game’s conclusion, and the sound of the train running was integrated into the music, though separated from the final music for the train level to allow the train to naturally stop and start according to gameplay.

Off the Hook created atmosphere through ambiance and sound effects, rather than a traditional score. As our first iteration, I built an audio file that moved through what I envisioned gameplay would sound like, setting markers for in-game triggers. After I had a set of sound layers I was happy with, I passed the list of files and their triggers off to the programmer to hook in, taking his cues for how to divide the layers and where to create loops.

ATLANTIS was designed with an adaptive soundtrack that reacted to the player’s progression in a level. As Atlantis comes closer to sinking, the calming music becomes more muddled and desperate. When the player finally reaches the final stretch of rescuing the princess, her calming theme is introduced in contrast. Each track for the game was a variation on this theme used for the main gameplay loop.

ATLANTIS offered some unique challenges for sound design. Our sprite artist had created elaborate animations for each playable character’s special abilities. I broke these down frame by frame in Audacity, creating markers every 1/10 second to ensure the complex movements would sync up in engine.

For Shelter, we only had a two-man team. I took over the narrative design, level design, and all audio aspects of the game. It was our first forey into heavy narrative design with two speaking characters interracting throughout gameplay.

For VORACIOUS, I designed an adaptive soundtrack that shifted based on how far from home base you had wandered. I voiced every character and monster as well as the menu notifications, and designed the gun sounds.

Edge of Twilight was a project made with a two-man team, so my time was split between art and audio.

In Rite of Passage, I split my time between audio design, implementation, composition, and level design. I worked closely with the programmer to create rules for procedurally generated rooms, and timing the music to ‘count down’ your allotted time for each level.

For this project, I came in at the very end after almost all the audio had already been created and the project direction was decided. The Audio Engineer wasn’t able to figure out how to implement in game, and I was asked to come on board just for implementation. I ended up creating a few additional sounds to fill holes.

Vocal Work

In addition to composing and doing sound technician work, I’m also a classically trained vocalist with a number of performance styles. Below is a small selection of recordings.