Catching up..

Here are five songs that I’ve released or performed, but have not put up on my site for one reason or another — a couple of them are several years old, but you might never have heard them! I’ve put them in the regular music listing, but also collected them here for your convenience:

Lorem Chipsum (expanded chiptune version of my Vocaloid song)

Splatterhouse – TERRORMASK (newly remastered!)

Michael Jackson vs. virt – Thriller (side-by-side mash-up)

TMNT (NES) – Enter the Turtle (70s Kung Fu movie-inspired TMNT arrangement)

The Machine Planet (My final Hellven contribution, lush original electronic track)

Wow, that’s a lot of different genres in one post. I hope at least one of them is to your liking!

It’s May already?!

(EDIT: Yes, I know it’s actually June. I started writing this a month ago, got sidetracked, and thought the title would be funny to use now.)

Okay, okay, okay. I’ve been putting off updating, because:

- I packed my house up in the last week of December, became temporarily homeless, flew out to MAGFest, flew back to Illinois, drove out to California, and reported to work 42 hours after taking the keys to my apartment.

- At WayForward, since January I have:

• • Handled sound and music on four separate games, including this and this.
• • Written 89 songs
• • Designed 2,178 sound effects
• • Programmed 4 tools ranging from command-line data prep utilities to a graphical patch editor
• • Written specs for and overseen the implementation of:
  • - a reactive music system
  • - a scripted sound effect system
  • - an ambient sound region system
• • Drafted out QA testing documentation, so testers will know how to verify that all the stuff above is working.
• • Played through all Mega Man games from 1 up to X8 (Even terrible ones and spinoffs) during our month-long “Mega May” event. We held separate Robot Master and Maverick Boss design contests, and I drew 15 of them with crayons and colored pencils. Scans forthcoming. Also, one night at 2 AM, we deliriously (and deliciously) noticed that a certain silo near Dr. Wily’s castle in MM6 resembled a baguette. So I made this, which now adorns the fridge in our break room.

- At home (on weeknights and weekends) I have:

• • Worked on official synthesizer demo tracks
• • Worked on preset data and voice banks
• • Written soundtracks for four Flash / cellphone games
• • Contributed a track to a large console game
• • Developed a duodenal ulcer
• • Seen very little of LA, not hung out with friends, wife, or dog.

Now, finally, the reason you’re here — MUSIC!

- Donkey Kong Country 2: Serious Monkey Business
(one of the best game remix albums ever, and not just because I’m on it)

- Mario Paint: Que Rico el Mono
(my entry for the Magfest Dwelling of Duels contest, won 2nd place)

- MC Nachbar: Rock Band
(alternate entry for the Magfest Dwelling of Duels contest — Warning: NSFW, extremely profane lyrics)

- Contra 4: Rocked ‘n’ Loaded
(one of the best game remix albums ever, and not just because they’re arrangements of my music, done by some of the most amazing musicians in the scene, including none other than noted Greek bastard Snappleman and noted pretty-boy Prince of Darkness)

- Doctor Who Theme arranged for Nintendo DS
(The unquestionably superior 10th Doctor theme [I don't care about your opinion on this matter] arranged with the same samples I used in Contra 4, using 156 kilobytes of waveform data, recorded from the hardware)

Time to stop slacking and get back to work!

Autumntunes, and Interviews

Two items:

1) My friend C-Jeff, a crazy talented chiptuner, runs a label called Ubiktune which has rocked the chiptune world, with its incredible quarterly seasonal albums, featuring some of the best and brightest in the scene, like Malmen, Lunar, Shnabubula, and Coda. The latest release is Autumntunes, which would be one of my favorite releases of the year even if I hadn’t contributed a track to it.

I wrote a J-rock-ish song about an ancient Japanese Buddhist monk who sojourned in China, following his writings about traveling the autumn months, armed with a chaingun and targeting computer. Features simulations of such instruments as the chinese Erhu violin, the Yangqin hammered dulcimer, and the shakuhachi, a legendary Japanese bamboo flute favored by the Fuke Zen school, and later by Peter Gabriel and that one Revlon commercial.

2) They interviewed me over at Original Sound Version for Red Faction: Guerrilla. Sorry if none of it makes sense, I was pretty amped at the time.

WESSIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE

Oops, cat’s out of the bag. I was hoping to delay the announcement until Magfest, but I was probably dumb to expect that.

So: I’m relocating to northern LA at the beginning of January.

Wayforward Technologies, my favorite game developer and longtime client, has enjoyed great success lately, and they have enough going on to keep an audio guy busy year-round. So I’ve made the utterly nerve-wracking choice to leave Volition, despite the incredibly good time I’ve had there, and be that audio guy.

So.. at Magfest 2010, I intend to celebrate with whichever of you foolios can make the trip out there.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Starting December 18, I’m back in the freelance business too. Street team, start your engines — it’s open season. I”m especially angling for iPhone and Flash games I can take on in my spare time, but I’m going to shoot for everything from handhelds to feature films — I want to make music and/or sounds for anything I can, and keep meeting brilliant people who love what they do.

The RFG reviews are in!

A familiar saying among audio people is that “the best soundtrack is the one you don’t notice”. Reviewers and critics are in the business of noticing things, but even the largest review sites often decline to mention audio at all, while writing at length about texture maps and character models. I guess that means we’re doing our jobs like a flock of ninja!

Other reviewers, however, think audio is as worthy of critique as any other aspect of a game’s presentation and style — whether or not it stands out on its own, or involves unusual hype or big names. My rainbow hat goes off to them! Here is a sampling of what they have said about Red Faction Guerrilla:

“…the various explosions, gunfire, building collapses, and other sound effects are uniformly impressive. The solid “thunk” you’ll hear every time you use your sledgehammer is especially satisfying.” –Gamespot.com

“…The audio quality is likewise just as wonderful in that the sound effects are full and rich. The weapon sounds are accurate and that naturally makes for better game play. The music really adds a great dimension to the game.” –GameSHOUT.com

“…the weapons look the part and sound authentic, and the quaking of toppling towers and the thunder of explosions have real weight to them. Throw in some excellent music that genuinely adds tension and substance without overpowering the action..” AceGamez.co.uk

“Some serviceable music tracks and sound effects.” –IGN. Oh, IGN. :))) But hey, that’s 7 more words than sound got from Kotaku or 1up, and Destructoid used the word “sounds” twice as a synonym of “seems” without ever talking about audio. Come on, guys, seriously?

“Forget vengeance. Forget liberty. The cheesy action movie story is background noise to the sound of 12 bombs crippling a skyscraper, tires tearing across a craggy Mars, and a sledgehammer smashing the skull of EDF infantry. Good times.” –Gameshark

“Almost as good as the graphics is the professional voice acting and brilliant soundtrack that just adds to the atmosphere of the title. The sound effects truly RUMBLE through a surround sound system and sometimes you need to play this game loud.” –ImpulseGamer.com

“Lets start out with the cons…or con of this game. I couldn’t wrap my mind around any problems beside the music, which is annoying. After you simply turn off the music, the game doesn’t really have any problems at all.” –Gamer-pulse.com

“The sound effects are decent but not extremely remarkable and the music is absolutely top notch. Yes, out of all the noise, booms and bangs the game offers, the most aurally pleasant aspect is the symphonic yet futuristic music that surrounds and adjusts to whatever may be happening at that given moment. They are definitely the kind of tunes you will find yourself humming after shutting off the game for the night.” — Game-Over.com

“com agrado que se ouve por vezes uma música de fundo orquestral que tanto prazer voz irá dar. Não opta por OST com músicas a passar na rádio mas sim por uma abordagem mais clássica.” –Eurogamer.pt

“I wouldn’t mind a stand-alone soundtrack of this game, the music is excellent and the composer has done a top job of capturing each musical theme for the various sectors. The music is dynamic so it shifts to match what’s going on and can serve as an audio cue for impending doom.” –GamesXtreme.com

“Sound: 10.0. Stunningly great music, crystal clear sound effects (though they need a little tweaking to not have the music drown out some radio chatter) and wonderful voice acting. This is treat for your sound system.” –TotalPlaystation.com

If you’ve gotten this far and are wishing you could post reviews like this about something you worked on.. Well, come work across the hall from me! I have a never-ending bowl of jellybeans, pixel art posters with carefully hidden naked girls, and something like 825 terabytes of sound libraries.

Magnetis

My friend Romain “Nino” Gauthier was the Audio Supervisor while I worked at Gameloft. He is one of the most passionate game makers I know, and has the sort of talent which attracts other talented people to work with him. Makes sense, then, that he started his own game development studio and is making a game involving magnetism!

Paris-based Yullaby has been climbing the ranks since 2006, and they are very close to releasing an awesome-looking puzzle game on WiiWare called Magnetis. It has a really cool mechanic and an incredible soundtrack by Nino himself. Check it out:

http://wiiware.nintendolife.com/news/2009/06/magnetis_wiiware_trailer

Support startup developers! Keep an eye out, or check back here often; I’ll announce as soon as it’s through Nintendo approval and released to the public.

Michael…

Words are failing me. I’m ignoring all news and entertainment media, and am very likely to tune out preemptively when MJ is brought up in internet chats or forums. I apologize in advance, but it’s still too much to process.

Know that I’ve shifted some priorities today, with the intent to send him off musically through my own expression of lifelong gratitude and love.

Happy Father’s Day!

One of the things driving me forward in my career is the encouragement of my parents. Although my choices rarely depend on their approval, I’ve nonetheless felt it has been there through most of my adulthood. Today, I want to tell you about my Dad. For anyone who didn’t get to meet him at my wedding, he’s equal parts comedian, muse, mad scientist, and older/wiser clone of me. He stowed a Harry Potter wand in his glove compartment, in case people cut him off in traffic and he had to Crucio a fool.

A fine fingerstyle guitarist, banjo picker, bass player, and singer, he taught me never to stop learning, to always be curious, and that sometimes people will think you’re nuts, no matter how hard you try to explain yourself, and that’s okay. It was following in his example that I became a self-taught musician. After a childhood during which he and Mom could easily have justified shipping me one-way to Mogadishu, I have grown up to feel mighty proud of all the good he’s done — not just for me, but for hundreds (thousands?) of students.

The local newspaper had this to say about him, last year:

Sixth-graders at Hammocks Middle School can’t wait to get to their science class. Walking up the stairs with anticipation, they already can hear their teacher, Harvey Kaufman, warming up.

Kaufman has been teaching science for 14 years at Hammocks Middle, 9889 Hammocks Blvd. When school began this year and he was faced with a less-than-desirable textbook, Kaufman searched for a way to increase interest in learning. While outlining his next lecture, the words on the paper formed into a song, and he grabbed an upright bass. Immediately, he had his first song, Heart of the Matter. Since then, Kaufman has been combining his passion for teaching science with his love for playing the guitar and creating a series of songs that teach his students basic scientific concepts.

I think it’s pretty easy to see how this kind of mindset has affected me, and made it clear that I can do anything I set out to, as long as I do it passionately. Now, conveniently, it’s my turn to make my Dad proud:

Red Faction Guerrilla, my first big next-gen console game, is now in stores, with ads all over TV. It is an action game set on Mars with a destruction simulation that antiquates anything seen before. The game is based around the fact that you can destroy any structure — no hiding place is safe, no building too fortified — and when you do, it breaks apart realistically, not in a pre-determined manner, but with real physics. Glass raining down, rebar everywhere, clouds of dust. It is literally a summer blockbuster.

For an audio team, this is a huge challenge. On top of the normal list of sounds any game needs, we had to design and perfect a system that hooked into the physics simulation, and create a massive array of breaking, crunching, rolling, tearing, shearing, and shattering noises for each type of material. Buildings groan audibly under stress, bridges create a hellish racket as they catastrophically fail, and each chunk of concrete makes its own distinct smack as it rains down on the rusty Martian landscape.

If you can’t already tell, I’m extremely passionate about this game, and highly satisfied with the results. I did the following things:

- Collaborated with Raison Varner, Dan Wentz, and Josh Davidson (all current or former in-house Volition sound men) to compose all of the in-game music. Tim Wynn scored the titles and cinematic cut-scenes with a live orchestra, and I tied his various themes back into the in-game music, so the whole presentation was cohesive and flowing. Music4Games wrote an article featuring the score.

- Revised, mixed, processed, and implemented all of the above music. We used a Raison-designed interactive music system which reacts to how badly you’ve pissed off the bad guys at any given time. It transitions between spacey underscore and two intensities of heroic combat. Each of these, in turn, consists of dozens of segments several bars long, which traverse a flowchart semi-randomly. It was important to write each segment with this in mind, since you never know which of 6 other segments may come next. There are several distinct “collections” of segments, each with about an hour of material, which are introduced as the story unfolds. I also wrote 6 shorter but more intense “collections” to get your blood pumping when you’re engaged in a mission, and for a certain activity where you race a timer to inflict property damage.

- Did a ton of sound design under my freakishly energetic coordinator Kate Nelson, who organized everything from music to voice acting under ridiculous pressure. I made sounds for weapon firing and handling, “clutter object” collisions / explosions / ambient noises, multiplayer “backpack” power-ups, the main destruction system which is the centerpiece of the game (polishing and revising Raison’s first pass), the little fanfare that plays on the news kiosks (the notes spell out the name of the game’s villains, or “EDF”), and various odds and ends.

- Stress-tested functionality of music and sound with the help of programmers Steve DeFrisco and Aaron Gresch, and ultra-skilled QA Testers Kelly McMorris, Mike Bianca, and Kristi Kaufman, who ensured that few audio bugs were shipped in the final game, and that I kept my sanity.

So, Dad, it’s my hope that by relishing every minute of life, using the talents I inherited to their fullest, and loving my family throughout challenges and celebrations alike, I can make you feel justified not only for the twinkle in your eye in 1980, but for resisting the near-daily temptation to drive us to the Everglades and throw me to the alligators. Happy Father’s Day!

Kind of Bloop

Show of hands: Who would like to hear me, beek, Shnabubula, Disasterpeace, and Sergeeo cover Miles Davis with video game hardware?

Because that’s exactly what’s about to happen. Talk about big shoes to fill.

Rampage Original Soundtrack

I have just uploaded my original soundtrack to Rampage [Korkusuz], also known as Turkish Rambo.

It is yours now, free.

Please, please, please show your support for the producer, Ed Glaser, and buy the film for yourself and your loved ones. It’s not something you have to be an internet meme nerd to “get”, it’s simply an awesome dubbed foreign action film. There are many reasons to get the DVD: amazing box art, a collectible poster, commentary tracks, and interviews with me and the actors. It will put all of these cues in context, but I felt it was important to get the music out there — I put a lot of work into it and wanted to share it with all of you. Enjoy!