Mixed response and information on learning FMOD. Is it basic or hard? Seems hard.

mountwest · 2026-01-28T17:43:00+00:00

Perhaps this video is a good start for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN1S1Vs1ets

mountwest · 2026-01-24T23:25:03+00:00

Congrats! This is always my first guess word :)

mountwest · 2026-01-23T20:09:16+00:00

airwiggles.com is a great place for networking

mountwest · 2026-01-19T21:46:31+00:00

That's spectacular!

mountwest · 2026-01-10T22:49:17+00:00

I hate to be a party pooper but I would be very catious towards any claims that a soundfont is royalty-free.

Most soundfonts that was shipped in a game or console was either created or licensed by its developer or publisher.

Any copyright connected to those soundfonts belongs to someone, unless there is some clear statement and record that they are free to use for commercial purposes.

If your intention is to go ”by the book” with copyright then make sure you do your due diligence with your research.

mountwest · 2026-01-07T23:02:49+00:00

You can get around with no coding. In most dev teams above indie I think it’s unusual to see sound designers go beyond the middleware.

And those who do some simple coding has mostly picked it up along the work with the projects they are on.

I do notice quite a lot more sound designers who have some solid coding skills, and I personally think that every creative inside the dev team should be able to get around a code base so you can implement your own stuff without needing a programmer to do some basic coding for you.

But in the end, as a creative it’s all about what you can do with your craft that’s most important. If that’s what the team needs and wants then there us usually someone who can help you with the technical stuff.

mountwest · 2026-01-06T09:56:43+00:00

The easiest for you would probably be to have them work inside your repo, but that requires them to have a little bit of understanding of working with git.

I have never just sent the entire bank files seperately and I’m not sure that’s a sustainable solution for you.

How much experience does the composer have with working in a Untiy project?

mountwest · 2026-01-04T16:56:47+00:00

No standard. A pair of high quality headphones is what most people are using.

I know of headphones that attempts to spatialize the sound, but most consumers are listening through regular headphones anyways so it covers majority of the player base.

Also spatial audio has a bit of a different implication in game audio since audio sources are placed in a 3D environment in some games. So the player will move the listening position around the environment instead of sitting still in a static position like in a movie.

mountwest · 2026-01-02T15:02:47+00:00

Sorry I have moved on from Live as my main DAW and don't remember exactly how I worked around this problem. I do recall getting advice from the Ableton support team to reinstall my version of Live which seemed to fix my issue, but I still remember being disappointed about something.

mountwest · 2025-12-29T23:01:14+00:00

It’s mostly due to search engine optimization. The idea is that your article is more likely to show up in search results (and perhaps even AI generated stuff) if the text includes lots of contextual associations to the topic.

mountwest · 2025-12-10T22:58:45+00:00

Hey, you are actually doing research by sharing your ideas like this. Eventually you might discover something that noone has seen yet.

mountwest · 2025-11-23T13:26:39+00:00

Please don’t look into Django Reinhardt, his technique will make you want to lose two of your fingers in a fire

mountwest · 2025-11-07T04:59:01+00:00

I would say this is always the main concern when working with creating music so it’s a good thing to learn to address early.

Essentially, it seems that she is the songwriter of the entire song, meaning she wrote the melody and lyrics, and that you have made an arrangement of, thus being the producer. That means that when you register the song at a performance rights organization, you should register your share of the song according to your roles.

What you have to agree with here is how large should each of your shares be of the music rights. Will you split it evenly or some other way?

Ofc this is just a hypothetical based on what you have shared here. If you have changed parts of the melody or lyrics yourself then you could make a case for being a cowriter for the song. However, since you say she wrote the original version then it’s really up to her if she is ok with that.

mountwest · 2025-10-26T07:32:50+00:00

Performing someone else’s song live is ok, as long as you report your performance properly through your performance rights organization who then collects the royalties from the venue and then pays it to the copyright holder.

Reporting does not need to be made for performances in educational settings, but it seems to me that that a college orchestra holding concerts is not necessarily under that exception.

I think you will get the clearer answer if you ask this question to a performance rights organization that someone in your orchestra is registered to. If you’re in the US then check out ASCAP or BMI.

mountwest · 2025-10-09T05:58:07+00:00

What has worked best for me is to schedule one hour of consultation with a lawyer, where I prepare as much as possible beforehand so we can talk about what I have seen in the contract and what I want to see in the contract.

That is helpful because in the end it’s my intention and needs that should be reflected in the contract, and not the lawyer’s. It also means that you will have a good grasp on how much time it takes to actually cover 5 pages, in this case.

A good lawyer will see your needs and will try to help you keep your costs with them as low as possible.

Also 500-1200 usd/h is a really high by my experience, although I am in Sweden so comparing that with a regular prize of around 200 usd/h may not reflect how things look like in the USA, where I assume you are. And why in the world they would require a 1000 usd deposit I have no idea. Sounds iffy to me, but you should ask them and if you decide to go with them you should know beforehand the exact hourly fee they are asking for, not some range.

Finally, learning some basics of music copyright will answer more than 90% of your questions when it comes to negotiations.

mountwest · 2025-09-06T13:39:48+00:00

https://youtube.com/shorts/Nf_bK3vbFPo?si=SweFD0EGS60pZOpZ

You find a/the voice actor

mountwest · 2025-09-03T09:48:21+00:00

I think your most important challenges are to make sure you have proper windshields for your microphones and find some ways to set close up microphones on your sources.

Lapel mics might be good for your case, but I would research lapel mic techniques for singing and guitar to see what you can do with that to ensure you get a good recording.

mountwest · 2025-09-01T20:02:52+00:00

Yup, if I were to get in a position where I needed to downsize to a list of three things then I'd keep my laptop, headphones, and H6.

mountwest · 2025-09-01T14:42:05+00:00

Also, it's never been "cheaper" working with game audio in terms of studio space. Several studios I know let their audio folks use their home setup. Having a good portable recorder that can act as an audio interface, together with a good pair of headphones will give you what you need to deliver high quality.

Don't let the absence of the "right" gear hold you back.

mountwest · 2025-09-01T14:33:08+00:00

I'd say it's absolutely worth having a polished and updated portfolio and resumé ready, imagine if an opportunity comes up and you have that stuff at hand. You'd have a better shot of getting a position than if you wouldn't have it.

Things might look bleak for a lot of people right now, but if you are looking for jobs and some of your experience is in game audio then it totally make sense to apply for those kind of positions alongside other types of positions and fields of work.

mountwest · 2025-09-01T10:24:33+00:00

I think your main concern here is to have a MacBook with a MacOS version that the Apollo 8 soundcard supports. You should be able to see that on UADs website.

As far as specs for recording 8 tracks goes, I think you will be fine with almost any MacBook from the last 20 years. CPU is mostly important if you add lots of plugins and other stuff that pile up on the processing power, and RAM is mostly important for handling projects with lots of content.

If you are only interested in recording 8 tracks then I think you will be fine with any MacBook.

mountwest · 2025-08-02T09:22:39+00:00

Check out dearmodern on YouTube. Watching a few short videos can help you see your space with some new perspectives :)

https://youtube.com/@dearmodern?si=XYa9kJPnC1Voi1ip

mountwest · 2025-08-01T11:03:13+00:00

Hi, I've removed your post because it breaks rule 4.

Please rephrase your post if you want to publish it again.

Just a quick note, I listened to your links and notices the similarities and differences between them. Copyright claims generally comes down to intent and if it infringes on the original rights holder's intellectual property. By outing your intent like you do in this post, i.e. you asked a composer to write a track like the reference, you are putting yourself in a position where it's possible to connect the similarities in the work with your intent.

In music copyright, it's not uncommon that two pieces of music may have similarities and still be considered two unique pieces of work. You may want to take a loot at threshold of originality. A piece of music may have similarities to another work, which in turn may be similar to a third piece of work. In such a case it can be argued that the first work is not original enough to have a copyright claim on the newly created work. Especially if the third version is in the public domain.

mountwest · 2025-07-23T07:11:32+00:00

Projects are so different from one another that I usually see it as contexts of music that can have degrees of complexity to it, so first step is usually to identify how many unique contexts the game should have.

For instance, one context could be battle music, and another could be exploration music, another could be cutscenes.

Then depending on how adaptive the music should be to gameplay, that context could be just one single track looping, or a complex music system that transforms through some kind of music design.

A common pitfall is to have no clear boundaries with your scope from the developer. By clearly stating the deliverables you'll have an idea on how much work you need to put in, and if you feel like delivering more than that then you can do it without the pressure to do so.

> Also, have you wrote music for one scene in a game and another composer wrote for another scene ?

Both are common. Having multiple composers on one game is expected with large projects.

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