Blog for John Seguin at GarageGames.com

When Orcs Attack! Audio Post-Mortem

John Seguin — 2007-09-30T20:45:01+00:00

All of you probably saw Jon Frisby's (Mr. Joy, Inc.) post-mortem regarding his new game When Orcs Attack!

If not, you can read about it here:
garagegames.com/blogs/48969/13597

Before reading, I would highly suggest you download and play the demo as well -- as you will get much more out of this if you understand what I'm referring to! Download it here:

mrjoy.com/games/6

As the audio designer for the game, there were several interesting things that happened during the development for this game that I thought others might find interesting and perhaps applicable to their current situations. For Torque users, however, your mileage may vary as WoA was developed on the Unity3D platform, so some of these "solutions" that we came up with may or may not exist for you and some additional ones may be available as well! In case you are wondering, I also did the two tracks of music in the game, but most of my post-mortem will be focusing on the sound design elements of the game.

What went right

1) (Pretty) Clear scope In all sound design projects for games that I work on, this can be a big issue. Knowing exactly WHEN to incorporate the sound designer at a stage where the scope is pretty well nailed down is key. Most sound designers are working on "per sound effect" price point as opposed to a "retainer format" (unless you are very rich and can offer health and dental plans...), so for the sound designer to produce extra sounds that you won't actually use can become quite costly. This project, however, was well scoped and I was shown the project pretty late in development, so most of the major features were there and could be seen -- so any additional sounds were figured out pretty quickly.

2) Good Source Sound design falls into two black and white areas; purchased source or self-made source. There is a lot of "grey" in there as well which makes up the huge amount of blend that you often do between self-made and purchased... but in general, when I see an animation and description of something I typically quickly sort my source needs into one of these two categories. A lot of beginning indie programmers I've met, however, have this completely bogus notion that you can just go buy all the sound fx you need and don't really need to do anything original, so you really DON'T need a sound designer. I can tell you honestly that if that's what you do, your sound will be extremely rough and amateur sounding. Every sound that you buy almost certainly needs to be cropped, level-balanced, EQ'd, possibly "placed" (reverb balanced) and converted to the appropriate file format, bit-rate and channel setting (mono/stereo/surround). Multiple that process time about 30-60 sounds for the average casual game, and it becomes a reasonable feat of effort that you are best letting someone experienced in these matters handle.

<gets off soapbox>

At any rate, you need to find good source. Sometimes, it simply is not available or is extremely difficult to produce. Fortunately, for this game, there was plenty of arrows whizzing, fireballs and other needed fx for me to chop up, recombine, enhance, double and otherwise mold into what was needed for this project.

3) Successful execution of "levels" In game audio design, a common request is to make a sound, for example, a turret shooting and arrow, and then make four more of them, variations so to speak, on the original. This is tricky as you need make sure its not TOO different that it doesn't sound like an arrow-shooting turret, but not too much the same as to defeat the purpose. Additionally, as it was with this game, another common request is to make the same kinda sound, but variations (5) that purposefully sound BIGGER. Like, "level 2 tower", "level 3 tower" etc. The animation/graphics show the tower getting bigger and tougher, so the sound needs to reflect that. The effect can be achieved through various techniques using additional source and layering (try to preserve at least one common "element" in all the sounds"), EQ (things with more low-end sound "bigger"), reverb (more reverb sounds bigger), short delay (enhances bigness to have a short delay) and other FX. Overall, I think this effect works well in this game.

3) Good trust I was fortunate that this was my second collaboration with Jon, so we had already developed a trust relationship that helped in working on this title. He trusted that I knew what I was doing and I trusted him likewise and this allowed us to go out on a limb in some places rather blindly and trust that certain things would work. This often becomes an issue when a sound designer basically is requesting custom audio "programming". (Note to all soon-to-be-professional-programmers. I was at AGDC last month and many, many folks are looking for real, dedicated audio programmers. So if you are one, or want to be one -- you seem to be in demand!)

Sometimes, your audio designer may request something that doesn't even make sense to you why it would be useful. Try to trust them if possible -- they usually know what they are talking about. :) Granted, they should also listen to you as you know what the game engine limitations are, etc.

What went wrong

1) Polyphony! Polyphony! Polyphony! This was easily the most frustrating part of this project. This game features a lot of projectiles and all of these projectiles have sounds attached to them. At a certain point (of which we could only estimate, but not pin down) Unity would cap the polyphony and sounds simply would drop out -- offering an extremely awkward playing experience. Several strategies had to then be utilized to try to minimize this having to do with firing behaviors of towers, when certain orc damage (i.e. "ugh!") sounds would be heard and so on. Additionally, several sounds needed to be retooled to be shorter so as to free up as many resources as fast as we could to make the game run smoothly. Finally, some sounds did need to go unused to simply keep the numbers down.

2) Lack of studio-side development license Because I don't own Unity3D, every time I made a change, I needed to wait for Jon to build a version with my new sounds in it so that I could hear the end product. This was tedious at best for Jon and for me. Additionally, apparently version control is difficult with Unity, making it difficult to keep a synced source even if I had a copy of Unity.

3) Variations In all sound design projects, you want to avoid what is known in the trade as the "machine gun effect". This refers to two audio samples being rapidly repeated and sounding too much alike so as to distort whatever their actual source content is, and if played fast enough, everything sounds eventually like a "machine gun". Clearly, not what you want in a game where there is supposed to be towers of arrows firing!

To avoid this, you *could* produce lots of alternate sources, which is a good idea, in general. However, for us, we wanted to keep the file size as small as possible, so that wasn't much of an option. The other thing you can do is use some random pitch shifting. Not a lot, but even a little will make thing sound different, yet the same, and will avoid the machine gun effect.

Try this: clap your hands several times. Listen closely and you'll notice that the apparent pitch changes slightly. This is essentially the same thing that is accomplished. If you just recorded one hand clap and played it back instead of multiple ones, you would understand the machine gun problem. This often, in games comes up with things like footsteps and other repetitive actions that often go overlooked.

Fortunately, Unity, like most other modern game engines, have this variation function built into them, so with a little tweaking of parameters, we found a setting that worked and used them on many of the repetitive sounds to make it seem like there are more sound than there are.

----

All in all, it was a great project and I hope you check it out.

Cheers!

-John
Composer/Sound Designer
www.seguinsound.com

AGDC and Organizing your Sound Files

John Seguin — 2007-08-29T16:48:44+00:00

Hello everyone!

I was *shocked* to find out how long it had been since I'd posted here! Needless to say, I have been very busy but thought I would pop in and share a quick tip with everyone involving organizing your sound files. Before I delve into the meat of things though, I thought I'd just give a quick shout-out to anyone attending the Austin Game Developer's Conference coming up in September. I will be attending - so if any of you want to discuss possible music and or audio work for an upcoming project, shoot me an email (john at seguinsound.com) and I'd be happy to meet up with you!

Organizing your project
Putting together a sound library for a large game project is complicated, time consuming and (sometimes) very frustrating. To try to combat this, I have developed my own little system that seems to work for me and keep things relatively organized, so I thought I'd share it with all of you in hopes that you don't have to endure the frustration that I sometimes go through. Perhaps, however, you are working on your first game so you're not really sure what needs to be organized? Or perhaps you are simply thinking -- "what's wrong with CVS?"

The obstacles
There are a few inherent problems that come along with setting up a workspace for all of your sound files:

1) Consistent Naming is important - Obviously, if the game makes a call for dudeJumps.ogg and you have a file instead called dudeJumps2.ogg, its not going to work. Naming iterations for newer versions of files is not practical as it is far too tedious to continue to rename the file write after you copy it into the appropriate directory. I tried this when I first started out. Trust me. You don't want to!

2) Most files will be in a compressed format - Most game engines (including torque of course) work with a compressed audio format, like ogg or mp3 or even wav using certain compression schemes. In addition, the final footprint of the game may be up in the air till the last minute and re-compression may be necessary for all files. So, even though you may be putting compressed files in the game, you STILL need to a logical place to hold onto your UNCOMPRESSED AIFF or WAV files.

3) Previous version access - And of course, you need to have backups of all the versions you have sent to the developer (if its not yourself) so that at any time when they say "you know what? Last weeks one was better..." you have access to that and can immediately respond.

The solution
The solution to all of these problems involved two pieces: a handy-dandy batch converter and a logical file structure.

For the first-part, I use a converter for the Mac called "Sound Grinder". Not only is it a wonderful time saver, its also fairly cheap and easy to use. For each of my projects I work on, I create a preset in Sound Grinder and a destination directory. In this way, any new files are dropped in, processed and then put in a directory of my choosing. Options as specific as "make all sounds mono, 128 kbps ogg" can be selected and processed in seconds. It's also reasonably priced at around $40. I'm sure there are other tools out there that do similar tricks, but this one has worked VERY well for me.

The second step, as I mentioned, is in the logical file structure.

Every project is given a folder (one that is backed up nightly!):

/coolProject/

Within that project, I usually separate it into sub-folders depending on what "kind" of sound it is, for example, for a recent project I had:

/coolProject/
.../voiceOver/
.../ambience/
.../music/
.../sfx-weapons/
.../sfx-gui/
.../sfx-other/
.../source/
.../finalAllSounds/

Source Directory
... and so on. When your projects start using well over 60-70 sfx/music tracks this organization comes in handy later on! The last one, "source" references source files that I've either recorded myself or have bought from some place like sounddogs.com. Since when I buy these source files they are essentially "mine", royalty-free as long as I use them in a project. Well, certain "source" purchased sounds have been used in multiple projects with various edits, recombinations or alterations made to the original source. So, keeping these in an easy-to-remember spot has proven handy.

Final Sounds Directory
Additionally, note the "finalAllSounds" directory. This is my "secret weapon". All sounds, in their current "approved version" get copied here as uncompressed files. This is great, because then when I'm working on a project, and the dev says, "can we try 64kbps instead of 128kbps? I want to see if the quality is okay at that smaller size". I can then say "no problem!", and I just fire up my batch converter and send them over. Additionally, after the project is over, I can send the dev uncompressed masters for everything just in case down the road they make a GBA version of the title or something where things need to be re-encoded again.

Below that, I'll name individual folders with the actual name of the sfx, as used in-game. Sometime, I won't know what this name will be because the developer hasn't gotten there yet. Often, I'll simply suggest logical, short names that the dev might find handy and will give them these names to use. Inside these folders, I'll have the source I've used (meaning its located in this sound folder as WELL as the /source folder discussed above) and any program files, such as a Reason file or a Logic Pro file. Within here then I'll have a "bounces file" which will be a "final version" of that sound, named appropriately, within a folder giving the DATE of the bounce. For example:

/coolProject/
.../sfx-gui/
.../.../buttonRollOver/
.../.../.../buttonRollOver (logic file)
.../.../.../click.aif (source)
.../.../.../bounces/
.../.../.../.../7.8.07/
.../.../.../.../.../buttonRollOver.aif (bounced file)

So, you see in the above example, that there are quite a few directories that are involved with the production of a single file. Additionally, remember that this buttonRollOver.aif will be copied to the "finalAllSounds" directory as marked above. One final note about that "finals" directory.

Because Torque is fairly finicky (as are other engines) about what sounds are stereo and what is mono, I'll often create that breakdown as well to make it easier to batch convert. Hence:

/coolProject/
.../finalAllSounds/
.../.../mono/
.../.../stereo/

Wrap-up and the digital studio log text file
I've found that this system works well for me -- especially since I often bounce between multiple projects at once. Just looking at the file structure then gives me an idea of what needs to be done, etc. I'll often also keep a digital log within the master file if it looks like a project is getting "shelved" for a while, to help jog my memory when I pick things back up again.

Best of luck!

------------
John Seguin
Music and Sound Design
www.seguinsound.com
john at seguinsound.com

Scoring the series "Hey, Shipwreck"...

John Seguin — 2006-12-21T03:32:00+00:00

Scoring the series "Hey, Shipwreck"...

As some of you may have picked up from Pat Habre's (incredibly flattering) blog a few days ago, I have begun working with him on scoring the machinima web series "Hey, Shipwreck". To return the flattering blog, I'll go on record to say that the reason that I was attracted to the project was Pat's great art and humorous writing! Great work, Pat! If you haven't yet checked it out -- it's available at www.tubedaze.com. Currently, we're making the videos available as DivX and WMV, but we're looking into other possibilities such as Quicktime and possibly even a video podcast! (which, of course, is Quicktime as well...)

To get to the meat of this blog, however, I wanted to comment a little bit at what I've found to be an interesting and much different medium than scoring for video games.

Approach

In video games, music is typically looped and on the shorter side because that is both cheaper for the person hiring you as well as more space efficient for the game's footprint, especially if its a downloadable product. However, when dealing with film, you can never write more music than there is film, but you'll most likely write far less. Also, the material is always used in sync with the picture in the same way every single time. So, you can more precisely craft exact emotions or "hits" to exact moments in the film. This adds both additional impact to your music as well as to the overall film experience.

Additionally, I had the opportunity to write the theme for the series. In this instance, Pat actually did this in reverse, the way that music videos are shot. In other words, the music comes first and the picture is cut to the music, not the other way around. Check out episode 2 or 3 and you'll see what I mean -- the video works very well with what's happening in the music! It would be very difficult (if not impossible) for me to construct meaningful music in such a hard rock/metal style while trying to exactly match scence that have already been shot (unless, of course, he edited with a metronome clicking away... but that's pretty unlikely).

(above: Okay, so I don't actually write in the dark typically, but studio "action shots" typically come off much cooler! This is a scene from episode 3 of "Hey, Shipwreck")

Style

The style that I'm trying to develop is one that basically employs some fairly active action percussion and combines that with a very laid back electric piano sort of thing (depending on the action) with a fair amount of traditional orchestral instruments in there as well.

In the vein of everything from Wagner's "Ring Series" (opera) to William's "Star Wars" films, I'm employing the technique of leitmotif. This is basically the idea of taking a particular theme in music and tying it to a an idea, visual, or character. I've started this, if you watch episodes 2 and 3 when you see "the cheif" in the gold suit as well as FRED (in ep 3 only). More information about leitmotif:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitmotif

Finally, I'm working hard to make sure the music is a character in itself and so the timing is very crucial. Having the music drown a joke or critical line would really ruin the episode for everyone. It's important that the comedic beats are in place so that jokes can be used effectively. Along the same lines, music can add to the ridiculousness of a situation by being completely out of place. For example, I personally find it very amusing in episode 3 when the characters are talking to FRED about getting authorization to use "deadly force". Their shipmate is in danger of being skewered, but they need to deal with this cheerful computer thing to get authorization. When the action is focussed on FRED, I chose instead of "action" more of a light calypso theme since FRED's voice sounded calm and happy to me and the sailors are obviously annoyed by FRED's mere presence, which makes it even more amusing.

At any rate, we are on schedule to ship a new ~5 minute episode every other Friday, so look for episode 4 to appear on January 5. Enjoy!

John Seguin - SeguinSound
Composer / Sound Designer
www.seguinsound.com
www.soundclick.com/seguinsound

Music Postmortem for Venture Arctic

John Seguin — 2006-11-15T08:46:17+00:00

Music Postmortem for Venture Arctic

Greetings GG community! It's been a while since I've posted anything here and for that I do apologize. I have been busy with lots of other game, film and theatre projects, including work on the sequel to Pocketwatch Game's Venture Africa, Venture Arctic!

Initial Design

For this title, Andy Schatz, of Pocketwatch Games, and I discussed some ideas for the music together early on. Andy knew he wanted the game to be "based in the seasons" and he had this idea of making 4 pieces of music, each that would play while a player was within a particular season. You are not actually positioned in that season for too long, typically, so the pieces had to be relatively short, but also interesting enough to grab the player's attention and serve as an instant reminder as to what season they are currently in.

In-game screen shot of Venture Arctic

Additionally, they had to be cohesive so that there were common elements between them all so as to let them flow from one piece to the next. To make things even more complicated, we both wanted to be as organic as humanly possible and involve as much "local sounds" into the sound as possible.

Choosing the instruments and finding the feel

Upon doing some research, I discovered that the native music of the people of the Arctic is very minimal. They don't do so much singing (becuse its very cold outside!) with the exception of throat singing which doesn't require you to open your mouth a whole lot but instead have lots of drums and dancing (possibly to keep warm!). Also, the extreme conditions make many instruments unpractical.

However, western whalers and other traders at the beginning of the 20th century brought other instruments into this environment and they have recently been integrated into the local "sound" of the area. It was these additional instruments that I used to give the soundtrack to "Venture Arctic" its unique sound. There are various frame drums, wooden flutes and plucked string instruments making up the core of the sound. There are of course, other instruments involved of a certainly western nature (brass, bass, etc.) though these simply compliment and do not dominate the sound.

Also, the melodies were designed to be somewhat angular and at first somewhat more sophisticated than your average tune. These were patterned after native melodies that I had listened to and studies to echo their "feel" though they represent no tune in particular. The angular nature of the melodies also helps them stay fresh after many repeat listens as the ear constantly hears and latches onto different pieces with each subsequent listen.

Old-school inspiration

In planning for the entire four-part, cyclical piece I looked to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. For the uninitiated, Vivaldi is a famed composer of the Baroque era who wrote 230 violin concertos (piece for solo violin with accompanying instruments.) This is a huge amount and he is not known particularly for making all of those particularly unique and as inspired as "The Four Seasons", the work he is probably most remembered for.

In fact, there is an old joke about Vivaldi I heard while in music school:

Quote:

Musician 1: All of Vivaldi's violin concertos sound the same to me! It's like he just wrote the same thing 230 times!

Musician 2: Oh, come on now -- that's not true! He actually wrote *2* unique concertos, and copied those 115 times each!

Musician 1 and 2: <music geek laughter...>

If you are interested in learning more about this work, I highly recommend Gil Shaman's recording of it with the Orpheus enesmble. It's PHENOMENAL.

Shameless plug and ear candy!

So, let's hear some music! I've included a short sample reel below which features the snippets of the four seasons, in order, beginning with spring. I hope you enjoy and look for the game Q1 of 2007! Also, when the sound design is finished, I will also write up a postmortem on that as well.

Link to Venture Arctic Music Sample Reel

Cheers!

-John Seguin
Composer/Sound Designer
jseguin@seguinsound.com
www.seguinsound.com

Sound Design: A Primer

John Seguin — 2006-06-12T18:18:53+00:00

Hi everyone and welcome to my quick talk about sound effects in games. Hopefully this article can help you get started working on adding some noise to your game so that its not just some pretty graphics demo!

Spotting
To start, play your game. A lot. Stop thinking about the bugs you need to fix... what's left to do... and definitely stop patting yourself on the back for your brilliant algorithm that took six days to create that works perfectly. You need to start thinking about "Joe Gamer" who doesn't really care about your sleepless nights and who just expects a good time and great production values.

This can be very hard to do. If you need to, invite some friends over and have them play it. It's always fun and a good experience to WATCH other people play your game and see how they react to it. Many folks do betas where they get written feedback -- but nothing beats actually WATCHING someone play your game.

Now that you are somewhat removed from the direct action, imagine the sound you WANT to hear while playing. This, of course, varies wildly depending on what type of game it is, the market you are aiming for, your budget, etc... but try to imaging, budget aside, what you WANT to hear.

Start making a list.

The list

When you make this list, makeup some name and then be sure to have a descriptive sentence or two. Two days from now when you write something like:

boom

You are going to have a hard time remembering what you were thinking. Something better like:

boom - this is the core sound for my bomber man clone.  
     The boom should be short, loud and deep without a bunch of shrapnel sounds.  
     Perhaps explore variations.

Variations

Have you ever noticed when playing your favorite FPS that not every bullet hitting something sounds exactly the same? This is, of course, on purpose, but must be thought about in your sound design list. Take this into account. Give descriptions as to how the variations should be different. Remember -- the more you get on paper the easier it will be down the road.

Two Roads Diverged in the Road...

Great! You've made it this far. At this point, you basically need to decide whether you are going to do this yourself or hire a sound designer to work on this. Don't worry -- if you start working on this and you figure out that there is just no way you can do it, you can of course still hire one. (I myself have completed several projects that the programmer/designer started and needed help with...)

How do you hire a sound designer? They may have a demo reel. This is great if you are asking them to make sounds for a radio drama, but more importantly you want to see how their sound is used in gameplay. Ask to see if they have a game that's out now that maybe you can download the demo to, etc.

Working with a Sound Designer

The list you have created is really going to help as its the places where you really think sound would work. To get REAL value from a sound designer though, send them the list but then ask THEM where they think sound work well. These people tend to think very much in sound and will likely come up with some differences that you can discuss with them. Hopefully, this will only better your project.

Sound designers typically charge by the sound effect. This price, as in most art, varies widely based on experience, quality, reputation, etc. The "type" of game you are working on can also affect the cost. If you are doing something that is largely going to use existing sounds (you need a bunch of car noises for your racing game, for example) they are most likely not going to go outside and rev up 18 different types of cars that they rent for the day and field record them all. Unless, of course, you are EA or whatever and paying them $100,000 to do this! They will probably get their source sounds from a sample library.

The majority of sound designers should give you a quote for the "package" -- the cost of all of your sounds put together. They have worked out time estimates for the work on their end, etc. and should be able to give you a fair cost. Watch for clauses about re-works. Most will not charge for them unless they become excessive (an ambiguous term...) or drastly deviate from the original design that was agreed upon. (Your space FPS now takes place in the old american west!)

Do it yourself!

Wanna give yourself a hand at doing things yourself? Even if you wind up using a sound designer, familiarizing yourself with the tools and language of sound design can help you become a better director/producer and so is well worth the effort.

Creating original sounds from scratch using only synthesizers is a serious challenge and beyond the scope of this article, but finding existing sampled recording and making them work for you is a good task to attempt.

After you have your list, try to narrow down the sound you need. Let's say its a puzzle game and there's "stone blocks" that get pushed around on a stone floor. Well, when the player pushes the block it would be nice to have some sort of "stone on stone" sound, correct? Well, in sound design terms, you are looking for a particular kind of friction. Probably, concrete on concrete. Armed with a batch of words that may work, I would recommend using an online reseller of sound effects. My current favorite is:

www.sounddogs.com

Trying a bunch of different keywords combination, I finally sound something that may work -- I used the terms "rocks friction" and got three choices. I've copied the link to the third one below for your convenience:

www.sounddogs.com/previews/36/mp3/295092_SOUNDDOGS_RO.mp3

Notice that the sound quality is terrible. This is on purpose, of course, because they want you to PAY FOR the good ones!

Their order/checkout system is a little weird, so I'll save you the trouble -- this sound is about $4.70. That is a ROYALTY-FREE price. Sure, you can get "cool cartoon sfx" for $10 on CD... but chances are good that they are not royalty-free, meaning you cannot use these sfx in your game without paying royalties!

From here, I'd probably select the exact sound here from the set, edit it and EQ a bit in order to emphasize the bass and add some reverb to be approriate for the space (are you in a cavern, or just in a room...?)

That, of course is the minimum you can do. Often, creating the right effect may mean blending several existing elements or using common sounds in uncommon ways (in order to create a unique potato-gun-like sound, I used the sound of a toilet plunger being popped on a linoleum floor and sped it up and varied the pitch to make it sound like a bizarre machine gun!)

Have fun!

Cheers,
John

John Seguin is a composer and sound designer for award-winning video games and film. His recent sound design credits include "Bounty" by Eclipse Software and "Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa" by Pocketwatch Games. You can visit his website at www.seguinsound.com and he can be reached at jseguin@seguinsound.com.

How to Produce Voice Over's that Don't Suck Part IV: Editing and Post Production

John Seguin — 2006-06-01T15:49:30+00:00

How to Record Voice Over's that don't Suck, Part IV: Editing and Post Production

Yes, I'm finally back from a looooong hiatus in posting blogs to GG. I hope to be more regular from now on in my contributions. Many exciting projects got in the way!

At any rate, if you have forgotten what has happened before, please see the bottom of this post for older blogs that lead up to this one.

Before we get started though, I'd like to write a small disclaimer. Audio engineering is far more art than science and the way that I present some of my "solutions" here will not work for everyone nor for every situation. There is a great deal of experimentation involved for both the novice and professional alike. Also, technology differences (different software, hardware, etc.) in your setup will affect the choices and tools you use. Finally, I'm assuming some basic knowledge of how these programs work and instead going to focus on sort of a "tips and tricks" approach. That being said -- let's get started!

Here we go! -- Volume Automation

At this point, we've assumed that you've recorded some VO (Voice Over) and at this point just need to massage the sound a bit as to make it more pleasing to the ear. For your entertainment, I've included part of a voice over from Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa ---

No fx applied MP3 sample

Not "bad", but it could use a little work. In fact, it actually had a little work done as far as levels. Are concerned before I bounced this clip for you to hear. Chiefly, I used some volume automation to lower the harshness of some of the constants that this actor performed. A lot of audio engineering is taking a great performance that has just a few issues and "saving it". This was one of those times. You can see in the screen shot below some of the automation that was inserted. (The yellow line across the large waveform).

This automation, which you draw with the mouse or other controller, then has a direct effect on that particular parameter in real-time. Say for instance that you wanted to mute a track because the actor coughed or breathed loudly between phrases... simply enact automation for a "mute" function and voila! Muted in exactly the right spot. Most DAW's (Digital Audio Workstation like Logic Pro (shown here) Cubase, Pro Tools, Digital Performer, etc.) worth their salt have such a feature.

It should also be worth pointing out from the image above, that the way the entire session was constructed was purposeful. There were around 25 VO's in WTVA that all had similar background fx and music. So, to construct the session, I created a track for each VO that was going to be recorded and then laid in the background fx and music on seperate tracks. In this way, without opening and closing a new project every time, I could record one VO after another. When it comes time to bounce the track to a stereo file, I simply "solo" the music/fx and the VO I'm bouncing and the rest of the VO is muted.

First Pass -- EQ

For EQ, I had a few simple goals. One, I wanted to make the actor's voice sound a bit warmer. Second, I wanted to make sure that it clearly cut through the rest of the mix. To accomplish this, I turned to the fairly advanced Channel EQ plug-in that comes with Logic Pro (I didn't use any 3rd-party plugs for this demo, only those included with Logic Pro, though there are many others out there for lots of different DAW's that achieve similar results). I captured this screen in real-time to show how it can be used.

The blue line is the real-time wave form. It moves along with the audio to show you what frequencies are being produced more than others. The green shape is sculpted by you and indicates where in the frequency band you are affecting the sound. Low to High is left to right and louder to softer is top to bottom. Around 1K is where a lot of human speech takes place and is the "clearest" part of speech for many. For this reason I have it a slight boost of around 2db at this range. Notice that I made a nice slope though as well. You can make this very pointed, but the sound turns very harsh. Then, I also gave a slight increase of again around 2db at 200 Hz. For this man's voice, that seemed to really warm it up a bunch. However, at about 120hz, I quickly dove below "0" to make sure it didn't become "boomy" and overly "bassey".

EQ is a lot of fun to play with. Most newbies at it apply way too much because they see how much CAN be applied and really distort the sound. For most cases, less than 5 db in either direction does the trick -- especially for voice.

Next pass -- compression

Now that you are dealing with the right frequency band, time to gently compress the signal. Compression is one of the most useful (and used) plugs/effects used in modern music production. However, it has been in used in one form another by the pros for decades! The most important part of this control is the ratio. Here, I'm compressing 2.2:1.

I couldn't tell you the exact math on how that works, but the higher the first number, the more compression that is applied. Basically, it limits the dynamic range possible in the signal by bringing up some of the quieter stuff and bringing down the loud stuff. Sounds simple, but if used improperly, this can radically alter your sound. In general though, a little lite compression gives it that "radio sound" (which is highly compressed) and evens things out tremendously. Yes, it will also "seem" louder (and will be) but this is mostly because the dynamic band has been limited.

Reverb

I didn't use a lot of reverb on this track, but just a little for space can really help make it sound like the voice wasn't recorded in a closet. (Which it basically was.) Notice how low the "reverb" slider is set for here. Also, the preset called "Clear Vocal" is a very short reverb (.690s) anyway, so this is not a "hall" type sound or anything. It's simply meant to enhance the sound.

Master Track

Finally, I'll speak a little bit to your master fader. The master fader is the last one the signals pass through before they go to your speakers. Essentially, all the audio gets processed here, so make sure that whatever plugs you use work for everything! There are two that I use fairly consistently.

The low cut simply cuts out frequencies lower than the value you set. However, because of various technicalities, this *can* increase the overall dynamic just a hair in the remaining registers. I usually set this for 64-72hz. Why? Granted, most of us can hear or at least feel down to around 20-25hz. However, most *speakers* don't actually reproduce sound that low because of the physics in speaker construction required to do so. Also, instruments with extremely low sounds can "absorb" bandwidth and have an effect on other instruments in higher registers when they play in this low register. In general, you will probably agree that 64-72hz is "bassy enough". Give it a try!

The second thing is an adapative limiter. There are also "mastering" plugs that do a similar thing. This handy thing is like a compressor, but allows you to scale and input against the output, resulting in VERY full sounding, radio-ready tracks. It's quite nice. It also has a nice out ceiling dial which allows you to "master" without going above a certain db. For example, you may want all the music in a game to be at a maximum of -2.5db so that sfx can cut through and be heard. This is a great way to do that.

So what does the final product sound like? Hear it for yourself!

FX discussed in place MP3 audio sample

Few! You can see there is quite a bit to learn and experiment with to produce a final track that sounds much better than what you started with. However, with a few tips from this blog series and other books, videos, magazines, web articles, etc. you should be able to produce something relatively satisfying.

Coming soon...

I'm going to be discussing some of the techniques I use for doing sound design work. Stay tuned!

-John Seguin
Composer/Sound Design/Director
jseguin@seguinsound.com
http://www.seguinsound.com

How to Record Voice Overs that Don

John Seguin — 2006-03-10T20:47:59+00:00

How to produce voice overs that don't suck: Part III, The Talent

In the last two articles that I've posted (Part I, Part II) in this series we've discussed both the why and the tools regarding making voice overs for your game.

Announcing the SeguinSound Forums for Game Music and Audio

John Seguin — 2006-03-07T06:24:06+00:00

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently working on my "part III" in the "creating voice overs that don't suck" series. However, before I get there, I wanted to announce a new resource that I created for GG game makers and many others. Presenting, the Seguin Sound Forums for Game Music and Audio:

www.seguinsound.com/forums

I put this together largely because of the amount of email and blog responses I get after I post something here at GG. I felt that the information and responses that might develop into continued email discussions might be of benefit to more than just that individual. Also, although I greatly enjoying meeting new folks here all the time, I often receive questions that are highly similar and it would just be more efficient to write a very good and detailed resopnse once and refer people to it.

With this in mind, I've added a bulletin board setup to my SeguinSound.com website. I hope that this can provide a good forum of only quality game music and sound design information. I would prefer that this forum stay strictly within the realms of computer game music and audio and also on the (mostly) creative side. In other words, not thread after thread of "what function do I use to do this...", etc. Although this is definitely valuable information, there are many better places for this (such as the GG forums!) and since I am not a coder, I would be a horrible moderator at such things!

Hopefully, in time, as I post more articles here at GG and more folks keep asking questions, it can become quite the resource for folks looking for some great information. (However, until it reaches a critical mass, I will not be posting it as an official resource here... I mean, really... what good is an empty forum!)

To keep up my end of the deal, I promise to respond and moderate as closely as I can to your questions and discussions.

I look forward to hearing from you in this new and hopefully very interactive medium.

See you there!

John Seguin
jseguin@seguinsound.com
www.seguinsound.com

Recording Voice Overs that DON

John Seguin — 2006-03-01T19:45:47+00:00

How to produce voice-overs that DON'T SUCK: Part II, The Tools

Greetings! If you have not read the first in this series, please review that section now before proceeding.

Now, the tools! In this article I will lay out for you the minimum tools that I would recommend to record a quality voice over (VO).

Computer
Mac, PC or Linux... choose your poison. Although I profess to be a Mac guy myself, I have no beef with any OS. The bottom line is that you need two high-quality pieces: a good sound interface and a good audio editor. These abound by the dozen. If you are going to be doing this sort of thing for the long haul it would of course behove you to investigate the pros and cons of all of them before making your purchase.

In general, I would recommend looking at a multitracker as opposed to a 2-track editor. The reason being that two-track editors offer a more simplistic environment and often offer advanced sound design and editing features (such as those found in Peak Pro, a favorite sound effect/VO editor of mine. For example, I found the ability to loop a sound with a cross-fade built in extremely easy and very convincing for taking seemingly random sound scape materials (such as crickets in the forest) and slicing it down to a meer 20-30 seconds without it ever appearing to "loop". This is easy enough when you are dealing with sounds that have a very finite beginning and end (foot steps, for example), but becomes extremely complicated when you start working with sounds that are continuous (a train flying down the tracks, or crickets, or a waterfall, to name a few).

Logic Pro 7

However, I have also had lots of success recording straight into Logic Pro, a multi-track editor. The advantage here is that you can then easily mix in additional sounds, music, voice all at once and adjust their balance, pan, EQ, effects, etc. all in real-time.

There are a variety of multi-track editors to choose from. I have compiled an incomplete list of some of the better-known and well-used packages here:

1) Logic Pro (Mac) - www.apple.com/logicpro
2) Pro Tools/Pro Tools LE (Mac and PC) - www.digidesign.com
3) Digital Performer (Mac and PC) - www.presonus.com/
4) Nuendo (Mac and PC) - www.steinberg.de/ProductPage_sb190e.html?Product_ID=2442&Langue_ID=2
5) Cubase (Mac and PC) - www.steinberg.de/ProductPage_sb51ba.html?Product_ID=2442&Langue_ID=2
6) Vegas (PC) - www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/showproduct.asp?pid=965

Sound Interface
Many computers come with built-in sound capabilities. However, the quality of these sound interfaces often varies dramatically. The standard for these types of devices that DO support sound-in is usually stereo-in using a 1/8" jack, digitizing at 16 bit, 44.1khz. This can be considered fairly basic stuff. The 1/8" jack presents an assortment of problems. First, there is no way to provide phantom power throught this jack (which we'll discuss soon when talking about microphones) and the preamp (if there is any) is often very low in quality resulting in poor quality electric guitar/bass direct-in.

In addition, the standard for professional quality sound is 24-bit, not 16-bit. Sampling rates may still start at around 44.1 khz but are often done at 96khz or even 192 khz. These extremely high sampling rates however are probably more than you really need just to record a professional sounding voice over. However, a discussion of sampling rates and their effects on sound quality really could fill an entire article so I'll leave that for another time. (Hint, hint...)

Finding a reasonable quality sound interface that supports 24-bit and phantom powered XLR connection for a condensor microphone should do the trick.

MOTU 828 MKII

The rig that I use is a MOTU 828mkII firewire interface. This is probably overkill for just doing a voice over, but since I have many different sound sources in my studio, the additional channels are a necessity, not a luxury. Here are some other well-known brands in the industry that offer a range of products that should fit the bill in the form of PCI card, USB or Firewire:

1) MOTU - www.motu.com
2) M-Audio - www.m-audio.com
3) Pro Tools - www.digidesign.com
4) Tascam - www.tascam.com
5) Edirol - www.edirol.com
6) Mackie - www.mackie.com

Microphones
Microphones are a very tricky subject. They are very, very difficult to choose because each of them has very much a characteristic "sound". Sure, they can be generally lumped into a handful of categories, but in the end, each has a unique sound. Unfortunately, from a catalog it is often very hard to judge what that "sound" will be. My usual recommendation is to go by word-of-mouth from folks you know, follow message boards the mic you are thinking of and stick with well-known brands.

There are tons of brands in microphones -- most of them fighting for the sub $99 spot. If possible, go to a local music store and try out a few of these. Let your eyes be you guide. There's some GREAT stuff in the $75-$300 range, but make sure you do your homework first.

Rode NT2

The microphone that I have now that I prefer for voice over is the Rode NT2. (Around $200, last time I checked) It does a very good job of capturing the warmth of the human voice and the nuances within it. For ANY voice over job, I would highly recommend using a p-pop filter placed a few inches in front of the mic to stop high-speed air from hitting the diaphragm of the mic. These high-speed air produceds the "pops" heard when saying a sibilant sound (such as the "t" in "tomb" or "b" in "bob") Anytime you hear these booms you can immediately pick out a voice over as amateur.

Compressor/Limiter/Expander
Now we're getting serious. Sure, these types of DSP functions exist in software recording tools, but nothing beats the quality or response of a hardware unit. These can now be bought quite cheaply, and even the lower-end products offer decent performance. However, read a review or two to make sure that no one has complained of excessive noise from the unit you are looking at.

Without getting into too much detail, this unit will "smooth out" the dynamics of the signal you are picking up from the mic. They will drop the noise to zero based on a threshold you set (thereby elimnating the hum of your computer when no one is speaking - called a "noise gate") as well as capping the maximum signal (limiting) and bringing up the level when it is too low (expanding). Additionally, the most important part of these units is the compressor, which takes the lowest signal and highest and squeezes ("compresses") these values towards a smaller dynamic range, giving the impression that the performance was more even than it was. The also accounts for minor variations in the distance between the microphone and the sound source. This is especially valuable in recording a voice over!

Behring Composer PRO

The hardware unit that I use, though admittedly "low end" seems to do a nice job. It is the Behringer Composer Pro , picture above. (an older model than what is available now).

Sound Proofing
There are many different ways to approach this, ranging from the extremely professional....

(From Auralex.com)

... to the extremely "guerilla".

What you need is based largely on the environment you are working. Nothing looks cooler or more professional than to have tons of professional acoustical foam set up in geometric patterns all over the place perfectly balancing the acoustical environment in which you are working. However, for many of us, throwing blankets and carpet up on the walls, though shabby looking, will probably have 70-80% the same effect.

For myself, I noticed that my computer's fans were pretty noisy and that I could hear this in my recordings. So, I built a sound isolation box using pro-grade auralex acoustical foam and fiber board, hinges, etc:

(Coincidentally, if there is interest in the community to learn more about how I did this, please feel free to comment as such and I will do a more thorough write up about this...)

For recording the actual voice, you do NOT want to position your mic and voice talent in line with any hard object that would cause a splash back reflection. Have them talking into a thick comforter or blanket (or acoustical foam!). Surrounding them with soft surfaces really helps. Here is one such set up in my studio:

Notice the towel on the music stand to make sure that didn't reflect back.

Above is "Dr. Willoughby" from "Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa" recording a part for the voice over in the retail version of the game. (Available very, VERY soon at a store near you!)

Up next...
Coming next in this series is working with the voice talent. You are all set up -- now how do you give these actors direction? Coming soon!

John Seguin
Composer/Sound Designer
jseguin@seguinsound.com
www.seguinsound.com

For older blogs about sound design and composing for games visit John's Blog at www.seguinsound.com/blog

Slamdance!

John Seguin — 2006-02-03T15:55:21+00:00

Greetings Garage Gamers,

After a long hiatus, I am finally back to finish my series on how to creat voice overs that don't suck... but first! Slamdance!

It's been a busy last month for a multitude of reasons, part of which was attending SlamDance in Park City, Utah. A game that I worked on, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa was a finalist in their "Guerilla Games" Division. If you'd like to see some pictures of the event and parties before and after (if any of you are going to GDC -- you are bound to meet some of these people!) I posted a photo tour off my website. Enjoy!

As a musician and sound designer there are few things I learned here:

1. Always carry your business cards on your person
I handed out cards everywhere from the bus, to the bathroom (awkward), to restaurants to parties. If you don't have a card with your name, business, phone number and email/website... you just don't look like you have your act together. Nothing looks more amateur than having to scrawl your email on the back on someone ELSE's card. I seriously questioned folks who didn't have a card to give back to me in return.

At conventions/competitions like these, everyone is there to try to network and find the "next gig" as fast as possible and to generate the most leads. Having a card that presents yourself in a professional manner... perhaps with a good company name and/or logo really help. I also developed a pet peive -- the translucent business card. The fact that you MUST place these plastic cards on a white sheet of paper to READ THEM seems a bit ludicrious to me. Just one man's opinion.

2. Try to make your game as self-explanatory as possible
If your game is installed on a machine that runs all day long, you want people to be able to easily, and on their own, understand your game and have fun playing it. This may take the form of a simple, professional-looking "cheat sheet" set up next to your station or maybe an in-game tutorial mode. Sure, it helps if you are around the whole time to help teach people the ins and outs -- and this is of course desirable -- but you do need to eat, sleep and network (that was pretty much my schedule for 4 days!) so you can't be there all the time.

3. Bring flyers! Print Posters!
If you haven't experienced a Sundance/Slamdance/Filmfestival x event... it goes something like this. Most indipendent artists are there with their super-low budget productions to try to get funding for their NEXT project or possibly distribution for their current project. Some desire to get noticed by major commerical studios, others are just looking for private investors to help jump-start the cash flow in their current independent company. In this way it is very similiar for games.

As part of this, the festival's wild popularity benefits from the fact that a lot of hollywood descends upon the same small town for 1-2 weeks a year. The difference between this and LA however, is that this town is pretty much empty for the rest of the year -- so this sudden influx of hollywood makes ALMOST anyone you meet a film maker, actor, director, art director, musician, etc.

So, there is a lot of competition for people's attention. At any given moment during the day, there are probably 10-12 films being screened at the same time. Some may be lucky enough to have another screening, others -- this will be their one shot.

So there's tons of folks walking up and down the street handing out flyers and stapling them to pillars, trying to lure folks into watch their films. Oddly, I was the only one who thought of doing this with the games and people were genuinely interested and came to see it. Whether you realize it or not, to many "non-dev" folks, game making DOES have some of the same sex-appeal as film making.

4. Always be posititve
Never, ever bash someone else's game or put down their skills or talent. Its a small world out there and you see people get quickly alienated when you hear about them becoming pompous or mean to other devs, filmmakers, etc. You can learn much more by making friends instead of enemies.

5. Always talk about future ideas
Not in a "hey steal this idea" sort of way, but this will quickly bring collaborators to YOU instead of you trying to hunt them down. Ideas excite people -- so if you have a good one, let them know!

Anyways, it was a great time and I'm glad I had a chance to go!

Coming soon will be part II of my series started here about recording voice overs that don't suck.

Cheers,

John Seguin
jseguin@seguinsound.com
www.seguinsound.com