The First Beat Due: Feb. 6
Welcome to our class blog, students of Game Audio COSC 414.101. Your first blog assignment is to seek out strong and credible game audio and film audio sites on the internet and post on them. Please provide a short blurb about the contents of the website and why you think this is a good site for our class purposes. Feel free to comment on each other's posts as well.
18 comments:
The first website I found was one that hosted a mix of articles on how audio was done for a number of different listed games, and films. What makes this unique is mainly how it offers both films and games articles on audio.
http://filmsound.org/game-audio/
Second website is one that offers a tool for making your own video game audio. Downloading it and trying it out was actually very interesting, and might be something I try to use for a game I am currently making.
http://www.audiogamemaker.com/
http://emusician.com/
http://mixonline.com/
I don’t mean to sound like a salesman, but Electronic Musician and Mix are wonderful resources, jam-packed with in-depth guides and tutorials, musical hardware and software reviews, and interviews with musicians and industry professionals, such as Tommy Tallarico. Their articles are especially helpful for those seeking knowledge on how to enter the film or video game industries. While they are both, in fact, printed magazines, all of their issues are archived online and only a very few of the articles require any kind of special subscription to access. Overall, they contain vast amounts of information and are, for the most part, free to access, so almost everyone should be able to glean some helpful insight from them. Also...
http://www.ocremix.org/
Overclocked Remix is a community of gamers who are dedicated to reinterpreting, or remixing, video and computer game music. The community has achieved widespread recognition through the undertaking of extensive projects in which they have remixed games' entire soundtracks. All of the remixes are conveniently sorted by game title and are provided completely free of charge, but OCRemix has more than just songs. They host user-created tutorials, heavily-populated forums, and provide links to audio software. Anyone with an interest in either listening to or remixing music needs to take a look at this site.
http://flashkit.com/soundfx/
Flashkit Sound FX is a really good place to find almost any type of freeware sound effects you might need. For our class I think it would be a good place to check out as you can see examples other people have done and maybe contact them to ask if they would let you know how they were able to produce the sound effect your interested in.
http://www.gdse.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1193
This section of gdse breaks down making good game audio fairly well. It's a big read, but well worth it. It covers everything from explosions to when to use orchestral scores to build game pacing with audio. Very useful stuff.
http://mixonline.com/recording/applications/audio_locked_loaded/
A pretty awesome article on the audio in Halo 3, decent place to get an idea of how bungie did some of their audio.
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/
The newgrounds audio portal is full of user created songs. The songs range from video game remixes to original work. Most, if not all, of the music is royalty free. Whether you are looking for music to use in a game you are making or you are looking to contact fellow composers, or you are just looking for some music to listen to, the newgrounds audio portal is a great place to go.
http://filmsound.org/game-audio/
This site contains a list of articles on various topics relating to game audio. It also lists some great references for anyone interested in game audio.
This was no easy task but I found a fairly interesting site:
http://www.vgmusic.com/
Unfortunately all the files appear to be in midi format, which, I don't know if everyone knows or not, is a relatively simple "synthesized-esque" way of making music readily available. As such, you don't get the QUALITY of an actual song but more of a cheap imitation.
Regardless, this library has a vast collection and it's great for finding simple songs or themes that you may remember from back in the day. Also, given it's large selection, you may come across a song that interest you, use the midi version as a sample/template and then try to find the actual song somewhere else.
I don't really listen to much music unless I am in my car or playing video games. I only really listen to streamed video game music here at:
http://gamingfm.com/main/
every once and awhile. Video games were a huge part of my childhood and still are today. I would say hearing music from some of my favorite video games (which can be requested for play on the web site if you signup for free) gets me pumped, makes me feel young again (because it sucks being old), and is a lot of fun to guess what game the music is from (everyone usually likes to play that game, I'm a champion!). A co-worker at AQ introduced me to this site and it definitely helped to pass the time there.
The music is sorted by era and console (my favorite is classic console), which can be seen here:
http://gamingfm.com/listen/
Enjoy!
These links work:
http://gamingfm.com/main/
http://gamingfm.com/listen/
I wish we could edit these comments instead of having to delete them ;(
Game Audio:
http://www.gamemusic.com
This website provides a seemingly reliable location to purchase a wide variety of official game soundtracks. The albums can be browsed according to popularity, series, or date. I found this website to have a strong selection of game soundtracks (most of which I know to be good). To add to the websites credibility, it is under a copy write disclaimer, and all of the payment transactions seem secure.
Film Audio:
http://www.soundtrack.net
Any time I need to lookup a song from a movie I use this website. It has been around since 1996 and has consistently returned reliable information. From the website you can search for movies, listen to previews of any track, read reviews, find places to buy, etc.
This site can show you how to make links (for the lazy people like myself):
http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_links
http://www.music4games.net
This site features some pretty insightful interviews with the composers. Much like the other link, except this one is for games.
http://www.soundtrack.net
This site features some pretty insightful interviews with the composers. Much like the other link, except this one is for movies.
I was unsure of how “credible” the sites had to be, so I choose a bit of a variety in “credibility”.
www.ocremix.org
…is a site in which videogame fans can upload or listen to fan-remixed music from videogames.
www.vgmusic.com
…is a site in which videogame fans remake their favourite videogame music from scratch through midi.
www.filmsound.org/cliche
…is a fun site that lists common sound cliché’s in movies. I think many of them can be found in videogames as well. It’s fun to look over and to remember when you make sound for your own games.
http://www.last.fm/music/Capcom+Sound+Team
…is myspace for a videogame company’s sound team. The above link is for Capcom.
www.pacdv.com/sounds/
www.grsites.com/sounds
www.soundsnap.com
…are sites that you can download free sounds. Don’t forget to reference them. Spread the love!
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http://www.gamessound.com/
Game Sound.com is a great source for finding out great information about game audio, such as terms and how it is used in games.
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http://www.audiogang.org/
GANG (Game Audio Network Guild) is an organization that is a very important resource for anyone that has any interest in game audio. Game developers and audio composers all come here to talk about the latest and greatest advances in game audio.
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http://www.music4games.net/Index.aspx
Here you can find alot of great links to game music as well as news on game music.
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wiki/List_of_video_game_musicians
Finally here is a list of video game composers. Through the links on this list you can find composers personal web pages and many great resources for researching anyone associated with game audio.
http://www.gameaudio.com/
This site is the bomb diggity. Game Audio is the leading provider of music, sound effects and synchronised audio post-production for FMV, utilising the movie industry standard audio tool, Pro Tools HD. All projects can be mixed and delivered in Dolby Digital 5.1 if required. Game Audio is a registered audio developer for Sony and Microsoft(http://www.gameaudio.com/).
http://www.thx.com - This is the officiales website for the Lucas (As in George Lucas' personally inventy sound system). Talks about all of the movies and such featuring the sound system, and some specifics about it.
I think the UK based Game Audio Website is good as well.
http://www.gameaudio.com/
It looks like one of the more developed online communities. They also have a couple of Demos to check out.
Also, http://www.audiogamemaker.com, promotes free software to develop a sound based game for the visually impaired.
http://www.audiogames.net/
This site is dedicated to games based heavily on audio such as games designed for the blind. While this is not a resource for audio like the other sites I see listed above, it demonstrates how audio can play a vital role in a variety of games. I think playing some of these games can help us focus on audio as an essential piece of all games and expand our ideas of how sound can be used for games.
Audio Network Plc has a large array of sounds all royalty free. There are thousands of different sounds and all are high quality and the same ones used in award winning films.
http://www.audiolicense.net/sfx/
There is also the Audio Track,Game Developers Conference. The site tells you who will be attending and what they will be talking about. It's really worth looking into and seeing if you can attend for anyone seriously interested in the audio track for games.
http://gdconf.com/audio/
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