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Is a CS Deg Needed to Make Game Soundtracks?
Kurtiz666 asks: "A good friend of mine has his bachelor's in music composition - he wants to score game soundtracks for a living. He's a very good composer but has had difficulty breaking into the industry, doing only occasional work like soundtracks for plays and such. He thinks getting a CS degree will help him and is making plans to go back to school, but I'm not entirely convinced he needs this degree. I don't want to sound like his mother or anything, but I also don't want him to waste 2 years on school if he doesn't have to. So, how do you break into the game soundtrack field? Are there any software skills you recommend, and is a CS degree really necessary?"
I haven't done large scale soundtracks for games, only smaller stuff (and not on anything that became a big completed product), but based on my experience, and what I've seen in the industry, he's on the right track with just doing plays and whatever he can. I've done scores for a couple theatrical productions, and having that on your resume will prove your ability to write music to supplement drama and action better than a CS degree.
My advise: don't get the CS degree. Keep doing music. Participate in small projects on the side of your regular occupation.
I've also heard that starting out just running mail and doing intern work is a great way to get your foot in the door at game dev shops.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
If he is going for a degree just to get a job, it's a bad plan. If he really is interested in computer science as a field he should go for it. It is never a good plan to choose a course of study just for a line on a resume. Over time that line falls farther and farther down the page. It always pays to study what you love - even though you may find it doesn't help you get a job at all.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
I mean, John Williams does not, to my knowledge, have a degree in filmmaking. Your friend is probably better off putting together a portfolio of his compositions, and then shopping it around until he drops. Covering both theme and incidental music would probably be wise, as well as a variety of genres. Don't bother with scores - the people who would hire him likely can't make sense of them anyway. Tell him to call in every favor he's got, get some musician friends into the studio, and do some recording. Lotsa luck to him.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
ocremix.org
/. :)
vgmix.com
etc?
Seems they would know better than
DYWYPI?
Do the soundtrack for it, for free, and get yourself noticed.
What on earth does game soundtrack composition have to do with computability, context free grammars, operating system resource allocation, space and time complexity analysis, etc? The entire premise of the question is insane.
It sounds like this person thinks that CS is where you go to learn to use a computer. That would be like sending an aspiring painter to get a degree in physics so he could learn to use a paintbrush.
Yes. You need a CS degree. That's all there is to it. You don't need any skills or experience or anything. In fact, knowing anything about music would be bad. Duh!
The Wizard of Oz to the Scarecrow: I can't give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
So, how do you break into the game soundtrack field?
You go to law school.
For a job in the game industry, you need game industry experience. Stupid but true. The degree won't help at all. Why not save 2 years of tuition and time, and use it instead to make actual soundtracks for indie projects for free or minimal pay. Then you'll have an awesome portfolio and hey, maybe even make a few contacts with programmers that break into the biz that you can use to swing bigger jobs.
It would be foolish to get a CS degree for the sole purpose of composing music for video games. However, if he wants to make some sort of generative music system such as the world has never seen, then a CS degree might be worthwhile, though a cognitive science might be somewhat more useful, and working with someone who has done generative music (Thomas Dolby comes to mind, for some reason) would make more sense still.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Writing music is an art, whether it's for top 40 radio, games, or theater. Most of the time you don't get hired to write music as a permanent job, though there are a few out there. If you want to get into the industry, start writing music and TONS of it. Get some games and re-write the music for them. Make some videos showing the game with your music behind it. Offer to write music for free for ANYONE who is willing. The best way to make money writing music for games is to get known as a game musician.
Another thing to do is learn how to write music on as many different audio apps as possible, as well as with physical instruments like guitar, keyboard, drums, etc. If someone asks you to come in and write music using a Jeskola Buzz Machine http://www.buzzmachines.com/, you need to already know how. You also need to understand mixing and mastering and need to know how to use analog and digital recording equipment. Mixing isn't too difficult but mastering really takes talent and skill.
Basically, he needs to shell out some cash on music equipment and software instead of on a degree. If he insists on going to school, he needs to go to a school like Full Sail http://www.fullsail.com/ that actually offers courses that would be relevant to the field.
Now there are no practical limitations to sound hardware. There's almost no reason for a good composer to understand anything about the hardware their composition will be playing on. In some extraordinary cases, I suppose, it might be useful to know that a particular sound subsystem can only manage 128 voices instead of 256, or only has 16 bit resolution at 44.1kHz. Generally there is no reason to know this stuff.
Your friend will do far better if he has:
- Practical experience with the top 5-10 sound tools used in the industry
- Generated music for games (of his own creation, for other effort, open source games, etc)
There are other things that are even more helpful (networking, self advertising/promotion, etc) since a lot of this business isn't who is technically the best, but who do we trust the most and who can consistantly pump out good material. Just like any other industry, music is a commodity material (despite RIAA assertions to the contrary). When they start a project they have to be able to assign you the tasks, and know that you'll meet the milestones on time.-Adam
A CS degree to make game soundtracks? No way. All you need are musical skillz, industry contacts, and luck. MOST industries are "hard to break into." There are more major movies released in a year than major video games--you've got better odds in Hollywood.
Here's all you need to do: spend 10 years making soundtracks for free or cheap for every game you possibly can until someone "discovers" you. Alternately, move to where video games are made, take any job at any company so you can get in the building and find out who does what, and go from there. But a CS degree? No way.
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The sound designer makes sound effects and music. The programming staff integrates the sound assets, usually using a 3rd party library like Miles. All the sound designer needs to know is how to make music and save it in certain formats. They're never anywhere near the code, and usually that's just fine with them.
If your "friend" is having a hard time getting into the gaming industry he would be better served by polishing up his music and composition skills and learning computer sound development packages, not trying to learn a whole different, unrelated, and unncecssary discipline.
He was writing music, and having some sucess, but he wanted to make really romantic music, you know, the sort of music that people play while they make sweet love.
Took him 12 years to become a gynacologist, but it was worth it. That man's name? Michael Bolton.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I may make some suggestions here that seem obvious, but if they're obvious to you, just ignore them.
I've been working in computers since 1986, in computer audio since 1993, and I know a fair number of people in the game industry.
In my experience, I have never gotten a job that was worth a damn without having contacts on the inside. Never. I have had crummy jobs that I applied for randomly, and I have had cool jobs that I got because I knew someone. Maybe this makes me lame, but I suspect it makes me typical.
Make friends in the game industry, or at least also trying to get in to the game industry. You don't even need to know them in person; this is the era of the Internet. The goal is that sooner or later they'll be in the meeting where the project manager at their game company says "Okay we're shipping in two weeks; it's time to add the music", they'll be able to say "I know this guy..."
They don't even need to be high up in their company. I started at Creative Labs working tech support. Within a few years, I had moved around in the company to marketing, and I was in the meeting where my boss said "We need someone to compose some music for our web site." We hired Paul Godwin because someone in that meeting knew him.
You have a web page up with at least snippets of some of your compositions up, right? If you can't find an open source game to help out with, turn off your PC speakers and compose some music for a game that already exists! Put 'em on your site arranged by genre: fps, rts, driving, puzzle, whatever.
In addition to a sharp looking site, you need to have some demo CDs. I bet you can make even the little business-card CDs in redbook format. I'd make 'em redbook with small song segments since you will be limited to 8-10 minutes of music. You can make them mixed-mode if you feel like, but I bet redbook with a nice printed label with your name and URL would suffice. You don't need to press them on everyone you meet, but keep them around.
If you don't already, spend some time learning about how the industry works. It may be boring and/or trite, but consider this: You meet someone who works for a publisher, and says "yeah we don't actually make any of the games ourselves." Dead end? Hardly! Maybe they don't make the games themselves, but they work with dozens of small software houses, each of which does need composers. "What titles are you publishing right now? Really, who is that by? Are you going to publish any future releases from them? You know I'd love to get in touch with someone there about composing some music for one of their titles."
Are you ready to be self-employed? Lots of small-time game operations are run on a shoestring. They're not going to need a properly-paid composer full time on staff. Get your state business license, come up with a nice looking invoice, learn how consulting contracts work.
And last, save your nickels and dimes, because next March 20-24, no matter what, you need to be here.
Best of luck.
Chris O
San Carlos, California
S -> SAb
A -> BSa
B -> ACSa
C -> dSD
D -> BaSBA
Is this grammar capable of producing sentences of finite length?
Also, determine an upper bound on the time complexity for computing Ackermann's function. Describe the significance of this function in the context of algebras.
Next, demonstrate that the grammar of ANSI C is not context-free. What modifications to the grammar would you perform to cause it to be context-free? Is the resulting grammar LL(1)?
I hope you found all that to be interesting, fun, and relevant to music scoring, because that's what you'll be doing in Computer Science.
I know this was only posted an hour and a half ago, but there have been some damn good suggestions here, so I wanted to say thank you for your replies (negative and positive).
I'm not the one trying to break into the gaming industry...I'm a graphic designer. Ask me anything about QuarkXpress and I'm probably able to answer it - kerning, tracking, tabs, keylines, all that geeky gd stuff. You don't have to believe me, that's fine. But thanks anyway, and thanks in advance to anyone posting advice after this.
This kid really needs a nudge in the right direction, and judging by the replies I've seen, he should have a good idea of where to go from here. You very well may have changed someone's life (for the better). Whether or not he appreciates my going behind his back to ask career advice is another story....but it's worth the risk in trying to help a friend, right?
Anyway, thanks a lot, Slashdotters.
Kurt
Reminds me of the one time I dropped acid and /. had a story titled "Periodicity, patterns and chemistry" :D
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The same way programmers, artists, etc break into the game industry may very well work for him. Find a high quality mod and offer to write original music for them.
Do so.
Then he can point people to the mod and say "I sacored that".
If he wants to make music, would a music degree make more sense?
Schools like "Full Sail" teach videogame design courses, whether its graphical design, programming, sound effects and music, motion capture or whatever they teach it.
Your friend should make himself familiar with the music formats used in videogames. Research the Ogg Vorbis audio format, an open source rival to MP3s, and one of the most used audio file formats in the gaming industry (any game developed using the Unreal Tournament and the Unreal 3.0 engine uses Ogg Vorbis). Learn to use Mod Trackers for music composition, and it wouldn't hurt for him to invest in a top-notch music composition package and midi-compatible keyboard. That is only if he doesn't already have one. The entire soundtrack for the new Final Fantasy games is composed on a Mac using a midi keyboard and composition software.
I am far from an expert in this area but I know someone who is trying to get into the game development business and I did a lot of research with him on the subject.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Yes, a CS degree is just as necessary for a musician working on game soundtracks as it is for the receptionist at a games company. A PhD in particle modelling or artificial intelligence certainly wouldn't hurt either.
...is to not refer to yourself in the 3rd person or as "a, uh, friend of mine".
Computer science (abbreviated CS or compsci) encompasses a variety of topics that relates to computation, like abstract analysis of algorithms, formal grammars, and subjects such as programming languages, program design, software, computer hardware, artificial intelligence, and numerical analysis. By definition, computer science is the accumulated knowledge through scientific methodology by computation or by the use of the computer.
Computer scientists study what programs can and cannot do (see computability), how programs can efficiently perform specific tasks (see algorithms and complexity), how programs should store and retrieve specific kinds of information (see data structures and databases), how programs might behave intelligently (see artificial intelligence), and how programs and people should communicate with each other (see human-computer interaction and user interfaces).
Article continued here.
If reading that article doesn't tell him that CS will not help his music career, nothing will.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Funny how these stories always begin with "a good friend of mine". Are people really that shy to say "I"?
Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. T. S. Eliot
All the sound designer needs to know is how to make music and save it in certain formats.
Except sometimes it's useful for the sound designer to know the technical rationale behind some of the limitations of the format. For instance, if the format allows only 8 voices or 1 MB of instrument samples per song, it would be useful for the sound designer to know why (Nintendo DS has 16 voices and 4 MB of RAM). That still doesn't need a CS degree.
You go to law school.
This is unfortunately more true than you may think. If you want to compose music for commercial purposes, you'll need an understanding of the law if you want to avoid having people sue you for copyright infringement through subconscious copying.
Mmm'kay? Yeeeaahhhh.