| Pyramind Online is the exclusive host of GameSoundCon online videos, giving you a front-row seat to the premier game audio event for the pro audio industry | | | iPad/iPod/Mac/PC friendly HTML5 | | In addition to GameSoundCon Videos, Pyramind Online features hundreds of videos from some of the top names in pro audio covering all aspects of audio production in a vibrant online community | | | | | Videos Include: | |
| Introduction to Game Audio: How Games are Different from Anything You've Worked on Before. This session provides an introduction and exploration into the many ways in which video game music and sound design are fundamentally different from linear media such as television or film. It also covers what to expect when working on a game, and how being part of a game team is very different from being hired to score or do sound design for more traditional media . | | Essential Game Audio Tech 1 :The technology behind game sound, both its capabilities and limitations can have a profound impact on how game sound is created and put into a video game. Knowing these gives the composer or sound designer the ability to set a high bar, but not promise more than they can deliver. This session will cover the essential issues in game audio technology and how they affect what is and isn’t possible when creating game sound and music. Digital Audio, Game Sound Compression, Inside a Game Console, How Console Technology Affects Game Music & Sound Design are some of the topics covered . | | Sound Design the Bungie Way: SFX for HALO REACH: Bungie's Jay Weinland discusses the amazing process behind creating audio for this record-breaking installment in the HALO series. | | An Interactive Underscore: Part I: This session will follow the creation and implementation of an interactive musical score for a major console game. Beginning with how to work with the designer to map game levels to music, the session will focus on the interaction between what's technically possible and the composer's vision for the game, through the planning, recording and production phases. | | An Interactive Underscore Part II: This session continues the creation and implementation of an interactive musical score for a major console game. In part II, the emphasis will be on the creative aspects of the composition process for games from managing key signatures, tempos and themes to orchestration and production techniques.. | | Essential Game Audio Tech 2: This session will cover more advanced topics in game audio technology. Covered topics include interactive Mixing, how run-time DSP is used in games, how 3D and Real-time Surround Sound are used and how Environmental Effects are applied to games. | Keynote Address: Playing the Gamer, Gaming the Player Scott Selfon, Xbox Advanced Technology Group |
| Game Audio Tools. Game audio production and integration requires specialized tools let you take music stems or sound effects create in commercial applications (such as ProTools) and put them into formats suitable for a game to use. This session will cover the concepts and features of these specialized audio development programs. | | Working in Game Audio. This session will cover the business side of game audio. Topics covered include breaking into the industry, game audio careers, budgets and opportunities for game composers and sound designers | | Roundtable: The Business of Game Audio: The video games industry is software development, a long way from the entertainment business. This roundtable features experts in the field of game & entertainment law, performance rights, as well as game compsers and sound designers discussing everything from quoting on a game to how the video game industry views composers, rights and music and making the transition from film/TV to the world of games. | If Beethoven Were a Game Composer : What if Beethoven were doing games? How does theme/variation and variablity figure into both Beethoven and Game Music? Features an amazing interactive performance by MOLDOVER. | Interactive Sound Design :Sound design for games is sometimes referred to as Interactive Foley. This session will describe how interactive sound effects are created, using real-world examples from some of the top games. Variability, interaction with environment from both the creative and technical standpoints will be discussed. | | Audio Director Roundtable: The job of Game Audio Director requires a unique combination of technical, musical, creative and business skills. In this roundtable, some of the leading audio directors discuss their job on issues ranging from working with the publisher to hiring external composers and sound designers. | Keynote Address: For the Love of the Game Tom Salta, Persist Music |
| Speakers: | | Jason Hayes: Audio Director, Carbine Studios |  A multiple award-winning composer, Jason Hayes is best known for his long-standing relationship with Blizzard Entertainment, a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software. He's contributed music to all their games released in the past 10 years, set in the popular worlds of Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft. Most recently he was the lead composer of World of Warcraft, the most successful online game in the world with more than 11 million subscribers. Among other contributions, his specialty has been to write the musical score for the widely acclaimed short animated movies produced by the Blizzard Film Department. In this context, he's won the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) award for "Best Cinematic / Cut-scene Audio" twice.
Jason's music from the Warcraft series of games has been performed by symphony orchestras all over the world in various concerts including the touring show "Video Games Live", which debuted at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic to a crowd of 11,000 people. He's also been a featured speaker for the Film Music Network, ASCAP, Game Audio Network Guild, and the University of Southern California.
Currently he's the audio director of Carbine Studios (http://www.carbinestudios.com/), a game development team based in , CA, and working on an unannounced title.
| | Paul Lipson: President, Game Audio Network Guild (GANG); COO, Pyramind, Inc |  Paul’s career has taken him all over the world, and his lifelong passion for music, games, and all things audio has helped him innovate, lead, and advocate as a composer and audio executive in the interactive entertainment industry.
Paul entered the game industry in the late 90‘s by founding Hit Point Music - an audio content development company specializing in music for games, film, and television. He has composed and worked with a dazzling array of “A-list” clients like SEGA, Microsoft Game Studios, LucasArts, 2K Games, SCEA, EA, Harmonix, etc.. Recent AAA credits include Halo:Waypoint, Bioshock 2, Iron Man 2, and Lego Indiana Jones: The Adventure Continues.
Paul is extremely passionate about audio and the advancement of video game industry, and currently serves as the President of the Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) and the Chief Operating Officer/Composer of Pyramind Studios. He has worked closely with the officers of G.A.N.G. to originate the industry-first Program Partnership Initiative, and was the mastermind behind the Guild Scholarship Award for Game Audio. Paul was awarded the G.A.N.G. “Distinguished Service Award” at the 2006 Game Developer’s Conference for his work in education and advocacy for the interactive audio arts.
Paul is an active speaker and presenter, and has conducted panels, lectures, and master classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Berklee College of Music, Musician’s Institute, SIGGRAPH, GDC, GameSoundCon, Pyramind Studios, AES Conference, New England Conservatory, Art Institute San Francisco, Grammy Soundtables, The Connecticut Film Festival, and at the Conservatory of Pernambuco in Brazil.
Paul has also studied music for twenty-five years, with a focus on jazz studies and classical/orchestral music. He has enjoyed a longstanding career as a performer, leading his ensembles at venues across the United States, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Brazil. He has performed and recorded with world-renowned jazz musicians including Clark Terry, George Russell, Eric Marienthal, Bob Moses, Jimmy Giuffre, Gene Bertoncini, Mick Goodrick, John Abercrombie, Tim Miller, Bevan Manson, John McNeil, and Rick DiMuzio.
Paul has previously served as the Chief Academic Officer at Expression College for Digital Arts, and held the post of Director of The Learning through Music and Technology Initiative at the LCG (Boston).
Paul holds a BM and MM with highest distinction from the world-renowned New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He is a member of the International Game Developers Association, The Music Educators National Conference, BMI, The Recording Academy P&E Wing Advisory Council, and the Game Audio Network Guild.
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| Leonard Paul: Lotus Audio |  Leonard Paul attained his Honours degree in Computer Science at Simon Fraser University in BC, Canada with an Extended Minor in Music concentrating in Electroacoustics. He began his work in video games on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System and has a fifteen year history in composing, sound design and coding for games working for companies such as Electronic Arts, Backbone Entertainment, Radical Entertainment, moderngroove entertainment, Rockstar Vancouver and Black Box Games. He has worked on over twenty major game titles since 1994, including award-winning AAA titles such as EA's NBA Jam, NHL11, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, NBA Live '95 as well as the indie award-winning title Retro City Rampage.
In recent years, he has broadened his attention within the field of game audio to include game audio education and spent five years as a full-time instructor of game audio at the Vancouver Film School and is currently a sessional instructor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada. He has published papers in academic journals and has contributed chapters to books focusing on video game audio such as Karen Collin's From Pacman to Pop Music. He is also a new media artist whose solo and collaborative work has been exhibited in cities including Surrey, Banff, Victoria, São Paulo, Zürich and San Jose. As an electronic music artist he has performed in cities such as Osaka, Berlin and Amsterdam. Paul is a well-known documentary film composer, having scored the original music for multi-awarding winning documentary The Corporation which remains the highest-grossing Canadian documentary in history to date with over 37,000 documented soundtrack downloads. He is an internationally renowned speaker on the topic of video game audio and has been invited to speak at at the Game Developer's Conference no fewer than six times since 2003. The Audio Engineering Society, AMAZE Festival, Banff New Media Centre, Interactive Futures Conference and several universities have requested his lectures as the field of games continues to grow. In the past five years he has delivered lectures in Lyon, Berlin, Bogotá, London, Banff, San Francisco, San Jose, Porto, Angoulême and other locations around the world. His lectures and writings are available online at: http://www.VideoGameAudio.com
| | Tom Salta: Persist Music |  Tom Salta is one of the most versatile and prolific music composer/producers working in multimedia including film, television, advertising and most notably video games. Renowned for crafting memorable, emotionally engaging music for the medium, Salta has garnered widespread acclaim for his distinctive, world-class produced scores featured in blockbuster franchises such as PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE FORGOTTEN SANDS Wii, RED STEEL 1&2, TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON ADVANCED WARFIGHTER 1&2 and TOM CLANCY'S H.A.W.X. Recording under the artist name “Atlas Plug,” tracks from his album "2 Days Or Die" grace many television shows on ABC, CBS, MTV, NBC as well as national commercials. His Atlas Plug music can also be heard in the soundtracks to hit games such as CRACKDOWN, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT and PROJECT GOTHAM RACING 3. Salta's orchestral music for Hollywood movie trailers and promos includes HARRY POTTER, SPIDER-MAN, ASTRO BOY, and CORALINE. Prior to his composing career, Salta toured with and worked on releases by a diverse array of popular artists such as Peter Gabriel, Junior Vasquez, Everything But The Girl, Deep Forest, Mary J. Blige and Sinead O’Connor. The anthemic military-themed orchestral scores for TOM CLANCY'S GRAW 1&2 fuse electronic sounds into the score to capture the hi-tech aesthetic of the games for which he was nominated for “Best Video Game Score” at the MTV Video Music Awards. To enhance the exhilarating experience of TOM CLANCY'S H.A.W.X, the first air-combat game set in the world-renowned Tom Clancy video game universe, Salta composed an adrenalized and emotionally-charged live orchestral / electronic hybrid score to emphasize the game’s cutting-edge technology, devastating firepower and intense dogfights. Salta’s anthemic orchestral scores for the TOM CLANCY franchise captured the attention of the US Marines and subsequently he was recently assigned to create the music for the Marine Corps' latest recruitment commercial entitled "America's Few". | | Scott Selfon: Microsoft Xbox |  Scott Selfon is a lead program manager in Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group, where for the past ten years he has assisted composers, sound designers, and programmers with technical and creative challenges in developing audio for games. In this position he also played an active role in the development of the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) for Windows, Xbox, Xbox 360, and XNA Game Studio titles. He is a lecturer in the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, and an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, where he developed and taught the university’s first course in audio for interactive media. He organizes the Game Developer Conference’s annual “Audio Boot Camp” tutorial session, and is a frequent lecturer and panelist at interactive media and sound-focused conferences worldwide.
Scott has composed music for a wide range of media, including film, television, video games, and live performance. He is the principal violist of Seattle’s Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra, and has performed with various other ensembles in the Pacific Northwest. He is a member of the Seattle Composers Alliance and is on the advisory board of the Game Audio Network Guild. Scott is an alumnus of the University of Southern California, where he obtained dual degrees in music composition (film scoring emphasis) and computer engineering/computer science
| | Cydney Tune: Counsel, Pillsbury Law |  Ms. Tune leads the firm's Copyrights practice section and Media & Entertainment industry team. She represents and advises clients in a variety of intellectual property issues, including copyrights and trademarks, as well as in a broad array of entertainment, licensing and e-commerce matters. She represents clients in connection with music, video, multi-media, publishing and other entertainment projects. Her practice also includes the full range of copyright and trademark protection, including counseling, strategic planning, clearances, prosecution, and extensive policing and enforcement, both in the U.S. and abroad. Ms. Tune has extensive experience in complex litigation including cases involving unfair competition, unfair business practices, product liability, franchise terminations, breach of contract, antitrust, a variety of business torts, securities, class actions and multi-district litigation. Ms. Tune represents a variety of clients, including virtual worlds service providers, social networking websites, Internet companies and other companies that conduct business online, broadcasters, associations and gaming companies, among others.
In 2010, Ms. Tune was listed among California’s top “25 portfolio managers, prosecutors and license specialists” in The Daily Journal’s Intellectual Property supplement and she was recently voted by her peers as among the Best Lawyers in America for 2011 in the Entertainment Law category. The Daily Journal also named Ms. Tune one of 2008's Top 10 Copyright Lawyers in California. She is a frequent lecturer and publisher on a variety of copyright and IP topics. She sits on the editorial board of the International Entertainment Law Journal, and is on the Advisory Board of Copyright World and Internet Law & Strategy, among others. Ms. Tune is also a member of the IP Section Executive Committee and Chair of the Copyright Committee for the State Bar of California. Additionally, she sits on the Governing Board and is Chair of the Merchandising and Licensing division of the ABA Forum on the Entertainment and Sport Industries.
| | Brooke Wentz: The Rights Workshop (TRW) |  Brooke Wentz is an intellectual property rights executive and the founder of The Rights Workshop (TRW), a music supervision and creative clearance company specializing in
securing rights clearance and licensing for new and emerging media. Author of Hey,
That's My Music! Music Supervision, Licensing and Content Acquisition (Hal Leonard),
she brings 25 years of experience in music licensing and publishing, record production
and performing rights organization administration to a plethora of clients, including
games and new media applications for companies like Redbana, ESPN Action Sports,
Aspyr Media, Evil Twin Studios, Outspark, JamPlay and Kidz Bop. In addition, TRW has
supervised over 200 films and secured music content used in political campaigns, retail
products and brand campaigns for Fortune 500 companies.
Prior to founding The Rights Workshop, Brooke was Music Director for ESPN
administering legal policy and overseeing all music rights including music for the X
Games, World Cup and Sports Century telecasts. Earlier in her career she was
Manager A&R at Arista Records and Director of the Reich Music Foundation. A criticallyacclaimed,
Billboard award winning record producer for her numerous world music
compilations, she is a frequent guest speaker and educator on content acquisition,
digital rights and the future of media. She holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Barnard
College and an MBA from Columbia Business School, and is a member of the Stern
Grove Festival Board and the University of Pacifica's Music Management Advisory
Board.
| | Brian Schmidt: GameSoundCon Founder and Executive Director |  Brian Schmidt is the founder and creator of GameSoundCon. The 2008 recipient of the Game Audio Network Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Brian has been creating game music, sounds and cutting edge game sound technology since 1987. With a credit list of over 130 games and a client list including Sony, Electronic Arts, Capcom, Sega, Microsoft, Data East, Namco, SounDelux and many others Brian has used his combined expertise and experience in music composition, sound design and his deep technical knowledge to change the landscape of the game audio industry. Brian is a frequent and in-demand speaker on the creative, technical and business aspects of game audio, having given literally hundreds of educational and inspirational talks at conferences all over the world. Events such as the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft’s Gamefest, Sega Devcon, the Audio Engineering Society Conference and esteemed institutions such as Yale University, Northwestern University, and Digipen have invited Brian to share his knowledge and insight into the industry.
Brian began his career in game audio in 1987 as a composer, sound effects designer and music programmer for Williams Electronic Games in Chicago writing music and creating sound effects for pinball machines and coin-operated video games. While there, he was the primary composer of the video game NARC. His main Theme from NARC was later recorded and released by The Pixies; his other work has been featured in the CD set, “Legends of Game Music.” In 1989, Brian left Williams and became one of the industry’s first independent game audio composers and sound designers, where he worked on such games as John Madden Football, the Desert Strike Series, and the award winning Crueball. Other credits include Guns and Roses Pinball, where he worked closely with Slash to create a truly interactive Rock and Roll game experience.
In 1998, Brian was recruited by Microsoft to lead the direction of game audio technologies. While there, he joined the then-fledgling Xbox organization as the primary architect for its audio and music system. Brian has been credited with bringing Interactive Dolby Digital Surround Sound to interactive gaming through his efforts at Xbox where he also created the original Xbox startup sound. During his 10-year tenure at Microsoft, Brian continued to drive and advance game audio technologies through tools such as the award-winning “XACT” (Xbox Audio Creation Tool); the first-of-its kind tool to provide interactive mixing for video games. Brian was also responsible for the overall audio system of the Xbox 360 game system, including the XMA audio compression format, winner of the G.A.N.G “Best New Technology award” and finalist in IGDA’s “Best new technology” category. Brian is currently a consultant to the video game industry working with companies large and small.
Brian received undergraduate degrees in music and computer science from Northwestern University in1985,where he created the first dual degree program between the School of Music and the Technological Institute. He went on to complete his Masters degree in Computer Applications in Music in 1987, where portions of his thesis work was published in the prestigious Computer Music Journal and presented by invitation to the AES specials conference on Audio Technology. While in school, Brian worked as an apprentice to film and jingle composer John Tatgenhorst, where he learned to appreciate the art and science of putting sound to picture.
Brian currently sits on the advisory board of the Game Developer Conference, is a founding board member of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) is a former steering committee member of the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (ia-sig) of the MMA, and has been a featured keynote speaker at The Game Developers Conference and Project BBQ. Brian was also a member of a select group of ten game audio professionals who successfully lobbied NARAS into making video game soundtracks eligible for the Grammy Award in 1999. |
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