Power Field Studio

Power Field Studio

quarta-feira, 29 de novembro de 2017

4 Razões Para Você Usar O LinkedIn Para Ajudar Sua Carreira Na Música

4 reasons you should be using LinkedIn to advance your music career


So you’re a music professional. You have the standard social media apps (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter). You may be rocking these sites and already have 50 zillion followers. Now, what does your LinkedIn profile look like?
For many musicians, LinkedIn doesn’t seem like a site to bother with. They assume it’s mostly utilized by people with corporate jobs. It’s not really the scene they’re after. This misconception is why many musicians are missing out on amazingly beneficial connections.

So why should you use LinkedIn to promote your music?

Contacts, Contacts, Contacts

LinkedIn is only for professionals. Many people use it to get jobs or connect with those in their fields of industry. This is what you should be doing too. A LinkedIn profile has tons of benefits, the biggest being increasing your contact list. LinkedIn being a purely professional site means that when you send a contact request, it will probably be accepted. No one gets on their LinkedIn account to look at the newest cat video. There are a lot of music industry professionals on LinkedIn and if you’re planning to build a profitable music career, you’ll need them. Think studio managers or booking agents.

Other people worth sending requests to:

  • Music Bloggers
  • Music Journalists
  • Booking Agents
  • Promoters

Music Industry Groups

The groups on LinkedIn are a vital part of what makes it a true social media site. While there is a myriad of music-related groups, try to stick with the ones focused on the music industry. Once you’ve requested to join and have been approved, be active. Ask and answer questions, start conversations, and make your name a common sight for the big fish who read the group content.

A few LinkedIn groups to join:

  • Music Biz
  • Music Industry Forum
  • Music and Marketing

Look Like a Professional

The beauty of a Linkedin profile is that it can be designed to look extremely professional. To attract connections from the music industry, you need to appear like a business professional yourself. When designing your profile, use a headshot or a face shot at a minimum. Avoid using a band logo or live performance shot, as these aren’t considered quite as business savvy.
List your actual experience instead of what your music is about or where your inspiration comes from. These are more useful on a Facebook or Instagram page to attract fans. Have you ever been featured on a blog? List it. You want other professionals to see you when they do a search, so if your profile looks more professional than someone else’s, it may give you a leg up. Finally, stick keywords into your profile that relate to your musical niche.

Questions to ask yourself when designing your profile:

  • What is your niche?
  • Who do you most want to see your profile?
  • What can you offer other professionals?

Keep Your Connections

Once you’ve established industry connections, it’s important to manage and maintain them. Fortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t drop connections with a lost phone number or change of email address. Ideally, once you’ve made a connection, these people will begin to recognize you from the groups you’ve joined. Until this happens, you need to keep working up the connections you actually know. LinkedIn has a lovely recommendation feature, which allows others to recommend you in one of your listed skills. Hit as many of these connections up as you can and ask for a recommendation. It will add to your credibility. Also, send a small thank you message when someone accepts your request. This isn’t done often and will make an impression.

Crunch Digital Lança Novo 'Sandbox' Para Ajudar Startups å Licenciar Música

Crunch Digital Launches New 'Sandbox' to Help Startups License Music From Labels & Publishers


The digital music business is booming, representing more than 80 percent of U.S. recorded music revenue in the first half of 2017, according to the RIAA, with streaming alone accounting for 62 percent. But keeping this market growing -- and keeping it diverse, so that one or two companies can’t dominate it -- requires encouraging more startups to enter a market that’s generally perceived as difficult and complicated.
Could another startup have the answer? Crunch Digital, which helps technology companies handle accounting and payments for the music they use, today announced that it’s launching Crunch Digital Sandbox, a platform that will expedite for app developers the process of licensing music from big labels and publishers. The idea isn’t to negotiate the kinds of complicated contracts needed by big online music distributors -- just to quickly create what Crunch Digital founder Keith Bernstein calls “an experimental license” so they can prove their concepts. 
Crunch will not license music itself. Rather, it will bring together startups with rightsholders that are participating in the Sandbox program, including BMG Rights Management. “Sandbox strikes the perfect balance, allowing startups to properly license music while ensuring that songwriters are fairly compensated,” says Keith Hauprich, BMG general counsel and senior vp business and legal affairs, North America. “This new model squarely addresses a long-standing concern of the industry.”
Essentially, the Sandbox business is one of efficiently connecting suppliers and distributors, in a business where making those deals can be time-consuming. “It solves the problem that there are a lot of entrepreneurs who don’t know what to do and they’re dealing with labels and publishers that have limited staff,” says Bernstein, who founded Crunch in 2013. (Before that, he worked at a senior level in operations and licensing for A&M Records and then at Universal Music Group.) Startups, which operate on Silicon Valley time, find the licensing process cumbersome and complicated, especially on the publishing side. Rightsholders, in turn, are approached by dozens of entrepreneurs who have interesting ideas but no numbers that show their concepts will work. 
Bernstein says Crunch Digital Sandbox will vet startups and bring their deals to rightsholders for short-term licenses that will help them get off the ground. Generally, these deals will include revenue participation but no minimum guarantee or equity. In some cases, startups won’t need to license music from all labels or publishers -- they’ll just need to get access to enough music to beta test an app or see if it can scale.
Crunch will charge startups an administration fee of between seven percent and 10 percent. “We’re creating a pipeline,” Bernstein says.
Bernstein expects startups to “graduate” from the Sandbox, with data they can bring to music companies in order to negotiate the kind of deals that best suit their businesses. Ideally, he says, they’ll also use Crunch to handle the back-office payments for those licenses. “The idea,” he says, “is that this fits right into the other part of our business.”

terça-feira, 28 de novembro de 2017

Demo - Trilha Sonora Para Um Game De Realidade Virtual - Video

VR Soundtrack - My Demo For Western Game 


Hi everyone! Has been a while! I'm still here producing and trying to create something new!

A couple months ago a receive a request from VR Game company about a soundtrack for their game.

I sent the demo, as I don't have any replay from them I decided to promote my soundtrack.

I used the "Red Redemption" teaser just as reference for my soundtrack, as usual, I always enjoyed what I did.

Enjoy the sound and video. If you need a soundtrack or sound design, keep in touch.

See you nest time.


segunda-feira, 27 de novembro de 2017

Eric Clapton Planeja Um Novo Show No Hyde Park Com Santana, Steve Winwood, Gary Clark Jr.

Eric Clapton Plans Hyde Park Show With Santana, Steve Winwood, Gary Clark Jr. - Not Retiring Yet

First of all thanks to Mark Beech for this article.

The guitar legend is 72 and has hinted at retirement for years, most recently saying he was no longer touring, partly because of nerve damage hindering his guitar-playing.
Fortunately, Clapton’s health problem was not obviously in evidence during his four-night run at the L.A. Forum in September, which took place amid speculation that those were his final shows. Clapton’s Madison Square Garden gigs immediately before also sold out fast, as with his two March 2017 shows at MSG, with fans fearing that he was about to say farewell.
The newly announced show on July 8 will be an exclusive U.K. concert for 2018 at Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time in London’s Hyde Park. A reappearance of “Clapton is God” posters may be expected to follow around the British capital city.

This year, apart from the shows in Inglewood, California and New York, Clapton has only played a handful of shows in Tokyo and his favorite venue, London’s Royal Albert Hall, where he has previously performed more than 200 times. The most recent concerts have celebrated his more-than-50-year career, with understated versions of his greatest hits – such “Tears In Heaven,” and an acoustic version of “Layla.” He also sprinkles in other favorite songs including blues and traditional numbers.
Clapton recently signed off sets with a cover version of Bo Diddley’s “Before You Accuse Me” with help from Gary Clark Jr., who will also be at the Hyde Park event. Clapton has for years been working with other top-rank musicians and friends such J.J. Cale, who died in 2013. Clark, 33, has already shared the stage with the likes of the Rolling Stones and others.
Some Clapton tours have been rumored as farewells. Music analysts said an officially-confirmed one could rank as among the biggest-grossing. Clapton’s 2015 Madison Square Garden shows had a secondary price of more than $750 each.
Clapton has sold more than 150 million albums, including those with Cream, Derek and the Dominos and more. His live album Unplugged sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S.
Clapton first played Hyde Park with Blind Faith in 1969 to an audience of 120,000. Winwood was in the band at the time. Clapton has also performed in Hyde Park in 1996 and 2008.
British Summer Time, an urban outdoor festival with a rolling weekend schedule, will next year also include Roger Waters, bringing his “Us + Them” Tour to Britain for the first time, on July 6. Michael Bublé will feature on July 13 and Bruno Mars on July 14.
Since 2013, the British Summer Time festival has hosted the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Lionel Richie, Carole King, Stevie Wonder, Blur, Florence + The Machine, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, and The Who. This year it included Phil Collins, Green Day, Justin Bieber and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers in what proved to be one of their last gigs.

Warm Music Quer Democratizar Os 'Royalties" Que As Rádios Deveriam Pagar

Warm Music Puts Heat On Broken Radio Royalty Business Model

First of all thanks to Monty Munford for this article.

It was one minute past midnight on August 1st, 1981 when the first-ever music video was aired on MTV.
To emphasis this new channel's impending dominance of music-as-a-commodity, that video was Video Killed The Radio Star by UK band The Buggles; a self-fulfilling prophecy in every respect. Radio was dead, long live video... the king is dead, long live the king!
The song was a huge success, it topped the charts in the UK and more than ten countries; my girlfriend at the time even bought me a copy of the vinyl single for my birthday. Those were the days when music ruled the world, but everybody knew that change was a-coming.
While the song emphasised the likely death of radio by video, the former has lasted a lot longer than many people expected and still remains a hugely influential channel for artist success while MTV has long been superseded by YouTube and the internet.

What is less widely known, however, is the broken model of radio and how artists are losing out on royalties because of how these payments are measured and how it is begging for disruption.
In 2013, the UN General Assembly nominated February 13th as the annual date to celebrate World Radio Day, a time to recognise the reach and power of radio to the poorer and more accessible parts of the world.
As part of these celebrations, UNESCO commissioned a report  that stated there are currently more than 51,000 global radio stations, but only a fraction of these stations are covered when it comes to evaluation royalties paid to artists.
According to tech disruptor Warm Music, existing monitors such as BMAT, Radio Monitor and Soundcharts only cover 3,500, 4,000  and 350 radio stations respectively. That means that thousands of stations could be playing music without paying the artist and without the artist gaining recognition for their work.
Warm Music wants to change this by taking the first step towards a more democratized music industry by delivering inexpensive data to anyone in the music industry, about how their music is performing on radio stations all over the world. 
The company says that today's radio royalties are in many cases being distributed, based on minor data samples and the result is a very uncertain and unfair distribution of the money in the industry.
Warm Music says that its technology enables artists (and their representatives) to know when and where their song is being played on a radio somewhere in the world, on not only the large commercial radio stations currently monitored, but on as many radio stations as possible. 
Warm says it is doing this by also including school, local, community and genre-specific radios and monitors 24,000 radio stations, a number that it want to increase to 45,000 stations 'the ones we think that would be relevant to be monitoring'. Consequently, by being able to track and monitor music on the radio on a true global scale, everyone in the music industry will be empowered.

Jesper Skibsby, CEO of the Copenhagen-based company is a vivid presence at the world's music and tech events, apparently being a collector of the kimonos he wears to such shows. However alternative his dress sense, he is focused on improving the efficacy of the radio business model.
"If there are 51,000 stations in the world and only 10% are used to measure success and playing time, then this needs to be improved. Musicians and songwriters have been hugely affected by changes in technology over the past two decades and we want our technology to acknowledge the importance of their work and creativity," he says.
Such recognition is crucial for any industry that by definition is always outside the mainstream. The long tail for artists that Warm is trying to fix is welcome. Video certainly didn't kill off the radio star, but hopefully the radio star can embrace a new model for everybody in the latest version of the music business.
WarmWarm Music
Warm CEO Jesper Skibsby is disrupting the global radio revenue model.

Como O Som De STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT II Foi Feito - Video

HOW STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT II’S STELLAR SOUND WAS MADE


he sound of Star Wars is (and has always been) serious business. There’s an established sonic universe, a certain “Star Wars” sound that fans expect to hear no matter the medium, be it film, game, or series. The sound of the upcoming film Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in theatres Dec. 15th) needs to fit into that universe, as does the sound of EA’s new Star Wars Battlefront II game, which comes out today. So how do you get a film (that’s not yet been released) and a game to sound the same even though they’re created by different sound teams? Collaboration. 
The EA DICE sound team in Sweden, led by award-winning Senior Audio Director Ben Minto, worked with sound teams from two other game studios. At Criterion Games (UK), he worked with Senior Audio Artist Nathaniel Daw, who was Criterion’s Audio Lead on Star Wars Battlefront II. And at Motive Studios (Canada), Lead Sound Designer Olivier Asselin headed up that team. Together they built a massive library of sounds to cover the Star Wars Battlefront II game. Those game sound teams collaborated (via their partners at Lucasfilm) with the film sound team at Skywalker Sound to make sure their audio assets were in line with the established sonic universe of Star Wars. Minto says they had three key pillars that guided their approach to the audio on Battlefront II — to “embrace,” “extend,” and “enhance” the existing sonic vocabulary of Star Wars. Here, Minto, Daw, and Asselin discuss the details of how they created the immersive and satisfying sound of Star Wars Battlefront II.
 
The Star Wars universe has an established lexicon of sounds. How much did the films’ sound influence your approach to the game sound on Battlefront
Ben Minto (BM): After we had shipped our first Battlefront title (Nov 17th, 2015), in which we had focused only on the original trilogy, we were obviously curious and keen to learn how Skywalker Sound would approach the same task of updating the classic sounds, but for the sequel trilogy, starting of course with The Force Awakens.
Once we had heard Episode VII, it was reassuring to know that we were on the right track. The films and their soundtrack are everything when it comes to setting the audio direction for Battlefront; they define where we start from, our final target, and the quality benchmark we strive to reach. They also, almost universally, set the expectations for how everything in the Star Wars universe should sound, in any other medium. The legendary work of Ben Burtt and the Sound People on Star Wars is burnt into our collective sonic psyche; when I hear a donkey bray I always think Tusken Raider first and donkey second…
If you want to create an authentic Star Wars soundscape and trigger a Pavlovian-like response from your audience, then you stick with what has already been established and passionately embraced by your audience.
On some titles, you get to start from a completely blank canvas, on others there are going to be some ‘sketches’ or general expectations of what certain events should sound like, and within these expectations there can be a wide range of possible and acceptable ‘realities’ (e.g. AK47 comparison in games). With Star Wars parts of the canvas are already filled in and are very highly detailed and finished/set. How does the Millennium Falcon passing by sound? Or, an AT-ST stomping through Endor? These sounds are fixed; if you want to create an authentic Star Wars soundscape and trigger a Pavlovian-like response from your audience, then you stick with what has already been established and passionately embraced by your audience. You CANNOT stray from these, and where there is an instance in your title where the action closely matches the film, then the sound should also follow and use the same sound and where possible the exact same source material. When you are working on Chewie, you don’t just throw any bear recordings in there. To get the spirit of Chewie you must work from the original material as recorded by Ben Burtt and try to embrace the way he edited the sounds, else it’s not really ‘real’ Chewie and you will not be matching people’s expectations; it could come across as just a ‘bear’ sound and not everyone’s favourite wookiee. Respect the legacy and stay as true to it as you possibly can and where it already exists – use it! This was, and still is, one of our key pillars for the audio approach on Battlefront – “Embrace.”
We know what an E-11 Blaster sounds like from the films, right? Well yes in a third-person sense, looking at it from a game POV. But what about in first person or iron sights (zeroth person)? Or, far far away? How does it differ firing indoors (Death Star vs Yavin Temple vs Naboo Palace), outdoors (from Hoth, to Endor, or on Kamino) or next door? Some of these situations exist in the films, some are hinted at and some don’t exist. A lot of our work was exactly this; starting from very well-known starting points, using the same core assets from the films and building out from these to cover all the situations we encountered in-game. Of course, this would be impossible without having the great support and access to materials provided by our partners at both Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound. We start with what they have established and build out from that to suit our needs; this is the second of our (audio) design pillars — “Extend.”
The final pillar, “Enhance,” takes its lead from the wealth and diversity of the Star Wars sound universe – all those aliens, all those languages, all those machines for example are all parts of the immensely rich and deep tapestry of iconic sounds available to us. Matching this resource, with a Stefan Strandberg-ism (former Audio Director on Battlefield 3) – “Use audio to expand the experience beyond the visual verifiable,” clearly guides us to strive to make the Battlefront game audio experience as immersive and diverse as that found in the films, but without having to always rely on having matching visuals for all the sounds that you hear. There are birds in the trees of Takodana, but you will always hear more of them than you will ever see! And what was that sound behind that door? And where is that (diegetic) music coming from?
Rebel soldiers and Stormtroopers fire at each other on Takodana
 
How about the other Star Wars Battlefront games? Did any of those audio assets translate to Battlefront II?
BM: It has been said that parts of the Pandemic Battlefront games were influenced by the features pioneered by DICE’s earlier Battlefield titles, and that in a way, these early Battlefront titles were their own take on that style of game, but set within the Star Wars universe.
I would say that we are related to those titles and that approach, in the fact that the audio team here at DICE had all previously worked on the Battlefield franchise, before starting to work on Battlefront. The “Extend” pillar, mentioned previously, has also been explained as, “Using the Battlefield recipes but starting with Star Warsingredients, to create Battlefront assets” or simply, to take our learnings and techniques from Battlefield and apply those to the Star Wars source material to build and create what we need for our Battlefront titles.
Both groups started from similar points of reference in Star Wars and Battlefield, albeit over 10 years apart, with similar goals in mind, but to date we have never looked in to taking audio assets from the previous Battlefronttitles and bringing them forward into our version. A lot has changed in the last ten years within games, game audio and the sound assets we use (determined largely by the amount of sound RAM available to us), and the material we use today is a lot closer to that found in the film stems than it is to the game assets from two console generations ago; that isn’t to say we can’t and haven’t learned from the work that has gone before us, but with regards to specific sound data going back to the original resource (the films) is going to guarantee higher fidelity and a better fit for us than going back to material from the PS2 and Original Xbox era.
Video Thumbnail
The official gameplay trailer for the game

There were three game studios collaborating on Battlefront II. How was the sound work divided up? What studios handled what aspects? 
BM: For SWBF2, we knew how the work for the whole game was going to be handled and split between each studio at a high level. DICE (Sweden) would handle the multiplayer component, Motive (Canada) would tackle the single-player campaign and Criterion (Guildford) would own the Starfighter Assault and Arcade modes.
DICE was responsible for the majority of the first Battlefront, with Criterion helping on the Speeder Bike challenge, and then further going on to develop the PSVR experience. DICE also developed the five DLC packs that complimented the first Battlefront, so, it made sense for DICE to continue to own most of the core systems that appeared in multiplayer, e.g. Blasters, Foley, Explosions, etc. as well as the other two parts of the game, plus providing ‘parent’ patch templates for almost all other systems, e.g. Planets, Music, VO, etc.
The theory was that this would ensure a solid platform across all the studios and help in bringing consistency and uniformity across the entire breadth and depth of the game audio content and the overall final mix (and it seems to have worked too!). Vehicles were split between Criterion and DICE, with Criterion handling Capital Ships, Starfighters, and Transport Ships, in line with them working on Starfighter Assault and DICE owned Ground Vehicles, Speeders, and Mounts.
The three sound teams on Star Wars Battlefront II:

DICE:
the DICE sound team
Johannie Gervais, Clement Visseq, Ludvig Kullberg, David Jegutidse (Front), Albin Jansson (Back), Stormtrooper, Gustav Rathsman, Philip Eriksson, Ben Minto, Mikael Mansson Grolander, Raoul Hamilton, Martin Wohrer
Motive:
The Motive sound team
Back left to right : Julien Vachon, Marie-Renée Brisebois, Tony Prescesky, Luc Blanchard, Olivier Asselin – Front left to right: Terry Fairfield, Rodrigo Rubilar, Jean-François Tremblay
Criterion:
The Criterion sound team
Back Row: David Varela, Peter Bliss, Jay Steen, Nathaniel Daw, Jeff Seamster, Mattia Cellotto – Front Row: Catherine Schell, Rosa Dachtler, Sian Harris, Mariana Botero
Criterion would then handle anything that was unique in audio related to their game modes, but also support the other studios where any of their vehicle assets appeared in other sections of the game.
Motive handled everything to do with single player, where obviously their entire journey was a lot more focused around the narrative thread of the campaign and the unique ‘snowflakes’ found therein.
Where it made sense of course, all three audio teams collaborated and worked closely together. For example, as with the first Battlefront, we were once again fortunate enough to work with composer Gordy Haab, who for Battlefront II wrote and recorded over twice as much music as for the first title. Each studio had their own demands and timescales for music, but we worked together to ensure that we all received what we needed for certain key points in the development cycle, without stepping on any of the other team’s schedules and making sure that we could split session time between us. 
Over three sessions at Abbey Road — each one attended by members of the audio teams from each studio, we recorded over two hours of original Star Wars music, recording both the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Voices. And while the specifications for each cue came from a specific need from a specific team, once we had the final cues there was a lot of sharing and reuse between the teams.
Stormtroopers run in the rain in a facility on Kamino
 
There are numerous ways players can experience Battlefront II — single-player story mode, and several multiplayer options. How did you manage all those sound assets? 
BM: We all worked on the same game branch in Frostbite, the same Perforce project and from a common Jira database. We (at DICE) already had an existing folder structure, which we then cloned at a sub level down for both single player (Motive) and then Starfighter Assault and Arcade (Criterion). The folder structure was important in also setting our nomenclature. It was very clear which assets belonged in which folders, and which folders belonged to which teams.
Beyond the individual sound assets, there are also the patches that combine these assets at runtime to generate our ‘game sounds’ (see how we achieve it in Battlefield 1 with this video from Andreas’s GDC talk last year); this is where it can get complicated and expensive. We are fortunate enough in Frostbite to have a very well developed modular patch system with data inheritance (very well explained here). In practice, it could work something like this. DICE creates a blaster patch together with content, and check that in. Motive wants a new blaster for single player, a bit like the DICE patch but slightly different. They could duplicate everything and make the changes needed (expensive and costly to maintain if DICE changes their model and Motive wants to keep up with those changes) or they could create a child patch of the DICE parent model and just point to say a new wave asset for one part of the model and tweak the overall fire rate. In the latter case, we only need to store the new sample and the playback change that differs from the parent patch, which of course is cheaper than a full clone and keeps an inherent link between the two models. This practice is essential when handling the sheer volume of assets and patches in a title like SWBF2 and even more so when development is split across three studios and multiple time zones.
Tell me about the Starfighter Assault mode. How does that multiplayer mode sound? Sonically, what went into creating that experience of battling in space? 
Nathaniel Daw (ND):  Star Wars Starfighters have some of the most iconic vehicle sounds in all of sci-fi; they’re something we all grew up listening to. Delivering on the space battle fantasy that has built up in all of our minds is crucial to our audio work. As a result, the core of the mode’s sound is the player’s engines. Everything is built upon that. It is definitely a balancing act — how can you make sure the classic scream of a TIE Fighter is present without exhausting the player’s ears?
The new Starfighter Assault mode has very responsive handling, so we’ve made sure that the vehicle feels just as responsive to the player’s input. We play ‘punch’ sounds when the player accelerates, brakes, or turns aggressively. We also reflect the strain of turning and diving by adjusting the engine content, and also with rattle and strain layers. This also helps make bigger craft feel weightier (such as the Republic’s ARC-170), or smaller craft feel nimble and quick (such as the Separatists’ buzzy little Droid Tri-fighter).
Another big challenge of battles in space is that the distances involved are much larger than on the ground. Because there is often no reference point for scale, it can be hard to tell if something is 500m or 1km away visually – so although we share a lot of explosions and such with planetary battles, we need to have completely different distancing in space.
We use a proximity effect when the player flies near surfaces in order to make the vehicles feel connected to the level they are in, and help the player to have more spatial awareness. This is coupled with a whoosh-by system that delivers the sound of near misses. Finally, we use reverb on any tunnels or other enclosed areas. It’s Star Wars so there’s sound in space.
We also want Starfighter Assault to have the feel of a full-scale space battle (or a “Star War”). We realized that to deliver that feeling we would need a big cast of wingmates to make the battle feel real and personal.
One other challenge with this is making the player still feel like a real character, not just a pilotless vehicle. We also want Starfighter Assault to have the feel of a full-scale space battle (or a “Star War”). We realized that to deliver that feeling we would need a big cast of wingmates to make the battle feel real and personal. As a result, Starfighter Assault has unique wingmate, hero, and commander VO. There were some challenges with this, such as the Droid Starfighters, who only communicate through a high-pitch chatter. We were able to get around that by incorporating the chatter for a lot of lines, while relying on a Tactical Droid to deliver the lines that needed to be intelligible. Our cast was fantastic to work with, and each faction really feels different as a result. This makes every battle feel alive, and gives the mode its own special flavour. Couple that with Gordy Haab’s exceptional score and it makes for a thrilling space battle experience!
 
In single-player story mode, the player takes on the role of Iden Versio, leader of an Imperial Special Forces group called the Inferno Squad. Sonically, what are some of her unique characteristics? 
Olivier Asselin (OA): There are many characteristics that stand out and help build the sound of the Inferno Squad. One of the main pillars is the music. Iden’s theme was one of the first cues we tackled. Once again, it was all about following what Star Wars does so well in creating iconic themes for their characters. Gordy Haab, our composer, managed to create an amazing theme for Iden. We needed a strong melody — an ear worm, something that would fit in the rich Star Wars universe, that was both memorable and versatile. We needed something that could be used in many situations throughout the campaign and that could also carry a large spectrum of emotions.
On the gameplay side of things, most of Iden’s abilities come from her little droid companion. That was quite a team effort creating the voice, the locomotion, and the different abilities, namely the shield, shock and healing abilities. First, we looked at how the Droid voices were created for the orig-inal Star Wars and because of the nature of Iden’s companion droid, we logically looked at R2-D2 as a main reference. We also referred to the sounds of the Imperial Probe Droid (EP5), the Imperial Mouse Droid, the Torture Droid (EP4) and ID9, the Seeker Droid from Rebels.
Using a Modular Synthesizer as the center piece, we managed to build a patch that allows us to cre-ate and manipulate the sound and give the tone and emotions we were looking for. The technique is based on the same type of manipulations Ben Burtt used to create R2-D2 (pitch modulation, LFO, ring mod, sample and hold, etc.). We modulate the sound parameters (pitch and filter frequency cutoff) with a joystick and ‘play’ it like an instrument to create numerous variations of similar sounding ele-ments. We then modulated these with a human voice element and some formant filtering to shape the timbre. This source was the building blocks used to create “lines” for the droid.
Another aspect that was super important to nail was the sound for the cinematics. Of course, we wanted the soundtrack to be as polished as the movie experience, but also to be representative of the gameplay to allow seamless transitions between the two.
For trailers and cinematic experience, we’ve been fortunate to work with Charles Deenen and his team at Source Sound. As always, they did an amazing job covering our numerous cinematics. From the dialogue edit to the final mix, they delivered a top-quality experience that truly follows the Star Wars ethos and matched our gameplay experience.
A death trooper stands before an AT-AT walker on Endor
 
What were some challenges you had in creating the sound for the single-player campaign?
OA: The biggest challenge was to make sure we have a uniform soundscape between the three stu-dios. There was a lot of interdependency between the three studios and constant communication and feedback was the key.
For example, DICE worked on all the gameplay elements, such as the weapons and Criterion on vehi-cles. Both of these have a huge part to play in the single-player experience. Creating a campaign has some very specific needs; the story telling and narrative always takes precedence over everything else. We had to make mix decisions to ensure that the player experience focused on the story but also respected the established soundscape.
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The trailer for the single player campaign
 
Locations: there are eighteen planets (including Starkiller Base and the Death Star II) — all from the Star Wars films. How did you approach the sound of those locations in the game? Sonically, how tied into the films did you get?
BM: What’s interesting about the different locations is how much material there is to start from. For example, Tatooine has been visited four times in the main films, so there is a wealth of reference and source material available, whereas Takodana we have been to only once, and our two visits to Yavin 4 have mostly been spent inside the Temple, and not in the forest. Single player locations like Sullust, Vardos and Pillio have never been in the main films, and while Sullust was visited in the first Battlefront, Pillio and Vardos are new for all of us.
As was mentioned before, our ethos is, “if it exists we use it.” The way to approach the planets, I found, was to start with the most well-known and well resourced, and learn by listening. I choose Endor to start with, as there were a lot of recognizable individual elements in the ambience tracks we were supplied with. There was one main mixed stereo track that was the Endor everyone knew and expected. Thankfully by using Izotope RX and Waves WNS it was quite straight forward to pull most of the parts of the mixed track out – four different distinct bird calls, two different crickets, some individual one shots (something hyena-sounding?? Probably a pitched-down bird), which after they were removed left behind a fairly clean and pared-down base ambient track from which to work.
Then I looked at each part and cleaned, edited, updated, and complimented where needed. With the base track, I used that as the core for building a new quad ambient bed, adding new higher-fidelity air tracks and then for some additional colour and variation I could use tropical forest recordings from which I would remove the cicadas and crickets, take them down an octave and sit them behind the original Endor track, thereby adding an extra layer of depth. Then with the individual samples that I extracted, the birds and crickets etc., these are triggered around the listener at runtime as one shots (using what we call a Big World system) to add variety, randomness and positional enhancers to the ambience. 
In the case of the crickets, there was plenty of variance in the extracted samples, but for the half-speed Chuck Wills Widow I had to track down some new recordings to give us more variation. We also added plenty more ‘Big World’ assets to various parts of the map, including Ewok shouts and their alert horns, as well as more subtle wind gusts, leaf twirls and tree squeaks, to add more air, ‘nature’ and some narrative to the level.
I did find that Bernie Krause’s explanation (from his book The Great Animal Orchestra) for how a natural soundscape evolves over time as new species take up residence was very useful. Each species, when the system is in equilibrium, sits in its own unique register across the audio spectrum …
Starting like this was a way to teach yourself how these ambiences were originally constructed and the work that went into making them. So, as you progressed to working on levels that had less source material you understood what was needed to fill the gaps, and by the time you reached the new ‘virgin’ levels you had a grasp of how to build a level from scratch and the steps to go through. I did find that Bernie Krause’s explanation (from his book The Great Animal Orchestra) for how a natural soundscape evolves over time as new species take up residence was very useful. Each species, when the system is in equilibrium, sits in its own unique register across the audio spectrum, in terms of frequency, but also with variation in duration and tempo of each call. If you are trying to construct a new alien ‘biophony,’ following this rule-set guides you while building your own orchestra of alien species that sit well together and helps to sell an experience that feels instinctively right.
By taking this approach, and not just for planets, it meant when it came to adding brand new sounds (not just new variations or extensions to existing sound sets) to the Star Wars universe, I think we were more understanding, considerate, and respectful when doing so and hopefully they sit well in the overall soundtrack, and feel like they belong to Star Wars and are accepted and appreciated by our audience.
ND: For the Space levels, we needed to make them feel like they weren’t empty (even when they mostly were). Often in movies space or huge spacecraft are ambiently depicted with a low frequency rumble. However, we didn’t want to muddy up the mix (or fatigue the player) with too much low-end content, so we created ambient sound that had less low frequency and more movement, that still implied weight and spaciousness. We found filtered crumbling rocks and contact microphone recordings worked well for this. In addition, we looked for opportunities to use higher frequency content, such as fire and electricity. Fortunately, lots of things tended to be on fire or sparking wildly.
Kamino (the only Starfighter Assault level not in space) was a particularly challenging level for getting the mix right, as we had the sea, wind, rain, and thunder taking up a lot of frequency bandwidth. We solved this by reducing as much noise as possible in the content itself, and favouring more textural sounds. We created a global ambience of stormy rain, and then had the sea layer come in only when the player was close to the sea itself, with additional wave sweeteners. There is also an in-cockpit layer of splattering rain for added immersion. This content is all quite low priority in the mix, so it will always get out of the way for the more important gameplay sounds.
A TIE fighter is on the heels of an X-wing
 
Vehicles: players have access to vehicles from all three eras of Star Wars. How did you recreate the vehicles’ sounds? What was the most difficult vehicle to recreate? Why?
ND: We started by going wide on creating Starfighter content — there was a lot to create! In the first game, there were four playable starfighters and two hero ships, while in this game we shipped 18 playable starfighters and nine hero ships, as well as transports, corvettes, and capital ships. Often the only reference that existed for some vehicles was a single pass-by (and occasionally not even that). 
We spent a lot of time extrapolating from this reference to create responsive engines that capture the spirit of the vehicle. Each playable vehicle needs three separate loops, correlating roughly to the thrusters, the wind rush, and the ‘character’ of the ship, with distant versions of those loops, as well as spawn sounds, pass-bys, and an interior loop.
One of the most crucial parts of selling the dogfighting experience is the pass-bys. We make them almost as big as the explosions, and spend a lot of time making sure that the character of the ship is clearly heard in the pass-by asset. Some of the biggest variation in sonic colours is in the pass-by content, from Slave I puttering past you to Darth Maul’s Scimitar screaming by with a banshee howl. It still makes me smile every time I hear the huge roar of a squadron of TIEs whipping past.
The sound of the ship depends highly on what era it is from. The original trilogy tends to use lots of raw, real sounds – lots of planes and animals. The new trilogy stays quite true to that original trilogy sound, but everything is much cleaner and crispier. The prequels, on the other hand, use a lot more synthetic sounds. Where there was reference we would work from that, trying to make a dynamic starfighter that felt authentic to its movie reference. 
The best creative challenge with the vehicles was developing the sound of ships with little to no reference, and making them still feel authentic. We would create something that matched the character of the ship, all the while keeping within that Star Wars palette. We try to use similar source content to the movies where we can – lots of planes, F1 cars, and several animal sounds. It helps to make sure there is a layer of noise and air in all the ships, so they always feel grounded and real – like they are an actual craft flying around. 
 
What were some of your favourite creative opportunities for sound on Battlefront II?
ND: Top of the list has to be implementing the sound of Slave I’s Seismic Charge. This is such an iconic moment in Episode II, and it had to be represented with full impact in the game. We knew we had to capture the same awesome moment in-game, which is as much about the big silence that precedes the explosion as it is about the explosion itself. Spending time carving that silence out was a great mix challenge and a fantastic opportunity to make something feel bigger by removing sound rather than adding it. Even after firing thousands of seismic charges I still love that moment to bits.
One of my other favourites was creating the Starfighter Droid chatter. We took alien dialogue and used a combination of ringmods and pitch shifting plug-ins to create the same effect, with different colouring for the different droid craft. The result has this wicked glee that I love listening to, and combined with our Tactical Droid and Droid Commander, the Separatist VO is one of my favourite things in the game. 
As a personal guide, the emotion and performance for each droid is characterized by if it’s a ‘goodie,’ in which case you can take inspiration from say R2-D2 or BB-8, or even Wall-E or Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
BM: We have a lot of background droids in the game, and again some of them are very well known, both visually and sonically, like the MSE-6 and GNK for example (the Mouse Droid and Gonk Droid) and for some of them we just had to get our hands dirty and make up new ‘voices’ as they had never actually ‘spoken’ before. For SWBF2, I had six new R-Series droids, that are part of the Living World setup across different planets, that needed basic idle and alert sound sets, namely; R2-Q5, R4-A22, R4-I9, R4-M9, R5-A2 and R5-J2. As a personal guide, the emotion and performance for each droid is characterized by if it’s a ‘goodie,’ in which case you can take inspiration from say R2-D2 or BB-8, or even Wall-E or Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Then for the ‘baddies,’ you look more towards say EV-9D9 or the Viper Probe Droid, with maybe subtle hints of HAL, Cylon or Dalek-like performances or tones.
As for making the sounds, that was a lot of trial and error and experimenting – the best kind of fun. For one of them I taped a DPA lav microphone to the bottom of my phone, running Bebot, but with my phone half way inside my mouth so I could add some format like control/filtering by opening and closing my mouth, this then went through a Cwejman Frequency Shifter (gently altering the carrier frequency as an additional performance control) and was recorded via tape (a single repeat delay on a Roland RE501 Chorus Echo). 
For another voice, I took inspiration from Kraftwerk’s very dry Votrax speech synthesizer vocal track on Uraniumand used Plogue, a plug-in that had an emulation of the Votrax chip, as the starting source. This I then ran through a Metasonix Ring Modulator and an analogue (BBD) delay, with a touch of phasing from Waves Reel ADT.
Maybe about 1/4 of these experiments would work. You would have an idea, quickly get it up and running and test the range of the setup and suitability of the end sound – was it Star Wars? Failing quickly was key, and one experiment and its learnings (or failings) was usually the starting point for another approach.
 
In terms of sound, what are you most proud of on this game?
BM: Being a part of one team, that was an amalgamation of three audio teams, that with plenty of external help, worked effectively as one big, and for the most part, happy family!
OA: Motive is a new studio at EA. Our team is composed of talented and experienced people from various game studios, with most of them having never worked together before. I’m proud of what we managed to accomplish in less than two years. We delivered a solid campaign and a great sound experience. We have excellent music, sound design, ambiences, voice over, and cinematics. The team did an amazing job putting all this together and I hope that our players enjoy this experience as much as we did creating it.
ND: Starfighter Assault came together really well. Even though there’s a lot going on, each element (vehicles, weapons, VO, music, abilities) is given its moment to shine. We never felt like we needed to compromise anything in order to let something else play. This wasn’t just in the mix – we played with timing a lot to make sure that moments wouldn’t stomp over each other. When playing Starfighter Assault, it feels like a real celebration of Star Wars space battle audio, and I love it!