Cat Arthur heads up all things sound at Akupara Games, from foleying sound effects to composing bangin’ soundtracks. I asked them to put together a blog to show off some of their expertise and knowledge and here it is! Enjoy!
Jams kick ass. They make me better at music and that happens with both game jams and music jam sessions. This year at Akupara we did a company wide game jam and I really needed that since I haven’t been able to jam with my music friends since Coronavirus. Buddy asked me to write a blog post so I thought this would be something interesting to talk about!
Usually music and especially sound design can’t happen until a game is partially done but for game jams you gotta find a way to start as soon as possible otherwise you’re gonna get backlogged at the end. Music can be good to go as soon as the creative direction is even vaguely locked down. Ideally, there would be some concept art but for Brainframe I just worked off just a moodboard. Getting the music done ASAP is necessary but I also really enjoy delivering it early because it seems to inspire the rest of the team. Somehow it makes it click that this is a real video game that is really going to get made. Sound effects are where it gets spicy though, because they usually have to happen after gameplay and animations are at least kinda done. The programmer is still trying to put together a minimally viable product but somehow you have to insert yourself into the pipeline. You end up watching the game like a hawk to figure out if anything is ready for sound as of like 5 minutes ago. Then, after you make the actual sound, somehow, you have to find time for implementation. And that’s why every jam inevitably ends up with me pulling an allnighter! If you leave it to someone else, sound effect implementation will definitely get left as a nice-to-have when it’s down to the wire to even get the game running. So I usually end up doing the code side audio implementation and just try really hard not to get in the programmer’s way.
As for music jams, the friends I’ve done it with like to keep it pretty casual and unstructured. Basically, one person on any instrument starts playing something fun and everyone else improvises something to fit with it. Live. We don’t talk about what we’re going to do. I’ve been to sessions where people figure out a key, structure, repeats, solos, maybe even use a chart but I think the freeform ones are more fun because it’s a really refreshing change from the way I usually engage with music. Usually I’m on a screen with headphones and I overwork every little detail. In a jam session you’re making a whole piece of music in real time and it is NOT perfect. Sometimes, we record it but usually it’s just a way to have fun making music in the moment and then it’s gone. It’s not really for an audience, it’s not a performance, it’s just something we have fun with.
A game jam isn’t real time, but the time limit is so strict that you don’t have time to revise stuff once it’s “””working”“”. And you have to find the quickest way to “working” you can think of. No time to mull over the best way to structure your file organization just in case this 5 minute demo turns into an 200 hour epic that needs to be ported to every console over the next 3 generations. For the Playmaze Panic music I wanted to evoke a creepy, warped sense of nostalgia and a quick way to get there would be to slow some music waaaaay down. At first I was gonna use the iCarly song but apparently that’s ~CoPyRiGhTeD~. But damn, I have 3.75 hours budgeted for this music. I can’t make a whole mix just to slow it down for a sample when I still have to write the whole rest of the song. Luckily, like all artists, I have thrown what little creative energy I have away on dozens of abandoned projects! How about… “Dad Guitar – Vaguely Sad on a Beach”, some original vaporwave thing I made a total of 28 seconds of over a year ago. That is Good Enough!
Jams are an opportunity to try out roles you aren’t used to. In a jam session everyone swaps instruments and you get to play around on things you would never buy for yourself. The barrier for success is a little lower because everyone knows you don’t really play drums, but the drummer wants to go get nachos and someone has to keep the session together. There’s no ego bs. It’s ok to just play a simple beat and stick to it.
On these projects we had community managers doing writing, programmers doing game design, it was really cool to see all these new talents. Our producer Alyssa actually did some sound design on Brainframe, most of the sound effects in the FMVs actually come from her. She’s learning to edit video and she makes way different aesthetic choices than I would. A video editor’s view of sound design is entirely different from someone who chose to do sound design primarily as their craft, or who came from a music background. Video Editor sound design is punchy, in your face, and highly referential, where as musician/sound designer sound design is immersive and subtle. It was cool going back and forth with someone who makes just wildly different decisions than I would and I think the game is a lot stronger for it. We wanted some aesthetic clash in Brainframe, as if two different production companies were responsible for the game and for the FMVs – doing that authentically came out so much better than me trying to work in 2 different headspaces.
I feel like the shared sparks of creative magic are the biggest thing game jams and music jam sessions have in common. They’re a flow state with other people where you’re creating something and enjoying what you’re creating at the same time. Someone suggests an idea, another person builds upon it, and it just keeps snowballing. In a music jam session this happens wordlessly and in real time. In a game jam everyone talks about it then has to retreat to photoshop or their DAW for an hour before showing it, but it feels the same. Anyway, jams are good and you should try doing one. They have them on itch.io and you can just sign up.