Wake Me Up Inside

I just realized that I have a blog.

Again.

Crap.

So. I'm gonna start blogging again! I know, you have all missed me dreadfully since the golden days of this blog when there were all of four posts on it. I'll be blogging all about life as a composer and sound designer for various games. I'll talk about games, sound design, Reaper and loads of other things. Thanks for sticking around; I promise there will be a lot more to read from me in the days to come!

Going Home

I have spent the last few days spamming just about everyone I know with the news, but hey, why not write about it here as well? It can't hurt, can it?

The big news is that I just released a new soundtrack. It's a quickie and also quite cheap (should you choose to buy it), but in this case it's more the principle of the thing. I put up my music far too seldom and my friends told me so over and over again. I decided to listen to them and this is the result.

So, what is Home? It's a very small and quite unfinished game that was made during the Nordic Game Jam 2013 get-together. If you didn't know this already, NGJ has quickly grown to become one of the biggest - if not the biggest - game jams out there. It's three days long, with about two days of active jamming, and the end results are always a blast to watch/play. Home was created by Number Twenty Five Entertainment and it's about going home. Well, since the theme of NGJ13 was "grotesque", it's a bit more about jumping into the ocean carrying a lantern and then slowly becoming something other than a human. It was more than slightly inspired by Lovecraft and his Mythos, and essentially the player will eventually turn into a fish. Of sorts. The idea is that he/she will go home - the bottom of the ocean - and add his/her lantern to the pile of lanterns that already clutters the ocean floor. Then there's a big fish carrying a lantern and - glompf - the adventure ends.

It's deep.

What inspired me the most about Home was Karin Bruér's very distinctive artwork, which for some reason immediately made me think of Tove Jansson's Moomin books. Now, don't laugh; I'm sure you're thinking of the cuddly Japanese variant. The original books were much more mature, much darker and at the same time much more heartwarming. I grew up with those books and the world the characters inhabit has always been firmly stuck in my mind. Something about Karin's art made me think of that world and its solemn, sometimes melancholy atmosphere. That said, I sat down and began to work.

Or, well, I didn't.

I was using my girlfriend's HP laptop and it really didn't want to use Cubase 5 so I was forced to find an alternative. I won't write what I ended up using because, well, I won't, but my MIDI keyboard refused to work in any capacity. I had lugged that beast with me all the way from Sweden and it just didn't want to work. I ended up giving it away in the end. However, after a few hours of despair, a really cool guy let me borrow his MIDI keyboard which worked flawlessly. Then I started working.

So, I'm very satisfied with the end result. I like how it sounds; I had to run it through some mixing and volume automation before it was good to go, and I also wrote a remix specifically for the soundtrack (I don't really feel comfortable releasing such a small soundtrack without any extra content). I'm quite proud of the end result.

If you want to check it out, you can do it right here. If you like what you hear, please, consider buying it. The lowest price is $2 and you can pay more if you want to. You don't have to, but you can. Also, please, send the link to as many people as possible. Yes, it does make a difference.

Anyway, I'm off to work on future stuff. I'll be back!

A Christmas Carol

VERSE 1:
Lo and behold, a beautiful sight
A most welcome offer this cold, starry night
The answer to anyone's most pressing plight
The sequencer that will win in any fight

VERSE 2:
'Cause Cubase will help you, yes, Cubase will win
And throw all your problems straight into the bin
So notify all, even your next of kin
Oh, wait - no, I lied, I've committed a sin

REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

VERSE 3:
See, Cubase is evil and terribly bad
at coping with anything that might be had
in VSTs, surely it will make you mad
or maybe not mad - maybe mostly just sad


REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

BRIDGE:
"But surely you jest, it just can't be like that!"
"You're just way too negative, you loathsome gnat!"
"Yet sometimes I fear when I use VSTs"
"That Cubase might hang, fry or just up and freeze"


REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

UP A SEMITONE!


REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

(molto ritardando) 'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass every-fucking-day!

The Checkbox of Doom

Sometimes you make a mistake that has absolutely devastating consequences and you did nothing wrong.

Or, well, that might not be 100% true, because what you did was wrong; it was just the fact that what you did wrong was, in fact, something you didn't do. And when you eventually realize just what the problem was to begin with you are sorely tempted to kick a dolphin. In the neck.

Let us turn our eyes toward the wonderful little piece o' software that is Adobe Audition.

Once upon a time there was a program called Cool Edit. All the cool kids did it. Used it. Something! Heck, I used it once or twice way back when (although I was more of a GoldWave fan when I was a wee boy). Cool Edit was cool, yo. It had fancy features. At one point it even introduced support for the .ACM format! Holy hell. Also, it was cool. It was made by Syntrillium Software and was released as crippleware for Ye Olde Windowse 3.11e in the 1830s. Did I mention how cool it was? The crippleware version wasn't too great but once you upgraded and got all the awesome functions? Wow-wee. Sure, you only had the one audio track to work with but when they released Cool Edit Pro you suddenly had multiple tracks. Mind blown yet? Why, I sure hope so!

The coolness! It burrrrrnssss!

Then, in 2003, Adobe purchased Cool Edit Pro - which had, at that time, reached the esteemed version number of v2.1 - for $16.5 million. They got some kind of loop library thingymaguffin at the same time and that was awesome or something. Hooray for Ah-doh-bee! Now they could doh all the bees in the world!

And so they did. Adobe changed the whole situation around by re-naming their newly acquired piece of software Audition and people soon forgot all about the whole thing.

Though the software's old name had been destroyed, the audio world was peaceful again...

But time flows like a river... and history repeats...

Now, we need to talk a little bit about metadata. Essentially it's like this: You can put stuff inside of your stuff and if something in the far distant future when this process becomes necessary needs to see that stuff you can allow it to do so. I jest. You've probably stumbled across metadata several times already, especially if you're an .MP3 buff and your sixteen external HDDs are packed to the limit with soundtracks. NotthatIwouldknowanythingaboutthatyouknowjustsaying. In that, ehum, highly unlikely case, you've probably tried to get your artist tags correct, your album information to display correctly and so on. Yuppers, that's metadata.

Now, metadata isn't only for the rich kids anymore. A lot of file formats can use the li'l bugger, and the .WAV file is no exception. You even have these new schnazzy formats like .BWF (Broadcast Wave File) that are apparently meant to contain a lot of the meta-stuff. I'unno, I haven't given it a lot of thought. Apparently this is the case. I mean, metadata makes sense if you're creating a naming convention for your sound file database (see my last post! Give it more clicks! Moooore!!) but honestly, I just name the files whatever I want and search for the file names. Maybe it's me who's weird. I don't know.

What I do know is that when it comes to metadata in .WAV files, Adobe Audition is there for ya, man. It wants to help you the hell out so you can focus on the more important stuff in life, such as poisoning pigeons in the park or running over a long row of people with a sports car ("GOURANGA!"). The program is even kind enough to leave a certain checkbox checked when you export a wave file from it. How nice of it!

There's just a teensy-weensy problem. See if you can spot it. Keep in mind, the region we wish to export is about 2 seconds long.

Nothing? Let me point it out to you.

... Ah.

Now, that can't possibly be right. This is 2 seconds of .WAV data. It can't be that big. Now put yourself in my boots for a second and imagine that you've gone through about 1,5 hours of recorded voice acting, split everything into small files (one file per dialog line), edited the exports and then implemented those files into a game. Do you know what that game's engine told me when I tried doing this? Well, basically it was the equivalent of "Ohmygaawwhd, that doesn't go in there! What are you even doing?! That's just way too big! All of them in the same place?! I CAN'T TAKE IT WHAT THE ACTUAL FU-"

... you get the idea.

When this happened I was completely nonplussed. Dumbfounded. Bewildered. This error shouldn't be. It just shouldn't be. It was impossible. Now, you guys are already facepalming in advance because, see, I pointed the problem out to you. Imagine that you're me - again, with the boots, the whole deal - and you have no Duckburgian clue what's going on. None. Zilch. Nada.

And then - again, boots, me, thingy - look at the individual file sizes of the exported .WAV files. Stare at them - remember, boots - and feel your jaw hit the floor. 2 seconds of audio takes up how much space?!

Go back into Audition - boots - and look at the export dialog again. Uncheck that tiny checkbox that Audition so helpfully pre-checked for you. Stare some more.

A-yup. That does look a bit more like it, doesn't it.

So today's lesson, kiddos, is that when you do stuff you need to pay attention because when crap hits the very big and well-ventilated air duct, the actual problem might actually reside in the very beginning of the chain of events. Sometimes it's all caused by one single checkbox.

The Importance of Naming Conventions

There is one thing I hate.

Well, actually, that's not true. There are many things I hate. Y'know, injustice, having to pay the bills, sexism... I hate many things. But when it comes to sound design, there is one thing I hate.

Actually that isn't true either. There are quite a few things that can happen when you do audio design for games that can seriously piss me off. Many of these issues will be brought up in this blog at one time or another. You know, at the end of the day I still absolutely love my work, but there are things that will make you grind your teeth.

Today I will talk about one of those things.

You know when you've been out on the field recording sound effects all day? You've been gathering footstep sounds, wind howling, various amounts of water noises... the works. Hooray, right? Yeah! Time to go home and edit these sons o' bitchnazzes! Or maybe I'll do it tomorrow because man, am I tired after all those hours of recording. I'll just put them on the HD real quick and leave them there. I'll remember what I did tomorrow.

*8 or so hours later*

"Wait, what? What's that?! It sounds like an alien being dragged backwards through a blowdryer!"

...

Well, that isn't the part I hate. That's actually part of the norm (at least for me) and something I rather enjoy (again, at least for me). I sort of like not knowing what the hell I just recorded because that makes it easier to write a nice naming convention. In a year or so, future Fredrik won't be interested in what past Fredrik recorded so much as what those recordings actually sound like. The keywords need to be consistent, they need to work according to my own complex (and often strange) abstraction layer so that they accurately tell me what the sound sounds like rather than what it actually is.

What I hate is when I get sounds from other places and their naming convention is just not even remotely close to what I want. I basically have to go through the entire library, renaming each and every entry and making sure everything makes sense to me. Honestly, this is why I prefer to record my own sounds, categorizing them the way I want them. Even recording together with someone else can be a pain if I'm not the one to edit the audio because it'll simply never end up the way I want them to.

Of course, the easy way around this is to work with someone who speaks the same language as you. Or, you know, actually try to adapt to other people's workflow.

Actually, come to think of it, I don't actually hate this. I sort of see it as a fun challenge that needs to be overcome.

Aw, shucks. I just invalidated the entire premise for this post, didn't I. Um...

Have a fun picture!

New Computer IV: Revenge of the iLok

Ah, yes. The wonders of music software.

I remember way back when this was all very simple. You had a computer with a SoundBlaster 16 in it (32 if you were lucky) and a generic MIDI editing piece of software that let you do the basic stuff (y'know, piano roll, staff view... those things). You clicked somewhere and a note ended up where you clicked. You pressed play and - voilà - you suddenly heard something coming out of your speakers. Nothing was complicated; it was all MIDI, filtered through whatever your sound card was capable of.

These days... things are just a bit more complicated.

I've spent most of today trying to install two synths using the completely useless and utterly terrible PLAY engine (seriously, PLAY should be burned and sealed away forever so that it can't taint future generations of VST systems): Stormdrum 2 and EWQL Symphonic Choirs. See, the problem was that the installer .exe on both of the install CD:s didn't work. It just did not work. Either it launched, installed absolutely nothing worth 0 kb of HD space (Stormdrum 2) or it started installing and then failed due to a "fatal error" (Symphonic Choirs).

Wonderful.

I contaced the Soundsonline support and they told me to basically skip the whole installation and instead grab a software update from their site and then copy the library folders manually onto my HD. Well, sure. I did so for SD2 and then launched Cubase (which, by the way, will only start if there's an eLicenser plugged into one of my USB ports). I added the PLAY VST, saw that the SD2 library was added as a favourite and was pleasantly surprised. Then I tried to load an instrument. Eeerrrk. (That was the sound of a failure alarm going off.)

Nah, because you see, my product wasn't authorized. Never mind that the iLok - the other kind of USB dongle you need for your stuff - was plugged in, recognized by Windows and everything. Nuh-uh. It wasn't authorized. So I logged in at iLok.com (because iLok insists on doing this through an ActiveX plugin from their site instead of using a piece of software for no discernible reason) and it told me I didn't have an iLok plugged in. I did. I do. Arrrghhh.

I then tried to plug the iLok into basically every USB port available until I found one where Stormdrum2 didn't complain anymore. Satisfied - sort of - I moved on to Symphonic Choirs, thinking it would be the same thing there. Hahaha! Silly me. Nah, after copying six DVD:s worth of samples I tried to load them up and got a completely different error: "Invalid Product ID". Apparently something else was wrong now and I had no idea what.

This is where we currently are. I have emailed Soundsonline and asked them what the flying hell is wrong (in a nice and polite way) and now all I can do is wait. I'm just happy my entire project isn't completely dependent on that particular library.

Today's lesson: Buy things that use Kontakt and nothing bloody else.