Music for Video Games (need help)

[Mastersonics]

hi

i'm putting together a studio from scratch
i'm extremely interested in doing music (real bands)
for the video games.

is any of you guys doing this at all?

my question
what would be an all around system to do this
i'm talking all the bases covered
i'm not too clear in what to get
but i can tell you what i have:

1. PT HD3 with
2. 192 with analog board
3. Pro Control 24 faders with Edit pack
4. G4 Dual 1.25 with 2Gb of Ram
5. PRE
6. MIDI
7. GT VIPRE
8. Glyph Trip (2) 36Gb Cheetahs/VXA tape Backup/CD-R
9. Digi Expanssion Chassis
10. KRK E8x
11. still deciding on the 5.1 monitor system
12. (2) Sony X82 18" LCD Monitors

etc...............................................................

what you think i should consider in buying
i was thinking in going softsynth and softsampler
with some drums libraries etc... and a controller

is there anything else i'm missing and WHY?
i'm pretty sure there are a lot of things left
just want to see the whole picture

thanks for the help
happy holidays

regards,

charles

[Jay Kahrs]

A few of my band clients have been approached about having their songs used in video games. That seems to be the harder connection to make. Getting the good song, not the good sound. In my clients cases we used 2" for the multi-track and handed the game guys a DAT, CDR or whatever they wanted as a delivery format. I can't think of too many people that record songs just for video games. Seems like most of the games these days have an all-star soundtrack. Look at GTA Vice City, the Test Drive games, Tony Hawk etc.

[chrisso]

Originally posted by Mastersonics

what you think i should consider in buying
i was thinking in going softsynth and softsampler
with some drums libraries etc... and a controller

I don't know a great deal about this genre but I know a couple of people who've done music for video games and I've read a couple of interviews with guy's working in this field. The impression I got - as with everything these days - was that the budgets were tight. Everything I've seen or heard has been about softsynths and sample libraries, forget all the expensive micpre's and real musicians.
I could be completely wrong and out of date however.

[C.Lambrechts]

If you go the "soft" way for synths / samplers / libraries etc etc you realy should consider getting a second computer to do just that. And there's several reasons why :

1. those softs eat a lot of horsepower from your cpu ... especially if you're gonna end up using only softs for your sounds.

2. In the game world, you'll end up with a lot of quicktime movies. those weigh heavy on the processing too, especially if you want them in good quality. Get some kinda external firewire to composite video convertor box (several possibilities out there) so you can hook up a regular TV for playback. You don't want those playing back on one of your computer screens. That kinda moving image flow weighs heavy on the PCI bus and especially in expanded ProTools systems with expansion chassis and dual monitors you might end up getting PCI bus overload errors if you don't.

Even with todays processing power it is tricky do to everything on the same computer. Only works in ideal situations and those are rather rare. Especially if you go surround, You'll soon find yourself maxing out that HD3.

HUGE hard drives are a must too if you want all those sounds 'on hand'.

just a couple of thoughts ...


Good luck

[Mastersonics]

hi

thanks for the comments guys
i'm kind of new to this arena
it's sounds very interesting to get into


C.Lambrechts

as always giving such good info
truly appreciated

so what you think?
should i go with a PC or another MAC for the soft stuff?
i'm deciding between Giga or Unity

what are you using?


thanks again
Happy 2003!