For many music producers, video game music can be a great fit. If you find the right game, you can make the music you love, find a new audience, and, if it’s a hit, benefit from regular income. It can be tough to break in, but here are the steps you can take to get ahead.
1. Tell everyone you know
People often forget that networking doesn’t just mean meeting people inside the industry. Your old school friends or extended family might know the game dev that can give you your first break. That’s why Ben Prunty, composer for games like FTL: Faster Than Light, Into the Breach, and Subnautica: Below Zero recommends telling everyone you know that you are available for video game music.
You never know who is going to have the contact you need. That’s especially true in video games, where your breakthrough project could be scoring an indie game from a previously unknown dev.
2. Make a showreel with visuals
A successful game soundtrack doesn’t just sound good; it also works with the action on screen. Many clients will “listen with their eyes,” so just having audio examples is not going to cut it. If you haven’t made music for an original game yet, take footage from an existing game and create new music for it. Your TV and film music can also be used on this showreel—anything that shows you can make music that enhances the visuals.
3. Deconstruct and recreate
The best way to know how something works is to take it apart and put it back together again. If you want to know how music works, transcribe all the instrumental parts and record the most accurate cover version you can. If that's not your forte, collaborate with someone who specializes in transcriptions.
This is especially true for music from cut scenes, where every beat and hit is carefully synced with on-screen action. That can mean having accents in weird places to make a hit line up with the movement, and you have to make it all feel natural.
The best way to learn is by doing, but you can save yourself a lot of guesswork by learning how other people have done it.
4. Enter game jams
Breaking into any creative industry can involve a depressing amount of working for free. Taking part in game jams is a better bet, because this way you are collaborating as an equal and end up owning part of the game. That’s why it’s the number-one recommended way to break into the industry.
The top place to find game jams is itch.io. Ludum Dare hosts jams every April and October. Global Game Jam hosts in-person jams, which will also give you a chance to meet and connect with game devs.
5. Develop your SFX skills
Adding sound effects to games can be a separate process, and you might prefer to specialize only in music. But if you’re interested, adding sound effects can be a fun process and another source of income. The knowledge of synths you’ve developed as a producer can be put to good use in creating new sounds.
Making it happen
As a rising producer of video game music, you’ll need one reliable, easy place where you can collaborate, communicate with your clients, and demonstrate your music synced with visuals. Pibox makes all that easy. Because you can annotate audio and video, keeping track of feedback on video game music becomes a breeze. Clients want someone easy to work with, and Pibox helps you work like a pro.
