The last week of our "Making 2D Game Assets" online course for teens looks at creating audio. Most of the session was spent in the nitty gritty of how to normalize samples from different sources and clean up recordings so things sound good together, but we did also talk about a whole range of topics from voice acting to Foley work. We shared the references last time we ran the course as well, but the list has expanded a bit so I thought I'd share them again!

General recording advise

Remember: the secret sauce of audio is always the same! Get as quiet a space as you can, and start by normalizing and reducing noise. Save that version before you do anything else, you'll thank me for it later.

Royalty free music

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is a composer and musician who has a huge collection of high quality music searchable by a number of different criteria and freely available to use - with the one limitation that you must credit him somewhere appropriate for the place you use it. Apart from using it in games, a lot of it is just solidly good music and worth a listen. incompetech.com/music/royalt...

How to create 100 distinct voices

This is a video from a voice coach on how to get started creating distinct character voices, starting with the easiest aspects to vary and moving on to more difficult skills. youtube.com/watch?v=FVmAEezr...

Sonic Pi

Sonic Pi is a musical live coding tool, which can be used both for creating music live as well as for setting up a full piece of music in advance and then letting it play through as you record it. The tutorials and examples are first rate, and it is a useful tool for both turning music that's already written into a performance (i.e. you can find the sheet music or a chord sheet) as well as using the random elements available to create ambient music or even background noise. You can use it in the browser, or download it and install it on your computer (browser support is fairly new, and I know it wasn't working properly for one of you - the download may work better). sonic-pi.net/index.html

Wing - Dopamine

Apart from Foley work (see below!) I briefly mentioned how flexible the human voice can be at creating sound effects just on its own. Wing takes this to world class levels, creating videos like this using only his voice, microphone positioning, and some reverb (the only effect allowed in the competitions he enters) youtube.com/watch?v=qlrpeYdm...

If you're interested in finding out more, Wing has released a deep dive 40 minute technical break down of how to sound engineer a beatboxing album... or more realistically as a starter, Beatbox International are a YouTube channel who include some beginners tutorials on learning how to make different sounds.

The Magic of Making Sound

This video gives a whole bunch of examples of Foley work. It does assume a certain amount of equipment you won't have available, but the basics are always the same: make sure you can see the video you want to match the sounds to, record the sounds, normalize to your desired volume, and remove noise. youtube.com/watch?v=UO3N_PRI... #GameDev #VisualNovel #SoundDesign