Demystifying Technical Sound Design

If I tell you I’m a Technical Sound Designer – do you know what that actually means?

As in, what I do day-to-day.

In my experience, from the majority of you who’ve contacted me, if you had to answer that question you would tell me something like…

“Well you know Middleware really well, sometimes you make sounds, and you code – right?”

Well… exactly, and not exactly.

Let’s talk about this, because I know plenty of you are interested – but this position can admittedly be super murky.

Demystifying the Role

The honest to God truth about Technical Sound Design is this –

No two roles are the same. It varies from company to company.

I’ve been in positions where I did zero sound design. None at all.

I’ve been in positions where I didn’t really do serious programming either.

In other places, I’ve done plenty of sound design and been told not to touch code.

Often, I end up doing a mix of both – but as I find myself most useful on the tech side, I often pursue lots of systems building.

In all honesty, it really comes down to what your team needs day to day. A Technical Sound Designer – more than anything else – seems to be a person who can handle whatever is thrown at them. A little bit of sound design, a little bit of code, and solid knowledge of how interactive sound systems actually work in a game.

Definitely one of the best things you can do to prep yourself for this kind of role is to pull down a game demo and do a sound replacement – not just replacing the stock sounds, but learning how to code your own hooks.

Which, coincidentally is exactly what I teach in C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity – only available for the next two days.

(I didn’t plan that transition, I swear, it just came to me)

How to Prep

As I said before – if you’re interested in this kind of role, it’s really useful to learn the audio pipeline in games end-to-end. You don’t have to be the best sound designer, programmer, or middleware user, I promise. But if you have a full, end-to-end understanding of how the entire process works, you’re leagues beyond many other people.

Add a solid understanding of source control to that, and you have a fantastic base of knowledge.

But even if you learn all of that – you could still be at a disadvantage come interview time. Why? Because as I said, the TSD role is different in its actual tasks from studio to studio.

So, how would you get around this?

By asking good questions.

90%+ of you who enter into an interview are looking to be impressive. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a good or ideal candidate who stands out on the page – that quality should be an assumption when you come in for an interview.

Certainly, answer all of your potential clients questions – but then come with your own. Namely something like –

“So I know the role of Technical Sound Designer is often a little vague when it comes to the day-to-day tasks. What, specifically, is the largest problem you’re looking for the person who gets this role to fix? As well, what do you expect this role NOT to do in terms of sound design or programming?”

That gets right to the heart of the matter, and should get you a clear response if the company has thought about it. If they haven’t – you’ll find them a bit stupefied, they’ll scramble to answer your question, and you’ll sound really smart.

You’ll also get the information you want, because if you want a role where you can do some sound design and some programming – maybe the client doesn’t want that. In that case, if you’re pushing to just add a little sound design – you’re going to end up frustrating both your client and yourself. So, make the effort to get clarity on what you need, and decide if that’s what you want.

How to Learn

“But Adam! Where am I supposed to go to learn all of this coding stuff?!”

I’m glad you asked.

Again, C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity is on sale until the end of Friday, March 22nd. I don’t know when it will be back online, and I have plans to do a more expensive version. So, I suggest you commit if you’re interested.

In the course, I teach you everything you need to know in order to get sound from Wwise into, and interacting with a game in Unity. That includes events, states, switches, RTPCS, soundbanks, and interactive music.

For a budding Technical Sound Designer, it’s a fantastic place to get started. I’ll tell you more about it in-depth tomorrow.