The Top 4 Mistakes I Made As An Indie Game Composer
Mistakes. I’ve made a few of them.
Do you ever think about the mistakes you’ve made? Not like an awake-at-3am-thinking-about-my-life-mistakes kind of way, but more in a moment-of-calm, introspective kind of way?
My journey as a music composer has been an esoteric one. I never went to music school or really hung out with any other musicians, so I kind of developed my skillset in a bit of a bubble. As a result, I made (and probably still make) a lot of mistakes, and learn a lot of lessons along the way.
Having spent the last decade going from a hobbyist, to working part-time, to freelancing professionally, I find myself reflecting on what I wish I knew when I started out. I’m by no means an expert (and I don’t know if I ever will be), but if you’re at the start of your journey as a video game composer and stumble across this article, I hope you find something of value here.
I’ve written about my journey as a composer in the past, but from a more analytical perspective:
I wanted to take an opportunity to write a bit more from a place of qualitative introspection. That’s what I’m going to share with you now.
Here are the top 4 mistakes I’ve made as an indie game composer.
#1 — I didn’t play enough video games.
This has always been a problem of mine. Whilst I love reading about, researching, and keeping up to date with industry developments in the indie game space, I am fabulously bad at actually sitting down and playing games. So much so that I had to formularise my way out of the situation:
Being someone who is hardwired to try and squeeze every last drop of constructiveness out of their day, I have always wrestled with the guilt of sitting down and just relaxing. Allergic to just sitting still and enjoying a game. As If I could be spending my time elsewhere; like writing music.
I think this has been my single biggest pitfall as a game composer.
Whether it’s on a panel or just having a conversation with someone, I’ve been asked on occasion what my favourite game music is. This is something that should be on the tip of my tongue, right? I can talk about classical composers, film composers, and contemporary music that I love from all walks of life. But as someone who purports to be a video game composer, I should be able to list reams of reams of games out, and the people that composed the music.
But I can’t. Or at least I couldn’t for a long time.
I’m hyper aware of this when in the company of friends who are able to list out game soundtracks with encyclopaedic levels of knowledge and fervour.
It has taken me years to learn that sitting down with a game and really soaking it up by studying and enjoying how the visuals, gameplay mechanics, and narrative influences — and are influenced by — the music and general audio, is directly useful to me as a composer.
Possibly even essential.
By playing more games I can better consciously formulate my own opinion and approaches on indie game music composition.
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it?
#2 — I didn’t let my ears rest.
This reads a bit weird but let me explain.
Have you ever worked on something into the early hours of the morning, only to come back to it the next day to see a gaping, blatantly obviously way of how to make it better?
Yep. Me too.
Having spent the majority of my composer life alongside a career in the finance industry, most of my music writing time was consigned to evenings and weekends. If I wanted to contribute to a project, I had to work quicker than I otherwise probably would have done. As a result I would try to write, mix, master and export a piece in as quick a timeframe as I found humanly possible.
This was a mistake.
I do believe in the power of creative constraints — and this approach probably helped in that regard, but I have had to develop the discipline to stop, slow down, and come back to something later.
I’ve found this to be more of a problem than the opposite — the problem of writer’s block and motivation. I’ve had to learn the discipline and motivation that by slowing down in the short term, it will speed up the quality of my output over the long term.
Even if I think something sounds awesome, I will give it a couple of days and come back to it with a fresh pair of ears. In my view, it has improved the quality of my work.
Every. Single. Time.
#3— I didn’t emphasise networking as much.
I used to think about ‘networking’ as some kind of conceited, inauthentic attempt at trying to get to know people purely because of what you stood to gain from a connection, as opposed to a genuine curiosity to meet new people. I often avoided it because of that.
That was a mistake.
Going to networking events, whether they are through informal meetups or more formal events, have been a great way of meeting new people working in and around a similar space to me. I have found it best to approach it with no expectations, being a friendly person (at least I hope), and just trying to do as much (or more) listening than speaking. If you’ve met me in real life you’ll understand that this last one can be a challenge for me at times.
When I think about some of the most awesome projects I’ve worked on (outside of Propulsion Games), they are all — with minimal exception — resulting from people I have met in person. Some of them have taken years before they came to fruition, some have resulted in me making some lifelong friends, and all of them have given me a boost of self confidence and shunned the sliver of imposter syndrome that tries to make an appearance every now and then.
But I still haven’t prioritised networking as much as I could have done over the years and I’m actively working on fixing that.
#4 — I was obsessed with buying plugins.
As I mentioned above, before a couple of years ago, much of my music writing time was in the evening weekends alongside a career in another industry entirely. As a way of compensating for the lack of time, I fell into the trap of buying plugin after plugin thinking that I'd be able to slap something on a piece of music and it would make it better.
It didn’t.
I know I’m not the only one. This affliction is also referred to as gear acquisition syndrome, aka GAS. I would see the deals and to add another plugin or piece of software to my ever growing arsenal, but the problem for me was that I wasn’t purchasing with intention and growing in capability as I purchase these new tools.
A couple of years ago I took a step back, decluttered my collection of plugins, and have even taken the step to use the capabilities that come default with my digital audio workstation where I can. I now spend the time I was browsing, buying and installing instead learning, experimenting and practicing with a smaller pool of software.
I feel as though my skillset has benefited greatly from this.
I want to emphases a point at the end here that these are not necessarily regrets; I think mistakes offer an excellent opportunity to learn and grow from experience.
Ultimately, I’m still here composing game music. And I suppose in a way it’s thanks to learning from these mistakes that I am.
