Hi! I’m tobi weiss, a fulltime game composer since 2012 from bremen, germany.
TLDR: Here's one demo track: https://film-and-gamemusic.com/studio/For the last 2 years I've mainly worked on the music for Need For Cheese. Now that we have produced ~100 minutes (including layers/branches etc) we have now arrived at the final implementation. This means that I have space for other projects - since I can afford it, I make sure that a maximum of 2 projects are running in parallel. In addition to NFC, I've also been able to compose music for DH Games (Idle Heroes, 1m + Downloads), for example. Since 2008 I have been teaching the production (adaptive/dynamic) video game music and its role and function in 1 on 1 mentorings, which is also what I wrote my bachelor thesis about (too many people still think that it is enough to write a couple of acceptable loops & forgetting that video games are not a linear medium). To save space - you can find a complete CV on my website.
Here’s a Folder with some Alpha-Test Footage of my latest Game Project:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PXiR0u7MMTZeLcXSmZxjlyHorYbeQ6nd?usp=sharingHere’s my website:
www.indiegamemusic.dehere’s my 2022 Game Music Recap Album:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6tPrWk9xrEBLA59KxuqekB?si=9166db7807ee4d12here’s my 2021 Game Music Recap Album:
https://open.spotify.com/album/49DaqRqbbLm5ZHNM3vCnWY?si=m72DmntkSEeuQAU7x9aZXgHere are some interviews, gamemusic panels and podcasts with and about me:
https://film-and-gamemusic.com/about/and here’s my instagram (i share daily work insights over there):
https://www.instagram.com/filmandgamemusicMy thoughts on gamemusic:There is currently a problematic misunderstanding: It's not only about writing “good sounding music” when you write for games - an interactive and potentially highly immersive medium. Top Notch Music Production Skills are a must have - but by far not the most important thing. You should be able to “read worlds” & to make visuals become music, to understand things like:
Mood Techniques, Couleur Locale, Emotional Atmospheres, Music as a Signal/Storyteller, Layering, Instrumental/Melodic Leitmotifs, Adaptive Music in General, how to make music evolve with the visuals, connecting instruments with ideas/characters/places etc (aka “why do you use and instrument and when"?) and so much more. There are literally hundreds of things and awesome possibilities for composers to make a game become an as immersive and intense experience as possible - and that's what divides me from "fantasy music library XY".
My work routine: Here is a glimpse into my general schedule when producing a medium to large sized game OST (15-60+ minutes):
1) Written concept (With all possible framework conditions: What instruments do I use & why? How do they fit the story/coloring/mood of the game world? Which ideas/characters/locations are they possibly linked to? What kind of melodic leitmotifs do we have? What kind of tracks do we need in general? To what extent do we use the possibilities of dynamic/adaptive music etc? How many minutes of music will it be approximately? What role does the music have at which points? (Signal effect, couleur locale, mood technology, rewards etc) And all that. In the best case this Phase starts as soon as possible - I don't need a vertical slice/playable scenes to begin with work. The more time, the better, since this will allow the OST to grow hand in hand with the gameplay/visual development.
2) Mood Track: I produce a 5-9 minute long track in which I combine the sounds/instruments and moods thought up in the concept & try to cover all possible moods. I do that on the one hand to try out whether the theoretical concept "works" in principle and to do the first instrumental sound design (I use the project afterwards as a template for all other tracks). On the other hand, I can give the dev team a first presentation of how their world might sound. I send the team "current states" of the track every 1-2 days to talk about the progress and if necessary to adapt things immediately / to integrate new ideas.
3) i start the actual production of the soundtrack. From now on everything is very open/dynamic. I roughly work my way along the written concept & let the rest come to me. I continue to send "Current State" versions of my work after each working day so that I can talk about it directly. Communication is incredibly important. On the one hand you save a lot of time (actually revisions of entire tracks etc.), on the other hand this creates a much greater creative potential.
Feel free to contact me via mail and/or pm & have a great day,
tobi
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