Audio Department
Do you like making cool music and SFX? Have you ever wanted to make music for video games? If so, you're in the right place!
Our Audio Department aims to provide club members with the resources and tools they need to create their own audio assets and incorporate them into games! We'll help you learn how to analyze music from video games and how to make them for your own game projects!
What do we do?
We host weekly workshops where we teach people how to use Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) for asset creation and how to use other types of music-making software.
We also have a group of audio designers called the Audio Strike Team, who fulfill requests for audio assets from game teams throughout the quarter.
If you're interested in joining the Audio Strike Team or want to learn more about it, please contact either Nelson Mencos (nelon juice), Estey Boling (namiwami), Mia Murasaki (deltamiyo), Tim Kashani (Timotainment), Haley Vlahos (Stratagist), Jadon Ark (Jad-Doggy#7223), or Darius Freidhof (ninjadare) on our club's Discord.
What do we teach?
We primarily teach people how to use DAWs and other audio applications to produce music, incorporate music into video games, and analyze music from video games. Specifically, topics we teach include:
Implementing audio in Unity
Music theory fundamentals
Voice acting basics
Compositional techniques
Recording and editing sounds
How to reproduce sounds and songs
Basics of using a DAW
Basic audio terminology
Introduction to mixing
Industry Relevance
Working with audio in this club teaches some fundamentals that can be used in careers related to audio design and composition, such as:
Soundtrack Composer
Record Producer
Recording Studio Manager
Audio Designer
Foley Artist
Audio Producer
Sound Engineer
Voice Actor
Audio Technician
Audio Programmer
Digital Audio Editor
Software and Tools
Here are some of the applications we use for work in the Audio Department.
FAQs
What is the Audio Strike Team?
This is usually a group of students interested in game audio but not sure if they want to commit to a quarter-long game project. In Audio Strike, we post audio requests from the VGDC game projects, where members can take these small audio requests to build up their audio skills.
Do I need any prior SFX/ music production experience to join Audio Strike?
Ideally, it would be best to know the basic physics behind sound as well as music theory, up to chords and major scales. Don’t freak out though! It’s basically do-re-mi from a more conceptual perspective. It would also be nice to have worked in one of the DAWs before. Again, we’ll help you figure out all those crazy buttons and dials.
Do I need to be in Audio Strike to attend Audio workshops?
Nope! If you're a student at UCI, you are 100% welcomed to attend the workshops, no matter what discipline you're from! There are many introductory workshops in the beginning of the quarter where we just sit back and listen to and analyze music and sound effects!