Are you interested in working as a musician in the games industry?
I caught up with Reffe, a Sound Artist working on Circleback’s upcoming game Curation.
Reffe describes himself as a “Sound Artist” — someone who works across every audio and music discipline: music production, composition, sound engineering, design, foley, field recordings and more.
(He’s 50/50 on the term though — “Music Producer” and “Sound Designer” also do the job. Or perhaps we could just go with “Audio Polymath”?)
In additional to how great he is with tech, Federico is very passionate and brings emotion to every track he creates. His tracks help shape the atmosphere of Curation, which shows how important Audio is in games.
🎤 How did you join Circleback? What’s the team like?
During the 3rd year of my BA in Creative Music Technology at Portsmouth University I had the pleasure of collaborating with the team when it still was a university project. I was tasked by them to compose several music pieces to uplift and enhance the feel of what we now proudly call ‘Curation’. I love the vibe and ‘family-like’ feel all of the members share with each other, and the deep, vivid passion these guys have for video games. Combine that with their incredible skills, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for an amazing Game Dev team.
🎼 What’s it like working on Curation’s music?
Music in itself is something that is very difficult to describe, but this is something different. I enjoyed and still enjoy every moment in the music composition process, and thanks to these guys I tapped into a branch of the Music / Audio world that always fascinated me, and that I would definitely love to turn into a successful career.
Oh yea did I mention the first time I opened the demo on Steam I cried while listening to my music?
🎧 What inspired you to get into music? Any cool side projects?
Since my father lended me his mp3 player I never stopped listening to music. It has been a fundamental part of my life and it definitely has helped me shape my character and who I am today. I have a couple of different projects going on at the moment, if you want to check some stuff that I’ve done come visit my portfolio website 😊
Also did I mention my father never got back his mp3 player? I love you dadddd ❤️❤️❤️
🧠 What’s your day-to-day like? What tools do you use?
Morning Routine
Since I’m currently still studying, the days vary a bit. But generally I’d say wake up (hopefully at a reasonable time), usual morning routine, then straight into some ear training (developing the ability to identify and analyse sounds only through hearing) and music theory (basically learning the vocabulary and grammar of the music language) as being the to wake the brain up, learn new stuff or strengthen my knowledge.
Education & Studying
After that I work on either University or personal projects (usually depending on deadlines and how I organised myself for that day) until lunch time, with some breaks where I play some guitar to detach myself from my laptop (work-related activities include producing songs, composing music, sound designing, recording music or foley [the art of creating or re-creating sound effects for picture, in either a realistic, hyper-realistic or fictional way] creating media content and stuff like that).
Relaxing
After lunch is pretty much the same thing, then we hit the gym, dinner, maybe some more work if I feel great that day, after that some chill time either alone, with the fam / gf / friends.
Before bed it’s reading time, to let my brain cool off, and then straight into bed.
Sofware & Tools Reffe Uses
The software I mainly use is FL Studio, which is not very ideal for composing, in fact I’m slowly transitioning on ProTools (which I usually use for recording and mixing). I also use Reaper, which for Sound Design is extremely flexible and powerful!
Here is the Curation main theme arrangement in the music software
💡 Advice for aspiring audio professionals?
I’m in no position to say that I’ve reached the finish line. I wasn’t yesterday, and I won’t be tomorrow. But I don’t care. Just keep on going, keep on pushing. Don’t be too hard on yourself, take your time and rest if needed, but master the art of showing up and being present in the moment, you never know when the train is going to pass, and if it does you better catch it. Idk where I read this but I completely resonate with this:
‘luck is when preparation meets opportunity’.
So be prepared. Also put yourself into situations where you are almost “forced” to be doing what you need to do, especially if you feel like you are a lazy person. Commit to stuff now even if you are 1% convinced and 99% doubtful, it’s gonna be ok! Even my contribution to Curation would not have existed if I decided to “do the easy thing” and create a boring project with the skills I already had just for the sake of getting a good mark. I would say that collaborating with other people (who take stuff as seriously or even more seriously than you do) will help you grow from both a personal and professional standpoint. Look at me (or maybe listen to me, or to my music actually…WhaTEveR!), I was no composer before this project started, and now I feel confident enough to throw myself into new and exciting opportunities to constantly challenge myself, like creating my own music (I might release an EP before the end of the year o.O) or joining teams / organisations to help them develop their projects!
🎮 What are you enjoying at Circleback?
It is providing a real-world environment that I have never experienced during my university years, which is helping me understand the dynamics of how the work environment works. I also love the team, as I said earlier I love the passion and the commitment my colleagues are putting into the project, which pushes me to push even more on a daily basis. All I can say is let’s get it guys!
(and also don’t forget to wishlist Curation when it comes out 😃)
🔊 Bonus: Hidden Feature!
When the project was initially conceptualised there was a contender concept for the video game. Here you can listen to the first 2 ideas ever created for the respective concepts:
