08-24-2020: Producing Music in the Cloud

Hello!

We're plugging away at assets for the next build and just wanted to talk a little bit about the process for real-time music collaboration when our composer and engineer are in their respective homes due to... well, you know :/

So it starts with both having a version of Avid's Pro Tools and Zoom. Our engineer has the more complete studio setup, which includes hardware, plug-ins, and software instruments, so the audio is being put together on their end. The engineer can send playback of the audio via Zoom to the composer. The composer can open up the project via the cloud on their own PC, but without all the bells and whistles that the engineer has, it's a very incomplete version of the project. The composer can record MIDI performances, and since MIDI is a very lightweight data format, the composer can upload entire MIDI tracks and the engineer can download them within seconds. The engineer then sends the MIDI through software instruments to get actual audio, and applies any signal processing needed to get the desired sound, and instrument by instrument the music is put together.

If you want to know more about how the music or anything else in the game is put together, just ask!

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