Game Audio Hour

Austin Wintory joins the trio of Mike, Alex, and Vince to chat a bit about game music! From the beginning of Austin's game scoring to his latest work on Stray Gods and various forays in-between, the crew have a rollicking good time that, yet again, pushes the GAH to consider naming the podcast after another unit of time rather than a mere hour. 

Notable mentions include:

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Summerfall Studios)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Thomas Was Alone (Mike Bithell)
Ape Out (Devolver Digital)
Age of Ash - The Kithamar Trilogy, Part 1 (book by Daniel Abraham)
That Total Age (album by Nitzer Ebb)
Donut Dodo (pixel.games)
Tacoma (Fullbright)
The War On Music (book by John Mauceri)
Music for Prime Time (book by Jon Burlingame)

Featuring: Austin Wintory, Michael Gordon Shapiro, Alex May, and Vincent Diamante

Recorded July 28th, 2023

Alex and Vince are at it, this time with the former making the latter quite envious with tales of roasted wild boar and hot takes on EQ plugins! Vince's Mac is back in the conversation, but plenty of other things also figure, including a decent amount of game playing on Vince's part!

Notable mentions include:

Midsummer (Swedish Holiday)
Acoustica (Audio software / Icon Digital)
Claro (EQ plugin / Sonnox)
Backbone One (Mobile phone controller)
Aether Gazer (Mobile action game / Yostar Games)
Vampire Survivors (Action game / Poncle)

Featuring: Alex May and Vincent Diamante

Recorded June 23, 2023

Mike and Vince chat about June announcements... or in Vince's specific case, a lack of ability to announce when one of the not-E3 venues to emerge from the ashes of E3 is shut down. But Apple's WWDC has got both these composers thinking about their newest top of the line entries in computing.

Notable mentions include:

Mr. Coffee
Apple Mac Pro
Synful Orchestra
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour
Humanity

Featuring: Vincent Diamante and Michael Gordon Shapiro

Recorded June 9, 2023

Alex and Mike chat about a diverse range of gear, as well as an even more diverse range of relationships with their gear. Music competitions, old plugins, and new DAWs figure into the discussion as the two consider what make their tool and instrument choices the ones for them.

Notable mentions include:

Eurovision and Melodifestivalen (music competitions)
Luke Black (Serbian musical artist)
PSP 2445 EMT (reverb plugin)
Bitwig Studio (live performance oriented DAW software)
Silo (TV/Book SF series)
Front 242 (Belgian 1980s electronic music group)

Featuring: Alex May and Michael Gordon Shapiro

Recorded May 26, 2023

The duo of Alex and Vince wax philosophical... but not before chatting about various bits and pieces of audio fun. Mic preamp buffers, iLok dongles, and germanium (atomic number 32) figure among the topics as they eventually wind their way through another GAH episode that is (of course!) rather longer than an hour.

Notable mentions include:

Tierra Audio (pro audio manufacturer)
Alesis MidiVerb II (1980s Digital Effects Unit)
Cliff Williams (Bassist for AC/DC)
Cities: Skylines (city-building game by Colossal Order)
Rachmaninoff Vespers (choral work)
Scriabin Op. 8 Etudes (piano cycle)

Featuring: Alex May and Vincent Diamante

Recorded May 12, 2023

Alex is back from a trip from Reboot Develop Blue and the remaining crew of Mike and Vince have to imagine the wonders of a beautiful town in Croatia playing host to a few hundred game developers. From there it's off to the races as it's an episode of Game Audio Hour that is... only an hour long? What a surprise!

Notable mentions include:

Dragon Age (RPG / BioWare)
Cuberpunk 2077 (RPG / CD Projekt Red)
Skullgirls (Fighting game / Hidden Variable)
Gods (Platform game / The Bitmap Brothers)
Brown and Friends (animated series / Netflix)
Succession (TV series / HBO)

Featuring: Alex May, Michael Gordon Shapiro, and Vincent Diamante

Recorded April 28, 2023

Vincent has NAMM happening in his backyard, Alex is moving forward by looking back at some 90s arcade classics, and the two connect for further topics and ponderings on game music in this episode!

Notable mentions include:

Future Music Magazine
Time Crisis (arcade game by Namco)
Radiant Silvergun (arcade/Saturn game by Treasure)
Overwatch 2 (esports game by Blizzard Entertainment)
Death Stranding (PlayStation 4 game by Kojima Productions)
Expressive E Osmose (synthesizer/MIDI controller)

Featuring: Vincent Diamante and Alex May

Recorded April 14, 2023

Vincent, Alex, and Mike are back to chat about stuff the week after Game Developers Conference, and the trio have some thoughts about how they've extracted the most value out of that conference. Then it's on to the latest flavor of AI making the rounds, and then the stuff that the guys have been not-so-conspicuously consuming.

Notable mentions include:

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (game by Summerfall Studios, soundtrack by Austin Wintory)
The Victorian Music Development Office
Star Trek Picard - Season 3 (Soundtrack by Stephen Barton & Frederik Wiedmann)
Turrican II: The Final Fight (Soundtrack by Chris Huelsbeck)

Featuring: Vincent Diamante, Alex May, and Michael Gordon Shapiro

Recorded March 31, 2023

Alex and Vincent are at it again, chatting game audio and going through a bit of history all the while. Hopefully you enjoy our BRIGHT and BUSY conversation!

Notable mentions include:

Citizen Sleeper (game by Jump Over the Age, soundtrack by Amos Roddy) - https://www.fellowtraveller.games/citizen-sleeper

Featuring: Alex May and Vincent Diamante

Recorded March 10, 2023

Alex recounts a tale of woe to Mike and Vince, but this one has a happy ending... and it doesn't even involve compressor plugins, for once!

Notable mentions include:

Logitech MX Vertical Mouse - https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-vertical-ergonomic-mouse.910-005447.html

Featuring: Alex May, Vincent Diamante, Michael Shapiro

Recorded February 24, 2023