Some preliminary responses to questions I know you're about to ask:

- Yes, I met up with tons and tons of people. Hopefully some projects in the future. Found out two or three new ways to get money from making music that I hadn't thought of before.

- No, I didn't get an award this year. I wasn't eligible for the AudioGANG student/apprentice contest anymore since I'd done a professional project shortly after the GDC last year. However, I participated in a much more useful event:

- The "Demo Derby", where dozens of composers play their 1-minute-long demos for a panel of experts: Bob Rice (THE videogame music agent), Alexander Brandon (game audio guru, literally wrote the book on it), Chance Thomas (extremely prominent veteran game composer; he scores tons of movie games, like King Kong, X-Men, etc.), Paul Lipson (president of AudioGANG, THE guild for game composers), Chuck Doud (president of SCEA's music department, THE guy to impress). This year was my first time participating, and it was a lot more intimidating than before since 1) much bigger room w/ large audience, 2) they made you walk up to a mic in the center of the room while they played your piece and then grilled you on it, and 3) did I mention the panel??

The first ~10 demos or so were pretty much amazing, it was this random cohort of experienced LA-based composers who all got their scores performed live by Prague orchestras. Most likely they were film music refugees, I'm pretty sure they were all over 30 and quite experienced already (no idea where they came from though, I'd never heard of any of them from AudioGANG). The judges were brutally honest and very insightful, and surprisingly specific in their comments.

Well eventually it got to mine, I chuckled a bit at how I compressed a 3-minute montage into a 1-minute shambles, but the judges actually seemed surprised and impressed by it. Actually I was practically blushing at some of the positive comments they made (apparently Paul had been "a fan of my music" since before we'd even met!), and I was of course quite excited when Alex and Chuck said they "wanted to hear more"... since, well, pretty much that's what I came to the GDC for - getting my music heard by the people who really matter. From what I've seen, composing for SCEA is pretty much the best job anyone could ever hope for, it's like a dream team of composers and implementation schemes. So, hopefully something good will come of it after I start following up in a few days.


- Of course the coolest thing was hanging out with Damian, Carsten, Anton, and Jeff. I roomed with C&D, and they had tons of experience in the whole networking/relationship-building thing so they really kept me on my toes. That and we pretty much came up with a whole lexicon of GDC-related terminology, which was fun in an elitist sorta way. The best part about our room though was that none of us were really in competition with each other; the "ditch rule" was still in effect, but since one of us was a composer, another was a sound designer, and the third was an implementor, we never really stepped on each others' toes. That and we all have tons of respect for each other; some extremely preliminary thoughts about starting up our own full-service audio outsourcing company in 5-10 years came about. So, we'll see what happens.    ;-)

- I also got to do a lot of cool stuff outside of the conference itself, like visiting Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts, meeting up with some gamedevvers I'd been working with, watching 300, and intentionally humiliating myself at a dance club just to get a free cab ride (word to the wise: self-inflicted humiliation is some of the most fun there is in life!). That and revisiting old friends (and composer-celebrities!) from last year's GDC was pretty epic too. Although I have to say I was most impressed by DJ Drunken Master telling me that I had an unusually good knack for writing melodies, then proceeding to sing back to me the theme from a totally obscure song I barely even remember putting up on my site! (weirdly, Chris Tin did the same thing with one of the songs from my demo montage... strange how only two years ago I was getting lambasted for being UNmelodic)


Aaaanyways, this turned out a lot longer than I thought it would, but hopefully it'll answer a lot of the questions I keep getting from people over and over and over. Interestingly enough, I kind of am starting to learn a lot more about what it's like being an audio lead for a game company, having to put up with hordes of composers, scads of demos, and endless emails. A good sign of maturity in any industry is learning how to respect someone else's time with succinctness and directness, knowing how to present your material in as easily digestible a format as possible while representing yourself as best you can.


Note: that rule does not apply to blog entries. ;-)