Sound Business with Akash Thakkar

#94: My guest today is Chris Bolte, who is a technical sound designer and audio implementer based out of Massachusetts.

Chris has built a wide-ranging library of sound effects used by creatives all over the world, co-wrote the book Elevate Your Audio Production with REAPER, and is most known for his work on the hit game Ghost of Yotei, where he implemented and designed sound across tens of thousands of assets at Sucker Punch Productions.

In this interview, Chris talks about how he pivoted out of a music career in 2022 and decided to go all in on game audio, how he learned his game audio skills so quickly with zero prior experience, how he landed the job at Sucker Punch working on Ghost of Yotei, and so much more.

Find Chris here:

Website: https://bolttracks.com/

Portfolio: https://christopherbolte.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherbolte/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/christopherbolte

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bolttracks.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bolt.wav/

Get info on The Game Industry Professional, my flagship course that teaches you how to make a great living in game audio here: bit.ly/gameindustrypro

#93: My guest today is Virginia Leo, who is a composer, sound designer, and pianist based out of Austin, Texas.

Virginia has worked on projects like Wobbly Life, had her work played by orchestras around the US, and is most known for her work on the hit game, The Baby In Yellow, which has hit over 300 million downloads to date.

In this interview, Virginia talks about her shift into video game music & sound after a classical music upbringing, starting out in game audio by doing game jams, how she landed the huge project The Baby In Yellow, how she keeps her career fun, sustainable, and interesting, and so much more.

 

Find Virginia here:

Website: https://www.virginia-leo.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginxel/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIzhERvVB_ChM7GIOKGduVQ

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1V7owLSpwbwiLVmSmpV2m5

Bandcamp: https://virginialeo.bandcamp.com/

 

Get info on The Game Industry Professional, my flagship course that teaches you how to make a great living in game audio here: bit.ly/gameindustrypro

#92: My guest today is Kevin Senzaki, who is a sound supervisor and sound designer based in Los Angeles. He has an incredibly diverse background starting first as a visual artists but then transitioned into sound during his college days. He got his career started during the early 2010s when he staretd working with YouTube Creators who would become massive like RocketJump and Corridor Digital.

 

Since then, he has worked with clients like Netflix, Apple, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, HBO, Adobe, and Dolby across a huge amount of projects across pretty much every medium from film to TV to video games. Kevin has won four Emmys for his work and was most recently nominated for two Emmys for his work on the HBO documentary 100 Foot Wave.

 

In this episode, we talk about how Kevin managed to get his first gigs with those early day YouTubers, how he managed to keep working during an economic crash, his minimalist approach to sound design, and so much more.

 

Find Kevin here:

Website: https://senzaki.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinsenzaki/

IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3339978/

 

Get info on The Game Industry Professional, my flagship course that teaches you how to make a great living in game audio here: bit.ly/gameindustrypro

#91: My guest today is Beatrix Moersch, sound designer based out of Montreal, Canada. She has worked on projects including Dead By Daylight, Gears 5: Hivebusters, Museum of Symmetry, Stories: The Path of Destinies, and is currently the audio lead at Don’t Nod Montreal, most recently working on Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. 

 

In this episode, we talk Beatrix’s transition from wanting to work in film and sound design and then game audio specifically, how she started her career in quality assurance and did freelanced in game audio on the side, and how sound designers can find paid work in the game industry, and so much more.

 

Find Beatrix here:

Don’t Nod: https://dont-nod.com/en/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatrixmoersch/?originalSubdomain=ca

 

Get info on The Game Industry Professional, my flagship course that teaches you how to make a great living in game audio here: bit.ly/gameindustrypro

#90: My guest today is Noa Beazley, who is a composer and music educator baed out of Boston, Massachusetts. She has composed for projects like Protodroid DeLTA, A Token War, and Phosfi working across a huge variety of genres all the way to dark folk music and everything in between. She’s also an assistant professor at the Berklee College of Music teaching game scoring. She’s also on the Board of Directors of the Boston Game Dev community and is also an organizer for the Boston Game Audio community.

 

In this episode, we talk about Noa’s classical music upbringing, how she rebelled against her roots, an instead went on to study jazz vocals, arranging, and media composition, how she managed to find her first bits of work, negotiates for projects, balances teaching, composing, and community organizing, and so much more.

 

Find Noa here:

Website: https://www.noabeazley.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noa-beazley-b74a7620a/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noabeazley/

 

Get info on The Game Industry Professional, my flagship course that teaches you how to make a great living in game audio here: bit.ly/gameindustrypro