Keeping Productive and Managing multiple tasks

This one isn't really a cool tip or showing a recording but instead a little monologue on keeping organized and tracking things that must be done. Everyone these days has a katrillion tasks being assigned to them in both their work and personal life. Tools like Jira are great for team collaboration and general "this should be worked on" but what about managing what you will be doing that day? Or even how long it actually takes for you to complete your tasks?

An option that I found that has been working wonders for me is TickTick. This is not at all endorsed and is me sharing how I've been able to keep focussed and better time manage myself. This app is basically an overhauled To-Do list that lets you assign tasks to specific days/times, sync with an existing calendar and turn events into tasks, quickly assign tasks to various lists, pomo timers, or even at a quick glance move a task to the next day or week.

The Pomo timer is something that as a contractor has been crucial for tracking how long it takes to complete a task while also remaining me every 25 or so minutes to take a break. This info could later be used for future pitches to accurately provide a time estimation. It's a fantastic tool that has been helping me keep organized in both my work and personal life and I highly recommend it to others as something that can be used to help better manage everything that has to be done.

I hope others find this useful or semi-inspiring in getting yourself organized.

Streamdeck and Wwise

Recently, for a new project I have the privilege of working on, I am finally getting the chance to use Wwise for the implementation. All my other projects were done with native unity Audio, and this was a very exciting endeavor. However, I am not as fast with Wwise as I would like so I figured I should put my nifty Streamdeck to use and began mapping out some common keystrokes that I would have difficulty remembering.

This profile will be available below.

I organized the profile so that anyone can use it, whether you have 32 or 6 buttons. It is split into a few folders:

- Misc

- View

- Create Actor

- Various 1 off functions such as toggle collapse container, commit changes (source control), Generate sound banks, start capture, and follow capture.

Misc

This folder is where I put common actions but didn't have an overall theme to them. Some of these actions include: open in editor, open in explorer, back rename, check out (source control), and open blend track editor.

View

This folder just has keystrokes to navigate Wwise and view its various windows. These are things like soundcaster, Mixer, Designer, Profiler, and soundbank.

Create Actor

This will arguably be the most used folder in the profile. Each of these commands create a child to whichever parent you have selected in the designer window. these commands include Blend container, switch container, sequence container, random container, and actor mixer.

All and all, I hope people find this profile useful. Whether it is for the workflow or the cool looking icons (thanks Ashton Fayendo!) There are some bugs when loading profiles where commands have to be remapped on different operating systems but please let me know if you have any questions.

YC _ Wwise Profile.streamDeckProfile

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Crowdsource Recording: Creatures

In June, I decided to run a crowdsource within the Field Recording Slack with members Daniel Meuser and Robbie Elias. Being a huge creature person and part 1 of the crowdsource had already been recorded, I decided to run part 2 of Creatures. It was way cooler of an experience than I anticipated - even after running doors back in 2021. At first, I thought that it would be pretty explanatory, then a few days into the crowdsource I realized the daunting question, what makes good creature source material?

Since every creature for every project is different, there is an endless amount of ways that a creature can be created. After listening to early submissions and beginning my own recordings, it was soon realized that there are certain qualities of a sound that make it sound like a creature.

- The throat

- The mouth movement

- the breath

For sounds of the throat of a creature, it could be any type of sound that had a longer sustain, anything that had a screech, or squeak. It was also learned that applying a resonant moving filter to the midrange of just about ANY sound, gave it a throaty quality that made it sound like it was coming from a creature.

The mouth movements of a creature are a crucial part in making it sound believable, the throat on its own often isn't enough to make someone believe the creature is alive, but hearing the mouth open, close, gurgle, click, before and after the main throaty element, giving it the extra spice that allowed for it to be believable. These elements could be any type of short squeak (a common theme), gurgles, bubbles, bowing of various objects, processing with tremolo, slowed-down recordings, etc. Having a quick burst of the mouth opening and then a longer more dramatic guttural sound is an excellent way to turn any throaty element into a creature.

The final element is the breath, truthfully this is more of a sweetener and how it works is very dependent on the project, but creatures need to exist in space, right? How do they react to the environment, breathe, Gills moving, the low rumbling of the chest, absorbing sounds through a crazy black hole? Just about anything goes for this but it's one of those extra things that help bring the creature to life.

All in all, this crowdsource was an awesome experience and the types of sounds the community came up with are breathtaking. I am incredibly proud of how this one came out and I also wanted to give a huge shoutout to the other hosts: Daniel Meuser and Robbie Elias.