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Richard has advice for the next generation

We asked Richard what sort of advice he’d give to someone seeking to enter the games music industry today. Here are the useful tips he offered. It’s important to have your own musical voice. If you’re just gonna be another composer that sounds like Mr A, or Mr B Hollywood composer, Mr A and Mr B are already doing that. What fresh ideas do you bring? If people don’t know who you are, they can’t hire you. Go to game jams, go to networking events, go to conferences, go to game launches. Be a problem solver. Learn how to do some basic sound design and voice-over editing. Look at the indie sector to try and get a foot in the door, find out what projects are happening. Even look for projects from people who are still in university. These days, you won’t walk into Sony and score a PS5 game. It’s good to look for an established composer who is looking for assistance. For example, I have an assistant, and then towards the end of a big project I put a team together of about ten people for the last three to six months. Be a nice person, don’t hassle people too much. It’s fine to connect with people and remind them who you are every six months, but if you email them every week that’s not really gonna work. Learn to take rejection. Sometimes you’ll pitch a demo for a gig that we don’t always get. If you’re not working on a game now, try and rescore some games footage, and as long as you credit the developer, the publisher, and the original composer and make it clear that it’s a rescored demo, that’s a good way to practice. You might have to have another source of income when you’re starting out, but that could be music related. You could teach, do orchestration, music preparation. Look at those kinds of things to earn money. But you’ve got to be a specialist and most of the good courses would teach much of this in the USA, Europe and Australia.