I realized that I never shared a whole lot about myself other than what was totally kickin rad in my life at the time, with the most recent events being Burning Man. I just want you to see that there's more to me than, well, what I'm popular for. Here's a detailed biography covering the events surrounding my involvement with this mod. I talk about my debut into mod making and the film industry, as well as lessons I've learned as a result.
Basically, I want this to bio to be an inspiration to work toward anything you dream of. All people are created equal, so don't think you can't go out and do something incredible too.
Be forewarned, this blog entry may come across as rather arrogant. I justify it in the end, trust me.
I've been working with the Goldeneye Source team for over six years now. When I joined the team, I was a complete noob straight out of high school. I was an arrogant genius child that thought way too highly of himself. I gained many skills at a very young age, and that caught peoples' attention. I had universities offering me scholarships before I even entered high school. But man, the music I made back in 8th grade... was bad. So, so bad.
The first mod I applied to was, ironically, Perfect Dark: Source. I was still in high school at the time, and I was using our AV studio's computer to make music using Reason. I got the job easily and made a couple remixes for them. It wasn't long before I started having disagreements with the team. I don't remember what happened... I just remember thinking they're a bunch of assholes. They're French.
Next up was EnigmaComplex. It was a total conversion single player campaign with a suspenseful storyline. This was my first time doing epic, cinematic music. It turned out pretty decent once I acquired the proper sound libraries. You can tell I didn't know anything about mixing, but the music was still not bad. The mod itself, however, withered away just as quickly as it started. I then applied to Dreamscape: Pin Point Blank, since it was the most awesome mod concept out at the time. The programmer was brilliant as hell; he hacked all sorts of new shaders and shit into the engine specifically for the mod. In terms of music, modesty aside, I absolutely KILLED it. I still, to this day, consider the music I wrote for Dreamscape to be the best I've ever done. It's not very well produced, but the complexity behind the melodies and themes have been praised by music professors at Yale. Dreamscape would have been my Mona Lisa. Damn shame it vanished as well.
In between EnigmaComplex and Dreamscape, I somehow managed to convince Nickster to make me the lead audio developer for GoldenEye: Source. I seriously tear up when I think about him now. He was a great guy that really put a lot of faith in me that, quite honestly, was probably misplaced. I was 17 at the time. I knew nothing of proper production, but I could make a catchy, albeit simple tune in Reason. But hell, look at us now. We have the biggest, coolest soundtrack ANY MOD HAS EVER HAD. And it's not even over yet...
Anyway, I got my first film gig when I finished my first semester of college. I wound up on the set of a movie because my new surf buddy was really into film making. I met the director, told him I do music and I'm interested in trying film score. I said I'd do it for free. My first scoring job was for a feature length film, and I did it for free. Talk about jumping in headfirst. The film won awards at the film festival that year. I made sure to be there with business cards to hand out. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, though. I was about to have the most stressful two years of my life.
Junior year. My friend's film company was starting to take off; their RED ONE camera put them way ahead of the competition. I dabbled with 2D and 3D animation, further delving into the world of film making. I learn how to engineer sound and record foley. My musical abilities exponentially grew with the help of the theory classes I took. I wrote my first movie script. I was officially a one man movie making monster. I'd get paid gigs left and right for graphic design, music, animation, compositing, voice acting, etc. Never a lot. On average I was making $300-500 per piece of music, typically 30 seconds to a minute in length. After I began getting calls directly from the advertising agency, paychecks quickly shot up into the thousands. So I started fucking around.
I sort of established myself as the chauffer among a group of freshman women. Cute freshman women. Wild freshman women. We partied hard... Way, way too hard. There were way too many of them. I had to settle down a bit. Plus, school was starting to get a little overwhelming.
Being a professional composer in addition to an electrical engineering student trying to graduate while maintaining a social life had taken its toll. I was taking 2 credits more than the maximum amount of credits the university allows you to take. I got an exception because I'm smart. That's 21 credits of electrical engineering courses. Electrophysics and electromagnetics, to be precise. Semiconductor physics is the hardest class I've ever taken in my life. It's too abstract and yet makes so much sense, I hate it. But I love it. Life was not fun. I was sleeping maybe 4 days a week, and my bloodstream had been diluted by Monster and Red Bull. But hey, I built my first autonomous robot.
I don't know how, but I managed to pull it all off. I took a shit ton of classes and wrote a shit ton of music for a shit ton of commercials and movies.
I planned my last semester specifically to be a joke. 8 credits of music. Those damn non-science teachers are too strict. They think what they're teaching is the most important bullshit in the world. I was there for the degree, not the education. My quantum mechanics professor wouldn't give two shits if you never came to class. Yet, in music theory, I get a 5% grade deduction every time I miss a lecture. This isn't high school dammit.
I continued to compose for money, making a good living doing so. One night, amidst a drunken stupor, I see that I have many missed calls from my colleagues. Not only was my music nominated for Best Musical Score, but it won by a total landslide.
My life took a huge turn Summer of graduation. I screwed up and pulled a dick move on my friend. My film colleagues exiled me. Took credit for my work and they owe me thousands. I decided to focus on engineering, seeing as I was unlikely to receive film work for now.
Boredom got the better of me one day, so I fiddled with circuits. I started to wonder if I could drive an LED using an analog audio signal if it were amplified to the proper voltage. I built a quick three band OpAmp filter using a quadamp chip and your everyday resistors and capacitors. It worked.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/TOeiQsmaYCg" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/TOeiQsmaYCg</a>]]>After securing a research position to develop home automation software and interactive lighting, I went all out making the brighest, coolest, most configurable light show around. This was the first demo in my office. Buggy audio analysis software, but it's still an awesome milestone.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/TR7axhdXvoE" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/TR7axhdXvoE</a>]]>Here's a prototype of the LED panels I built. At this point I had switched from I2C to DMX and had to start over on animation code, so the panel doesn't react as much as I'd like it to in this video.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ICynIESZopc" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/ICynIESZopc</a>]]>The owner of tetris sees my efforts and offers me a job. Just like that. I was asked to do the biggest stage at the biggest party in the world. I didn't let him down either:
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/qjj7afR4lYY" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/qjj7afR4lYY</a>]]>My presence at Burning Man was ultimately a result of the Solar Decathlon, an international, multidisciplinary competition that revolved around universities creating conceptual, solar powered homes. I was a shoo-in when I applied to be the lead electrical engineer of the project. This was the peak of my stress level; I wrote a multiplatform home automation interface that allowed users to control all infrared devices from their phone.
From anywhere in the world.
The lighting system was the most advanced piece of work. The $22,000 system was top of the line in terms of smart energy savings and aesthetics. I created 400 panels of RGB, DMX controllable LED lights. These were placed inside the walls, shining through a translucent and diffusing layer of aerogel, which also helped insulate the home. I hacked a kinect camera into an occupancy sensor and locator. By tracking where people are in the house, that part of the house would light up. I'm not talking about the room someone was in; I'm talking about that part of the room. Imagine a portion of the wall by your computer lights up your desk, but the rest of the lights are off. Obviously the RGB lights can take any solid color, including white. They also react to music, animating in all sorts of crazy ways. I even made the TV gesture controlled. Ever wanted to turn on a TV by pointing at it? I made that happen.
Well, that house was never built. I created all the prototypes for every system I designed and confirmed that I could do it. Then we ran out of money and time and were forced to forfeit the competition.
The spirit of Hale Pilihonua (Our home's name) lives on. Our home was the coolest, most advanced concept in the competition. A little too advanced. We bit off more than we could chew.
Read more about that here:
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3f6bdc4c21aab50c82ffd2626&id=cc113dac3f&eWhile developing the lighting system in my laboratory, I often threw parties on the weekends. I had the entire top floor of a solid concrete engineering building to myself past 9 PM. I threw rave parties in my engineering lab. On campus. I mean, I never did that. That would be a very bad thing.
Someone I met at a party I never threw Invited me out to a private party, saying I need to meet some people. They owned the hottest club here, Asylum Afterhours. This club is rated #60 in the world according to DJ Magazine. I'm now their resident lighting specialist. I never asked them for money. They gave me some, but I constantly work on new lights for them for free. They take care of me. I never pay to get in, neither do my friends. I never pay for drinks either. I can sleep in the studio there if I need to after hard night of partying. I have good friends because I started being a good friend and respecting everyone like I respect myself.
That's why people started to respect me.
They say it's all about who you know. This is absolutely true. Do your best to appease everyone around you, and they'll take care of you. Seriously, I've donated hundreds of hours of work just to have to have the extra mark in my portfolio. My list of works has become so long I often completely forget about certain films or shows I helped out with. I've produced well over 500 pieces of music over the last ten years, and I'm not looking to stop any time soon. It's funny stumbling on an old project and having it sound rather familiar before realizing I freaking made it.
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Switching gears a bit, I want to reflect on my own development as a producer over the years. Let's be honest; the music I made for GES back in 2005 was rubbish. It was still awesome to have custom music, but damn it was pretty bad. I decided to take a look back at some of the older tracks I've done for this game, specifically by examining their spectra. It was pretty shocking to see how far I've come.
These images represent the frequency information in a 10-20 second clip over time. The brighter the image, the louder that frequency is. As you can see, The bottom of every image is very bright. That's why I'm basstronix
Here's an exerpt of Bondage, the first completely original track I contributed to the game back in 2006.
Any sound engineer will laugh at this picture. Notice that the instruments are clearly defined, and the bass is saturated. I think this song does have a simplistic charm to it, but it's not technically well made. The spectrum is pretty empty and cuts off at 17kHz. This is something that all of my old music is guilty of... and I think it's because I used FL's crappy compression tools. That's what gives people the feeling that FL's rendering engine just doesn't cut it.
Here's an exerpt of the first Silo track I did.
Wow, that looks like shit. You can see that I'm fillling in more of the spectrum, but still getting cut off at 17kHz... hmm... Definitely something wrong with the way I'm producing these tracks. Now the bass is even more saturated. This was done in Reason, and hosts typically have different built in limiters and compressers to work around. FL music seems very flat and devoid of high tones. Granted when Bondage was done, FL was at version 5 I believe. It was still a young DAW.
Here we have the current version of Silo.
17kHz cutoff again. Honestly, I'm not sure how I managed to do that to EVERYTHING I made, but I do know that after switching to a professional mastering alternative, my music quality has skyrocketed.
Above is an unreleased and completely original GE:S track I made recently. I made this after sitting down with a local producer to learn about sound engineering and all those little details arrangers don't typically think about. Sound really is a science; don't go thinking you can make a cool melody and lay it on a beat and call it music. When you're producing one big sound wave, you need to understand how sound works. You don't know how sound works if your mixer doesn't look like this ( although I suppose I could have labelled things)
Also, don't act like you're better than you are. I'm pretty arrogant, and all it did was slow me down when it came to learning what I needed to know. I've met plenty of nubs that think their music is the shit, and it's complete shit. It's an easy trap to fall into.
So there you have it. A brief history of my rise to fame
Just for the hell of it, here's a picture of me and my roommate. That man gets laid more than you'd think. You know, being such a nasty fuck and all.
I love you Pat.
And as a reward for making it to the end of my blog drenched in self-importance, here's a collection of 140 pieces of music I've done. Music for films, commercials, movies, tv shows, mods, and of course fun. It totals 3 and a half hours of music of very, very many styles. It contains many projects that I've decided I'll never go back to finish. I figured I might as well throw it all out in the open, even if only to humor your curiosity. I even threw a couple commercials in there. Epic ones.
So long as I can pay the bills, I'll never charge for my music. Even the new stuff that will be on my label's compilation album. They might not be too happy about that, but too bad. Just don't, you know, steal my shit. It's cool if you want to use it for a film or game or something, but you need to ask me first.
I'm not even going to act like all of the music in it is good. A lot of it fucking sucks, to tell you the truth. But hey, I got paid to make it and I'm not ashamed haha
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25686183/Trents%20Music.zipSo here I am. 24 and broke, but not for long.
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I owe a lot to the GoldenEye: Source Community. Thank you all for being supporters and fans of myself, Sole Signal, and Goldenzen. We wouldn't have been able to do it without you.
I want to take the opportunity to say that we all miss you, Nick. Rest in peace. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I never would have thought my music would end up being heard by thousands of people, let alone being included on a PC Gamer DVD. I miss you buddy. I really wish you could have been around to see how big of a success this game became, and to see the success it brought us developers. Mod communities don't get any closer than this.
You were a bigger influence on our lives than you could have ever imagined, Nick.
As a closing word, I want to address my arrogance by stating that although I think highly of myself, I think no more highly than I do of anyone. This is why I'm comfortable being so forward and proud of my accomplishments. I accomplished these things because I worked my ass off for them, not because I got good grades in school. I firmly believe that anyone can do anything, and I want to be an example of that. I have no reason to have any talent in anything, but I do because I tried. I succeeded because I wanted to. I did whatever it took. Moreso than most people would.
To a lot of people, what I do might seem like rocket science.
Gardening is fucking black magic in my opinion.
But that's because I've never tried it.
People are intimidated by certain fields of study. Don't get intimidated. It's fine if it doesn't interest you, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't understand it. You would if you gave it a chance and removed the "this crap is confusing" mental block.
I also don't believe talent. At least not the popular definition. People say talent is a natural inclination toward a certain skill that a person has a knack for.
Talent is an indicator of willingness to learn, nothing more. I believe in a natural interest, not natural instinct. I have an Interest in music that led to exploring its construction. If you're interested enough in something, you'll figure it out. You just need to want to. Then you can do anything. How else would I have gone from tonedeafness to perfect pitch, a supposed natural gift you either have your you don't?
I started to care.
I started respecting others as I do myself. A lesson I learned as a developer.
Which is why I brought Audix and Goldenzen onto the team.
I may think I'm the best, but you know what? I think they are too.
So please don't take my cockiness the wrong way. It's meant more for entertainment purposes, and I try to be very humble in person. This is another reason why I took down the blog I started when I was 18... That was a long time ago, and maturity has definitely changed me.
I hope you enjoyed the story of Trent, thanks for reading.
