Jack Menhorn

Sound Designer

Jack Menhorn is Sound Designer for video games. Also Editor in Chief at DesigningSound.org and a panelist on Game Audio Hour

Wwise Dynamic Music Demo

I have put together a video where I take music from the movie Inception, plug it into Wwise and make it dynamic!  I edited 3 different tracks from the movie soundtrack so that they could layer/loop/blend well together. I then made use of a few techniques in Wwise:

 -Menu music uses states to control Switch Container holding Sequence Continuous Playlist 

-Level Music uses states to control Switch Container holding Random Playlist 

-Battle music uses Random Playlist holding Music Segments based on RTPC

-"Health" LPF effect controlled by RTPC

-Pause/UnPause

 

I think taking linear music and solving the problems of fitting into a non-linear medium is really fun and educational. Although I didn't realize this when I picked Inception: using Hans Zimmer's music is a bit of a cheat since he is so textural and harmonic; the looping and layering was quite painless. I imagine a John Williams or other melody-driven score would have more difficulties, although would not be entirely impossible.  

What I've been up to: April-May

So I have got some pretty cool things I worked on come out in the last 2 or so months!

First off I was the Lead QA as well as Sound Designer of Star Trek Rivals!  An iOS card battle game that just came out the same time as the new movie! 

I also did the sound design for Deep Dungeons of Doom which just came out on iOS!  I believe it is also out for Ouya as well:

I also did the music and sound design for I Think In A Minute Or So I Will Explode which you can play for free on Kongregate!

I also did a track for Frequency Domain, which is a super-cool synesthetic game-thingy that you can download for free now! (And probably forever).  You can listen to my track here:

February/March Updates

​So I have been up to some neat stuff this past month or so:

-I did the tunes for a wonderful iOS game called Relic Rush.​  I also put out an OST album  for the game and had some good friends put together wonderful remixes for it. You can get that for free here.

-I also did the tunes for a game called Everlasting Tower​ which is a retro-runner-esque platformer thingy. You can currently play it for free on Clay.io or Kongregate. I believe other services and platforms will be coming in the future.

-In supercool news I contirbuted some sfx to a game called Ravensword: Shadowlands which has been nominated for a G.A.N.G . Award for Best Handheld Audio! While the nomination really belongs to Sean Beeson for his wonderful music, I am happy to be a part of the nomination.

​Hopefully we'll win! See you at GDC 2013!

Few things I have been up to:

I've been working on quite a few things here and there. Let's to a wrap-up of some of them:

I did some SFX for Ravensword: Shadowlands which has been all over the iOS Store front page.

Ravensword

Ravensword

Gear Jack

Gear Jack

I also did a few SFX for Gear Jack, also on iOS.

I have also been doing a bunch of sounds for Final Rush which is currently on Steam Greenlight (go vote por favor!). Reloads, robot voices, and servos are some of the sounds of mine you can hear in the video:

I've also been busy field recording and reading Paul Virostek's Field Recording: from Research to Wrap.  I've popped a few sounds up on Freesound:

Beating up a metal pasta maker

Beating up a dishwasher


Contributing to DesigningSound.org has been a blast so far.  We have recently switched to a monthly topic format and have gotten great responses.

Soon.

Soon.

I have also been poking at an Arduino Uno which has been very exciting. I only need a bit more experience with it and I will create 8 robot masters.

I've got some more stuff in the pot cooking, but Ill save those for another infrequent update.  See you at GDC!

Unexpected Recording Subjects Are The Best

This past week when Doomicane Sandy was heading up the Eastern coast, I took the opportunity to go to a local park here in the middle of North Carolina to try to record some cool wind and tree creaks.

While I debatably got some decent wind sounds I wasn't able to grab the creaking sounds I wanted. But I was able to get some wood creaks I didn't know I needed.

Bike ramp?

Bike ramp?

I had decided to walk along the bike trail rather than the pedestrian trail to minimize encountering anyone while recording.  About halfway through the bike trail I came across this wooden ramp-thingy off to the side.

I thought to myself: "Hey, this will probably get some good hollow wooden footsteps". So with my blimp-encased NTG-3 in hand, I walked up the ramp only to discover it wasn't fixed in place!

The structure had more in common with a see-saw than a ramp, balanced right in the middle with a fulcrum. So as I would walk back and forth along the planks the whole ramp would rock back and forth and make some fantastic creaking sounds!

Standing in the middle, above the fulcrum I shifted my weight back and forth and was able to get some pretty cool creaks and slams out of this unexpected treasure. Fortunately the wind was fairly calm while recording the ramp, (much to my dismay for the intended purpose of my trip!) Funnily enough; the day after I recorded this I had a time-sensitive project pop up with a specific need for such wooden, creaking slam sounds!

While I wasn't able to get very much in the way of wind and tree creaks, I sure as hell got something better.

Downloading the track above for free allows you to use it royalty free in any capacity commercial or otherwise as long as you do not sell the file as a SFX library sound. This sound will also be available on Freesound.org once it has been through the approval process.

Standing on the ramp in my fly kicks.

Standing on the ramp in my fly kicks.

Robots.