Here’s what I’ve been doing on the side. (Patreon)

I run the one-person sound department at a game-marketing company (the story of how I got here is a wild one), and I’ve just wrapped the audio for a new Mechabellum unit reveal—on a 24-hour deadline. The intro, built in Ableton, follows a linear tempo rise from 30 BPM to 100 BPM, a tricky request from the video editor that’s difficult to pull off on most grooveboxes. The editor and I stay in separate lanes—I don’t touch video, they don’t touch audio—though we both understand each other’s craft well enough to keep the process seamless. It’s an unusual setup, but it works.

For the rest of the sound design, I repurposed in-game effects and layered assets from my own library (wooshes, hits, risers, and so on). The music under the voice-over is a track I wrote on the M8 Tracker—a tool I’ve leaned on for several promo videos. My guiding principle is simple: every sound should make you think, “That belongs in a video game.”

I master the voice-overs separately, and cleaning up recordings from all kinds of home studios has really sharpened my dialogue-polishing skills.

How I got the gig: About a year ago, an Octatrack student hired me to teach him how to score a film. In our last session I suggested he try Mechabellum because the matches are short. We said our goodbyes—and he went on to become the world’s #1 player (still holding a top-five spot). When the publisher asked him to build a marketing team, he invited me. I didn’t hesitate; you don’t say no to fun, creative, chill work, not right now. I've only done a 5 videos so far (2 unpublished) and created a few bumpers that appear in videos from before I took over all sound work, but it's been a really interesting journey so far.

What I’ve learned: you can absolutely work at a professional level with your favorite hardware. I’m glad I invested the time in those wonderful machines.Here are a couple more vids I did the audio for:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOgSt_DDmn4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB0GbglAEhk