Kevin Regamey @regameyk Twitter profile

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Tunic’s been out for a while now, sooooo… Let’s talk about audio secrets!

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Celeste's dialogue design is the #1 most-asked-about topic when it comes to the game's sound. I figured I'd share some of how we went about creating it.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

6 years

Happy Halloween everyone! @celeste_game

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

First, we explored some simple synth sounds to figure out a general tone for a given character's voice. Once we had a foundation timbre established, we moved on to setting up how that tone might change over time.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 months

Lil @celeste_game behind-the-scenes for ya... Here's one of the better bugs we hit during that week of rapid audio dev. 😅 (volume warning? ...haha)

Celeste

@celeste_game

3 months

Gear up for the Celeste 6th Anniversary Challenge! 🗻 Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain is here and you can play it on @itchio . 👉

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Cheers all!

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

5 years

I don't want to alarm anyone, but my current IL goal for chapter 9 is "sub 2 hours".

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Then, we broke down the emotional range of a given character, and figured out what the sonic characteristics of those emotions might be.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Essentially, using a Parametric EQ in FL Studio, we modelled what are called "formants" - that is, naturally occurring spectral peaks in human vowel sounds. These spectral peaks have specific frequency positions and relationships, and they looked something like this:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

We then pressed PLAY in FL Studio (to set the formant automation in motion), and then "performed" the emotions on a midi piano keyboard while messing with the pitch wheel to try to hit all those characteristics we'd laid out above.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Is the emotion generally high or low in pitch? Does the pitch stay in one place, or move around a lot? Is the speech slow and careful, or is it rapid and pointed? What kind of pitch movement should we hear, and what kinds of sentences are these sounds representing?

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

We then automated the frequency positions of those peaks over time, to resemble the way the human voice might transition between vowel sounds.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Seems a good day to share a few of Alex Trebek's outtakes from when I worked on "Jeopardy!" for the Wii U. Hopefully these bring a smile to your face on this sad day. <3 (sound on) 🔈🔉🔊 #AlexTrebek #Jeopardy @Jeopardy

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

My sincere thanks to everyone who came out for my Tunic Audio Talk. Wonderful to be up on stage again. ❤️

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

This was basically a lot of me reading the script and "over acting" the dialogue.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

The Powers That Be have kindly invited me to speak about Tunic's audio at #GDC2023 ! I'll be going through all of it - creative direction, sound design methods, and technical implementation. We did some unprecedented stuff, and I can't wait to share.🤘

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

4 years

Married. 🤵👰 🎉

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

5 years

Holy heck. Thanks everyone.

The Game Awards

@thegameawards

5 years

Best Independent Game award goes to @celeste_game ! Fantastic speech! #TheGameAwards

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

That's pretty much it! Hope you learned something about #gameaudio ! If you'd like to see a detailed breakdown of how the dialogue event works, you can watch it here:

Celeste FMOD Commentary - powerupaudio on Twitch

powerupaudio went live on Twitch. Catch up on their Creative VOD now.

www.twitch.tv

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

My TUNIC Audio Talk is up on the GDC Vault! I know some folks were asking if it'd be available after GDC, and it looks like apparently YES! No login required! AMAZING🤘

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Well, apart from following suit with the “secrets-everywhere-in-plain-sight” direction of the game…our dev team had a little phrase that we employed throughout development: “CONTENT FOR NO ONE”

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

We recorded the audio output of that performance on a separate computer, and then went through and picked out the "good takes". These good takes were sorted into 3 basic categories per emotion: - Quick passing syllables (20) - Emphasized syllables (10) - Sentence endings (10)

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Using @fmodstudio , we set up an emotion-driven (actually character portrait-driven) event system... We had one audio event per character, and each dialogue event plays non-stop for the duration of a given character's conversation in-game.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Thanks for reading and listening! (bonus: here’s an action shot of me working through all this stuff, courtesy of @zoesees a long time ago)

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

What an actually amazing day. Congrats @dicey ! Congrats @lifeformed ! Congrats @FinjiCo ! Congrats @SparseGameDev ! Congrats @PowerUpAudio ! HOLY SHIT WELCOME TO CANADA COLE!!! 🍁🍁🍁🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦

Courtney 🍄 Latreille

@LittleLatreille

1 year

Holy shit my boyfriend is now officially a Canadian citizen and right after the ceremony Tunic won a BAFTA for Best Debut Game!!!!! WHAT A GOOD DAY! So proud!!!! 🍁🇨🇦🦊

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

We loop on silence until it's that character's turn to speak. When that character speaks, the code-side sends the current character portrait info to FMOD, and FMOD responds by sending the playhead to the appropriate emotion on the event timeline.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

The seeker spell!

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

❤️❤️❤️🦊🦊🦊🎉🎉🎉

Zoe Si

@zoesees

1 year

@TUNICGAME WINS BEST INDEPENDENT GAME AT #DICEAwards AND MY BRILLIANT HOT HUSBAND @REGAMEYK ACCEPTS, HUGE DEAL, CONGRATULATIONS TEAM 😭❤️🦊

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Quite some time ago, Jeff and I dared to wonder if perhaps there was more to #gameaudio than our toxic-as-hell first job had to offer. And so, we made a plan, pooled our life savings, and incorporated @PowerUpAudio . That was 10 years ago today. Best decision ever. Love you pal.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

You can also download and check out the complete @celeste_game FMOD project (along with all source sound & music - thanks @kuraine !) available on the fmod website.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Update: It happened again and this is the RAW RECORDING I AM NOT KIDDING. SERIOUSLY ALL I DID WAS TURN IT UP

Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Of course, her full-of-salmon stomach stops wildly bubbling as soon as the mic comes out. :(

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

4 years

Throwback. #YOLO

Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

6 years

Happy Halloween everyone! @celeste_game

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

5 months

There was a whole lot of mono audio at @thegameawards tonight. I'm gutted for all the audio folks who had their hard work presented in such a poor light. So... here's a thread of all the affected trailers, in beautiful FULL STEREO SOUND!

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

When we arrive at that emotion, we progress through a random sequence of syllables via a transition system we built. FMOD doesn't have a great way of handling this degree of specificity when moving through a random sequence of audio files, so making this was pretty tedious.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

It’s in enemy sounds like with this lil probe guy:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

It necessitated manually placing every syllable on the timeline, and setting up a "transition hub" that would rapidly send the playhead out to these various syllables. No syllable was allowed to play twice in a row, and emphasized syllables had a lower probability of playing.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Tunic’s audio design was aimed in that same direction. Early in development, we imagined the game having a “voice” of sorts - a voice that the player was not equipped to interpret. SO. I designed a musical cipher - heard throughout the entire game, but never acknowledged.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Anyway! “Tuneic” shows up all over the game. It’s in UI sounds, like when you start a new game:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

❤️❤️❤️

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

The hub also made it trivial to fine-tune the spacing between syllables (as we could move entire hub's position rather than forty separate transition markers).

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Anyway, once the text-draw ends in the game's UI, FMOD is notified that speech should conclude. The playhead then returns to silently waiting for the next portrait/emotion. (It either plays an end syllable before returning, or it returns immediately if on an emphasized syllable).

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

And by the way, if all this talk of ciphers tuned to the music has you wondering - Yes, this is a large reason why we called the game “Tunic”.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

6 years

Excited to soon be releasing the entire @fmodstudio project for @celeste_game , complete with source sfx from @PowerUpAudio and music from @kuraine . Not sure this has been done before...should be super helpful for both the modding community and for personal #gameaudio education!

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

Update: Security at Heathrow took the BAFTA out of my carry on, and showed it around to the staff "so they will know what they're looking at next time a BAFTA comes through the scanner". 😂

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

5 years

Holy

GDC

@Official_GDC

5 years

Congrats to the Celeste team for winning the award for Best Audio! #GDC19

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

And of course, the door in the mountains:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

Let's GO?!

Power Up Audio

@PowerUpAudio

1 year

HOLY SMOKES TUNIC won Best Audio of 2022 in Edge Magazine!? How did we miss this! Thank you so much @edgeonline !

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

One main goal of Tunic’s overall design was to make it feel like this world isn’t *for* you. You can’t read the language. There is no clear path. You are not the hero. You are small and lost in a land full of mysteries - many of which are hidden in plain sight.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

We used that phrase to refer to little (or large) things that we hid deeply in the game, for no other reason other than because we liked creating it, and we liked knowing that it’s there. Will anyone ever find it? Maybe. But maybe not, and that’s okay.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

4 years

Saw a post on r/vancouver showing how disgusting Trout Lake was after all the fireworks last night. Zoe and I decided to deal with the problem, and picked up some 40lbs of trash - mostly fireworks remnants. Please, revelers. Clean up your shit.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

The legend @amora_b at work. ♥️

Extremely OK Games

@exok_games

3 years

🍓 Celeste high res art - a thread! 🍓 Behold @amora_b , our amazing artist!! 💜 She worked on soooo many things for #Celeste , but let's focus on the game high res art and Theo's Instagram for now:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

Feeling pretty good about my Tunic Audio Talk coming up later today. It's definitely gonna be a little bit off the rails, but I'm looking forward to sharing a bunch of STUFF with everyone! Room 3002, 4pm-5pm

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Oh cool, a few gaming sites picked up the Celeste dialogue breakdown. 👍

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Btw got married again. Was way better the second time around. ❤️

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

"As a sound designer, what defines your sound?" me:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 months

If you want to know what I've been doing for the past week 👀

Celeste

@celeste_game

3 months

Gear up for the Celeste 6th Anniversary Challenge! 🗻 Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain is here and you can play it on @itchio . 👉

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Or this spell being cast:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Importantly, the audio track also features a series of musical arpeggios that occupy the same time-space as the glyphs, and correspond 1:1 in meaning. This is our musical cipher’s Rosetta Stone.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

SO anyway… I know what you’re thinking. Why, right? Why go to all this trouble?

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Finally, thanks to Tunic’s incredibly talented and capable composers @lifeformed & @alsojanice , “Tuneic” is all over the soundtrack - offering some secret lyrics of a sort. (Thanks for being down with all this nonsense you two!) …in the Library:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Wish me luck.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Or when you hit the finish line in a speedrun:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Take Tunic’s glyph language for instance (since dubbed “Trunic” by our players). While we don’t *super* expect players to decipher it, the words ARE there if you choose to take the time.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

We’ve got this poor guy yelling from within:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

The "garden path" shortcuts, the secret controller inputs, the functionality of various items and props in the world - it's all there from the beginning. The player just might not yet possess the knowledge required.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Spoiler alert, of course. If you haven’t played yet, you might want to turn back now. D: Seriously. Very, very heavy spoilers.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

…and in the end credits:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Downloading and viewing the website’s audio in spectrogram mode shows a series of glyphs.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

…when you’ve defeated the Heir:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

…which, upon solving, leads the player to . (Have a listen!) This is where we finally reveal the existence of the audio language! …sort of.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Finding a secret directs your attention:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

Just watched @thegameawards nominations stream from the Isle of Skye in Scotland, and woohoo @tunicgame !! Congrats and good luck to all the other Best Indie nominees - @cultofthelamb @PlayNeonWhite @SifuGame @HKdevblog ! We'll see you in December! 🤘

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

This is actually part of why we composed a unique track for the 6A heart room. The main chapter's key centre didn't super jive with these notes.

Power Up Audio

@PowerUpAudio

3 years

btw, these musical notes show up in a few places in @celeste_game .. The birds and satellite console here, the 6A heart room dashes, the direction of movement for arrow blocks, etc. We made this quick reference image early in development to keep things consistent across the game.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

A pentatonic scale can be built starting from ANY root note, and therefore Tuneic can be written in any key centre. We can even follow along with chord changes. As long as all notes in a given arpeggio move together, it remains decipherable.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

More on that soon, but first we need to talk about the glyph language, “Trunic”. If you DID take the time to solve it, you would have discovered that its structure is phonetic. Here’s a lil rundown if you weren’t aware…

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

Confession: The Fox in Tunic has only a single footstep sound effect that repeats over and over for each footfall. And it's the same sound for ladder climbs too - just pitched up a bit. I just wanted to see if it could be done inoffensively, and without anyone noticing. 🤘

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Furthermore (music theory incoming), since we’re working in terms of numbered notation, the cipher’s design accommodates for all kinds of expressions of tonality.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Learning this language might eventually lead the player to uncover the mysteries of the late-game “Glyph Tower”...

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Dubbed “Tuneic” by players, this cipher is the same as "Trunic" in structure. For Trunic, a given phoneme is indicated by the presence or absence of lines within a glyph frame. For Tuneic, it’s the presence or absence of notes over two octaves of a pentatonic arpeggio.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

- Each character represents a consonant/vowel phoneme pair (or just one part by itself).

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

6 years

@mvcaster Merci beaucoup for playing Celeste man. Crazy hearing "La Boule Magique" from Wayne while you're playing a different game we also worked on. haha

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

Holy shit I am so done with @WavesAudioLtd . I've spent 10+ years dealing with the headache of doing the right thing despite it being far easier to pirate. Please recommend me your favourite non-Waves, Waves-equivalent plugins. I'm in the market.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

5 years

Big one for us! Huge ups to @dannyBstyle absolutely destroying it on music, with help from @FamilyJules7x @AdrianaFigueroa @rileykoenig @mklachu & @katelovelymomo . :) also I got to gerudo whistle which I'm pretty amped about 🤟

Power Up Audio

@PowerUpAudio

5 years

Cadence of Hyrule releases today and marks a watershed moment in our little company’s career. We poured our hearts into this game, and we all hope you love it as much as we do!

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

For Trunic, we look at the internal and external components for consonant and vowel. For Tuneic, we look at the lower and upper ranges of notes.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

- Pronunciation order is always [Consonant → Vowel], unless you see a little ° under the main glyph, in which case you swap the order, like so:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

4 years

Feel free to hit me up if any questions on this btw. 🤟

Power Up Audio

@PowerUpAudio

4 years

We've updated the @celeste_game @fmodstudio project on the FMOD website to include the sound/music content from the game's Farewell DLC! <3 The project file & all source audio is free for anyone to use for educational and modding purposes. Please dig in!

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

7 years

*HEAVY EXHALE*

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Also, reminder that we released this voice pack for any streamer/youtuber/etc. to use however they please! If you're thinking about doing some Halloween Darkest Dungeon II streaming, have at 'er. 💀🎃

Darkest Dungeon - The Ancestral Bestowment

Download the entire package here: https://www.powerupaudio.com/download/Ancestral%20Bestowment.zip

soundcloud.com

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

5 years

Just realized last week marked 10 years in #gameaudio for me. Dang... :)

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

I recognize we’re getting into music theory territory here. We’re definitely gonna get a little technical, so I apologise to those who aren’t as musically versed…but here’s the BRIEFEST tutorial for those who might be a little out of the loop:

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

One phoneme in “Tuneic” is one arpeggio. One arpeggio can be (a) a consonant sound, (b) a vowel sound, or commonly (c) a combination of the two, as a phonetic pair. For example, “no” would be [1-2-6] for the “n”, plus [9-12-13] for the “o”. [1-2-6-9-12-13].

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

3 years

Happy Birthday to my business better-half, Jeff @PowerUpAudio . I owe basically everything I've got to our partnership and I have no idea where I would be today if I hadn't met you pal. All my love.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

(The horizontal line is just some flavour to indicate word separations and to make it look nice.)

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

- The “exterior” defines the vowel.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

- The “interior” defines the consonant.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Sometimes we’d have a descending arpeggio lead directly into an ascending arpeggio. In this case, we might employ a single [1], serving as a kind of apostrophe connecting the two phonemes.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

Major, minor, diminished, mixolydian, whatever - a flat [5] is still a [5] so it’s all fair game. :)

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

2 years

A musical *chord* is a selection of musical notes played simultaneously. For an *arpeggio*, the notes that compose a chord are instead broken out and played separately - typically in a rising or descending order of pitch.

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Kevin Regamey

@regameyk

1 year

We took home 6 awards at the CGAs. I'm very proud of this achievement, but geez this event. It's tough to talk about without seeming ungrateful and/or self-deprecating, but suffice to say, I'll be writing a letter.