Hello, my name is Ben

My passion and most significant interest is music and sound theory, focusing on the science of sound and sound engineering as an ongoing study. I'm at least an autodidact and perhaps a wannabe polymath. I've never stopped studying and learning and probably will continue to do so until my brain can no longer do so. This has led be to become a bit more of a generalist rather than a specialist, but music is my main wheel bag. Bag house? Something like that.

I'm an Audio Producer and Director, Freelance Sound Designer, Digital and Traditional Artist in several mediums. I have worked alongside independent game developers for about 15 years, with companies such as WayForward, Sumo Digital Ltd, Lucky Mountain Games, and ColectorVision.

I play a lot of instruments and can usually dive into something that doesn't take a lot of time to make sound good, like bowed instruments, still haven't been able to afford one. I play keyboards and guitar-like instruments mainly. The majority of my composing is done on PC software like DAWs or Trackers. I'm most familiar with Reason Studio, FL Studio, Audition, Audacity, FamiTracker, ModPlug Tracker, and DefleMask. I have worked with retro console developers of NES, SNES, Genesis/Master System, and PC Engine. For modern game music, I use many technologies and techniques including VST and AAX instruments, MIDI software/data, MML (the markup language used in some Japanese software and BASIC versions for music), and my own code to generate sound and sequencing.

I can work with most asset creation tools, with actual experience and intuitively. While I lack traditional training as an artist, I have spent time teaching myself what to look for and making very pretty programmer art, if I do say so myself! I have studied most parts of game development to be able to communicate with developers in all departments. I use, and have used for years, Blender, Aseprite, Affinity image products, Photoshop, Corel Painter, Krita, and Genetica.

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I am a programmer, fluent in C++, C#, LUA, Python and can grok a few others. Once you learn a few you kinda get hooked and the others fall into place pretty quickly. Though I haven't had as much experience with retro developing from a code point of view I have a working understanding of machine language. I personally focus on modern game and application development for PC, mobile, and VR. I use Godot a lot recently, but have also learned and use Unity 3D for Game and Interactive Media creations as well as Unreal Engine, Dark GDK, DarkBasic, and FreeBasic.