VGA FIRESIDE Ep. 3 feat. Akash Thakkar: Interview Highlights
In Episode 3, Chaz Evans got to talk with his former minigolf buddy and video game sound composer Akash Thakkar. They chatted about the importance of a healthy work-life balance and the fascinating conversations needed to design sound for game developers.
Highlights from their conversation are below, edited for brevity and clarity. The full interview, which includes demos of Akash’s sound design process and the playing of an AZTEC DEATH WHISTLE, can be seen above and on YouTube.
Episode 4 of VGA Fireside streams live on Wednesday, April 28th at the new time of 5:30PM — tune in for our interview with Catt Small!
On his background as a drummer.
Chaz Evans: Akash, how did you get involved with sound making? How did you get involved with video game making? And then specifically, how did you get involved with video game sound making?
Akash Thakkar: So it's, it's it's a long, long and arduous process. And that's so like common with everybody in games, I think, where some people fall into it. Some people know that they want to do it for a really long time. And I am one of the people who in a weird way, fell into it, but not unintentionally.
So to elaborate on that more, I initially came to this field wanting to be a touring drummer. That was the thing, so I had hair down to my butt. You can Instagram stalk me, or Facebook stalk me, you'll see pictures of me with the hair. I wanted to be a touring drummer, who played metal shows.
I always had played video games since I was three years old. Megaman 3 was my first game—so good. And I never really put the two together until I actually ended up going to music school. And that's a whole story being a son of immigrant parents and where your options are doctor—lawyer—failure, but then going to music school. And when I was there, I eventually ended up drumming for Nobuo Uematsu, the composer of the Final Fantasy games. So through that, again, there's a lot to that too.
But after playing with him, my kind of mindset shifted from touring to, I want to be more like that guy. I want to like, make stuff on my own, and be able to work from home, and not tour, and not be sleepy 24/7. That sounds really nice. Because man, it's exhausting to do any sort of live performance, especially night after night. So those sorts of moments are kind of what pushed me to realize that it was even a possibility, because I never put two and two together at all until that kind of showed itself.
And while I was at music school, I was also surrounded by other people who also wanted to do similar things, whether it be film, games, stuff like that. So I could at least see, oh, this isn't insane, because there's at least a small group of other people who want to do something in this zone as well. And that helped encourage me to get to that point as well.
On balance and finding work that’s enjoyable.
CE: Terrific. So now that you've found a way to sort of reconfigure the spirit that brought you into drumming and gigging around, do you find that you have found a way to not be sleepy for a 24-hour cycle?
AT: I think so. I am one of those people who is so hardcore about health and wellness and keeping it balanced and stuff like that. So I have figured it out. But I think for me, a big part of this is like I never wanted to get away from the performative aspects of drumming, I realized that things like business and things like performance are things that will always interest me. And so long as I have an outlet for those, I'm fine. As long as I'm recording videos of me making sounds and putting them up on Instagram or YouTube, great. If I'm writing articles, great. So long as it's performative, I am happy with it. And that makes it so that anything from that angle is enjoyable.
CE: The cycle of performing of things is coming, then the rest is just kind of details.
AT: Exactly, exactly.
CE: The base layer of what is needed has been met and you can just kind of enjoy the rest.
AT: Exactly, exactly.
CE: Can I follow up on I love the topic of balance and health when it comes to being in this field. Especially because you know, there may be people who are trying to start out. And often when you’re starting out you feel like you have to just throw your yourself on the line, right? And make yourself completely available and work every hour of your existence. Do you have any rules of thumb, or Hot Tips for this kind of thing? Just balancing out your life, especially when you're starting out in the field?
AT: It's an interesting thing. Because I know I'm a weirdo in that balance to me is working a lot. Because I like it. There's a an interesting thing where if you're actually enjoying the process, and there's no weird sixth sense of pride of “Oh, yeah, I worked 18 hours today.” If soon as you're doing that it's over. Like, you're not spending your time or energy in a long-term-thinking manner. But if it's the sort of thing where you enjoy it, then that's kind of where the balance comes into play.
I'm lucky in that work and life are pretty much 100% intertwined. And both are great. So that is wonderful. But you have to kind of start thinking of it in a way as, How do I actually like spending my time? And what actually emotionally fulfills me? If it is actually—this isn't common—finding the work, doing the thing, and you know, "hustling." I hate that word, but quote unquote, "hustling?" Fine, then that's balance for you. If it is indeed, like, I'm going to stop at 4pm every day, great. Freaking awesome. Because you feel good the next day. Whatever makes you feel good the next day is balance. And it's different for literally everybody.
On the starting points of a new project or collaboration.
CE: So what is the minimum amount of information that you need when you get started on a project? Like, what can you start working on before you have that conversation? And I guess I would like to expand this question also to just like, say you don't even have a project right now. But you want to start doing this right? What's what is the minimum? What is your base layer of stuff? So how do you get to this place where you feel like, Ah, yes, I am ready to play?
AT: A big part of it is, I try and mine as much info out of the dev as I humanly can, to to get me started. Sometimes, like you kind of mentioned sometimes a little be like “I don't know, just just do a thing!” And sometimes we'll have a ton of different stuff, but I will still mine as much as I humanly can until they just can't tell me any more. Because there's always something interesting that comes up in their description of something that I never considered. A good example of that is from Hyper Light Drifter. Alex Preston at one point offhandedly said “neon nightmares.” Whoo, that's awesome. So that really stuck.
Or, for example, with developers, you know, they don't necessarily have to be sound-savvy for this. They might say something like, I really don't know what this needs to be. Okay, that's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. At that point, you just ask, How does it need to feel? That's it. You just have to ask something like that. Or an equivalent that I really like to ask if someone says, I don't know what this needs to be. Always ask something like, Well, let's pretend that you knew. What would that pretend to answer be? Everything unlocks for them. So get as much as you can.
But if you're doing your own thing, and just you know, practicing or whatever it may be, you just make your own, you're just doing stuff: I love to work with prompts. There are apps that just prompt random things. They’re not sound specific. You can just look up any app that prompts a bunch of words to get your creativity juices flowing. But I love, love, love working with prompts.
Or you can work with visuals. You can download a trailer of a game and then redesign the sounds for that. Or you can download a five second clip of a game and redesign the sounds for that. That can get you used to that sort of way of thinking when it comes to, like, What do we even start with? So with a five second clip of like a Gundam shooting a laser, great, you're in laser town! Now with that, that's a great way to start getting the flow.
CE: This is perhaps an inversion of the process you just mentioned, but it does it ever happen where you are making a batch of sounds, and then the rest of the game team has to figure out how they work into a game? As opposed to having the privilege of demanding what sounds happen?
AT: All the time. I’m in that right now. I'm on a game right now that is that. It's actually awesome. Because I will I will make a thing because maybe the art is super rough, or not even there in some cases, and I’ll be like, Here’s a thing that denotes the emotion of the action that's happening on screen? And often the animator or artists or whatever it will be like, Oh cool! And will bounce off of that and change things based off of that. Usually sound happens later. Usually it's more reactive but that does happen where sound informs other things. And that's a treat. Then you're just working in emotion land. You're just trying to evoke emotions without any other reference, and it's super fun.
On career goals and paying it forward.
CE: What is your ultimate career goal? Or generally, how do you structure your career goals and targets?
AT: Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm very lucky, I'm at a point where work is stable, and it's going well, and it's great. So all my goals now have to do with helping other people. That's it. Because none of what exists now, with YouTube and stuff like that, existed when I was getting into this field. So my goal, really all the structure, everything has to come from like, Alright, what is a way to help other people do their thing artistically? Whether that be doing the things in public, so people can say, Ooh, I wonder if I could do that too! Just like kind of I had when I was in college, or it could be the sort of thing where I offer business advice to people, like, Here's how you network, or Here's how you charge for a thing, or whatever it may be. That is where a lot of my focus kind of goes and stays. And that's how I structure most of my stuff. Anytime it's a new goal, even if it is something like getting a new project or working on a new thing. I'll even think like, Ooh, I wonder how it can share the process behind this negotiation I'm in right now, later on. That's how everything kind of spreads out from there.
CE: That's true, that really describes what I would maybe call an ethic of openness. That sounds really different than plotting a career arc and saying This year, I'm supposed to make this much money, or feeling like life is a, a, just a constant accumulation of CV lines.
AT: Right!
Akash’s parting wisdom.
CE: Is there this I wish I had a good question for this. Is there a way you can take everything you've told us today and sum it up into sounding like really wise and, you know, wizardly for us?
AT: I will do my best. Basically, practice absurdity. And don't worry about any sort of dumb result that you come up with, because honestly, that's where the best stuff comes from. I've never thought I've never had anything in my life, career wise or otherwise be like, Oh, I'm glad I planned that out, start to finish in a very serious way and it worked out great. It's always been that would be stupid, what if I did it? And it worked!
