Ressa Schwarzwald

Game audio producer and sound director at TinyBuild, Holding the title of golden ears and Currently working on her first solo album, @Ressa Schwarzwald is this month SoundGym Hero. 

Half a year. It all began as a part of an experiment: I wanted to know if small steps in different fields of my interest can influence my skills in general. Now it became joy and pleasure, not only training hard.

What was your first connection to music?

As a kid, I loved listening to catchy tunes. Just everything from songs for children and pop hits to cinematic scores. It seemed like magic that people could create such beautiful pieces, so I decided to become a magician too.

How did you get into sound production?

Nearly ten years ago I was an aspiring philologist during the day, but at nights me and my friends created power metal bands and made stuff (we haven't played a single concert in our entire band career of course). Once we decided to try something own instead of Nightwish covers so I wrote several songs in Runglish and arranged them in Guitar Pro for our band. Then I unexpectedly found myself in the game industry as a sound designer, from that moment everything's gone upside down.

Tell us about your work at TinyBuild?

I do everything, you know. It's hard and on the other side super exciting to work for the game publisher. It means not only creating audio assets for games being developed by our partners but also making audio for promo materials like trailers or logos, helping with implementation, supervising audio in the games ready to be released, outsourcing stuff to sound designers at times, mastering soundtracks for sale and so on. It's a huge variety of possibilities here, I never feel bored, but there's always a problem how should I be identified as a professional. "Audio producer" was the most general and abstract term I found, fits well I suggest.

What is your favorite soundtrack of all time and why?

That’s super hard question, cannot choose just one. Let it be Jeremy Soule’s Skyrim and Jessica Curry’s EGTTR if speaking about games; Steve Jablonsky’s Transformers 2 and Clint Mansell’s The Fountain if speaking about cinematic scores. Just because they are melodic and epic enough to make my heart beat faster.

Who have been the biggest influences on you and how do you think they’ve shaped your sound?

If speaking about melodies, my first musical love was Trevor Jones (score from Last of the Mohicans). The score was so epic and dramatic that I fell in love with melodic folk themes with orchestral arrangement. Same was with Melnitsa/Hellawes and Tuomas Holopainen. I took inspiration from their works to create my first big score - Legends of Eisenwald. From Hans Zimmer, Klaus Badelt and Ramin Djawadi I learned ultimate epicness and simplicity. Cecile Corbel, Joe Hisaishi and Alan Menken showed me what power modulation can reveal together with simple tunes. I’ve ever been excited by the works of John Carpenter and Sia, so I learned from them while trying to improve my skills in writing electronic music.

As an aspiring sound engineer I was amazed by Skillet’s sound, that was one of the reasons I went to Belarusian Academy of Arts to get profile education. My mentors at the Academy, especially Alexey Zaitsev, a well-known sound engineer in Belarus, had a huge influence on my sound as it could be seen now. And finally, all of the authors of reference tracks (which game developers ask me to imitate or inspire with) shape my sound as well. I make music in plenty of styles and genres, so if there's something new to me I always try to imitate and use the learned techniques then.

What have you been working on lately?

There are some upcoming games published by TinyBuild. I've been creating an eclectic synthwave score for Phantom Trigger, dance music and sounds for Party Hard 2 and a couunannounced projects. I'm also trying to finish my first solo album called "Higher", hope to release it soon.

Tell us a bit about your workflow at the studio? 

It depends on the type of work on my to-do list. There's a big calendar where all the deadlines and important events are marked, so at first, I look at it and form the list for the day. If there's some music to write in a genre I hadn't worked yet, I always do a research. As an example, a few days ago I was to create an old-school hip-hop track, so it was necessary to learn the history of hip-hop and listen to representatives of the genre. When the research is finished I usually create a track in my DAW, and the magic begins. If it comes to making SFX, I usually record the video from the game to make animation sync easier, then search for the sounds in my SFX libraries (or record them anyway) and modify them according to the gameplay video. Working with implementation requires game project launched in the game engine where I set up audio events and so on.

Which is your go-to EQ??

I like FabFilter Pro-Q 2 because of its ultimate flexibility. If there's no inspiration to work you can just draw beautiful paintings in it.

What is your go-to compressor plug-in?

Waves Maserati GRP. Though it's a group compressor I put it everywhere. On the insert - okay, on the aux - great, on the master bus - oh man, did I say it aloud?

Which 3 plug-ins you can't live without?

If not counting two from above, NI Kontakt and Waves PAZ analyzer (just to be objective). FabFilter Pro-R, because one cannot live without space.

One Free plugin that you recommend?

BlueArp arpeggiator. It's made by an enthusiast and you can donate him if you want to. That thing saved me a lot of time when I was to create 12 tracks in a week. 

What does the future hold for Ressa Schwarzwald?

I'd be pleased if neural networks did the boring part of my work and I just told them what to do while I'm having fun killing giant robots with my cyberbody. If serious, it's very interesting to discover the creative limitations of AI - if there's something that only human can create. I'm planning to find new effective ways to provide narrative and influence the players by the sound as well.

Last question, What is your favorite SoundGym Feature?

What's really great about SoundGym is that... it exists! Love everything here, go on guys!