How to get into game music: practical first steps in the UK

Many routes in: conservatoires, film school and self-teaching

The composers profiled on this site came into games in very different ways. Grant Kirkhope studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and Gareth Coker at the Royal Academy of Music. Jessica Curry studied at University College London and the National Film and Television School. Nobuo Uematsu taught himself the piano. David Wise got his first job after demonstrating a synthesiser to the founders of Rare.

Formal training can help with orchestration, harmony and working with live players, and some UK universities offer courses that cover game audio specifically. But a qualification is not a requirement for most game work. What developers usually want to hear is music that suits their game, delivered in a form they can use.

The skills a game composer is actually asked for

Beyond writing good music, most game work calls for a handful of practical skills:

• Production in a digital audio workstation (DAW). Many game scores are delivered as finished recordings made with software instruments, so mixing and production skills matter.
• Writing loops that do not tire. Music may play for a long time, so it needs to loop cleanly and stay interesting.
• Thinking in layers and sections. Adaptive scores are built from parts that combine in different ways, as explained in our adaptive music guide.
• Basic implementation. Knowing how music is set up inside a game makes you easier to work with.
• Delivering to a brief and to deadlines. Game development schedules change, and revisions are normal.

Communication matters as much as any of these. Developers who are not musicians may describe what they want in terms of mood, colour or other games, and part of the job is translating that into music.

Learning FMOD or Wwise for free

Most commercial games use audio middleware to control how music and sound behave. The two most common tools are FMOD, from Firelight Technologies, and Wwise, from Audiokinetic. Both offer free licences for non-commercial use, so you can learn them without paying, and both work with widely used game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine.

Building a small interactive music system in one of these tools, for example a track that layers up as an intensity value rises, is a useful learning exercise. It shows you how your music will actually be used and gives you something concrete to show developers, who may otherwise only hear your music as a linear recording.

Game jams, student projects and small teams

Composers usually need credits on real games, and real games need music, so the early challenge is meeting people who make them. Game jams, events where small teams make a game in a short period such as a weekend, are a common starting point. Many are held online, and university games courses and local developer meet-ups often host them too.

Working on student and hobby projects teaches you how developers think, how to deliver files they can use, and how to handle changes. It is also how many lasting working relationships start. Darren Korb, for example, was asked to score his first game by a childhood friend who co-founded the studio, as covered on his profile.

Building a portfolio developers will actually listen to

A portfolio for game work is most useful when it shows range and function. Short pieces that demonstrate different moods, plus examples of music working in a game context, tend to be more useful to developers than a single long concert piece.

Some composers practise by writing new music to footage from existing games. That can be a good exercise, but be careful about how you share it: the footage belongs to the game's publisher, so check the publisher's policy on using its material before posting anything publicly. Original projects you have made with developers, or small prototypes of your own, avoid that question entirely.

Keep the portfolio short, label each piece with what it was written for, and make it easy to listen to without downloads.

Royalties, rights and PRS for Music

In the UK, PRS for Music is the main organisation that collects royalties for songwriters, composers and publishers. It represents two societies: PRS, which collects when members' music is performed in public, broadcast or streamed, and MCPS, which collects when music is reproduced, for example on physical or digital releases. PRS was founded in 1914 and MCPS in 1910, and they have operated together as PRS for Music since 2009.

Game music contracts vary widely. Some developers buy the rights to the music outright, while others license it and leave the composer with more rights, such as releasing a soundtrack album. The terms affect what you can earn later, so it is worth understanding them before signing. For anything beyond a small hobby project, many composers seek advice from a music lawyer or a professional body.

Awards and communities that recognise game scores

Several organisations now treat game music as a field in its own right. The Ivors Academy, the UK's professional association for songwriters and composers, first gave an Ivor Novello Award to a game score in 2010, for Joris de Man's music for Killzone 2. The BAFTA Games Awards include categories for music and audio, and in the US the Game Audio Network Guild holds annual awards with a Rookie of the Year category.

These organisations, and others like them, also run events, talks and networking. For many people, attending events and talking to working composers is the most useful step after building a portfolio.

Realistic expectations about the work

Writing music for games is a competitive field, and few composers work on large productions straight away. Many combine game work with other music jobs, such as teaching, writing for media or performing, especially early on. Projects can be cancelled, schedules can slip, and budgets for independent games are often small.

The flip side is that the barrier to starting is low. Free tools, online game jams and small teams looking for music all make it possible to gain real experience without a large investment. If you want to understand more about how games use music before you begin, our explainers on recording a score and sound design versus music are a good next step.