The musical revolution is here, all you need to do is play | Akash Thakkar | TEDxRainier

In this lively talk, sound designer Akash Thakkar invites the audience into the epicenter of a new musical revolution engaging millions - video games.
Akash Thakkar is an award-winning composer, sound designer, and public speaker within the video game industry. Inspired at a very young age by the background music of his favorite video game, he eventually married his two loves, video games and music, to find his career.
He is a graduate from the Berklee College of Music where he was both an instructor and leader of the game audio community. Akash has worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as both a researcher and audio designer and performed with musical legends. He has worked on everything from full orchestral pieces to explosion sound effects for dozens of video game projects. His aim in composing and designing music and sound for video games is to provide a massive emotional impact to everyone who plays them. Akash absolutely loves to share his knowledge and has had the honor of speaking at events and conferences around the world.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx

[@brianhavey9203]

Installed Ableton 9 and became a musical genius in an instant.

[@nandocordeiro5853]

Used stock piano on Soundtrap. Instantly turned into Mozart.

[@everythingcritic3188]

Great talk! Creating a bridge between musicians and non-musicians and the non-exclusivity between the two hasn't been championed enough.

[@Yotrymp]

No problem with critiques of this video, but I think the purpose of the talk was to sell the idea that game music has value, to an audience which may have a lot of people who don't play video games. To someone who already agrees, this may understandably seem to be about nothing. lol

[@georgesonm1774]

I think the point was that games have value, because game music (is special, gets Grammys and so on). Idk

[@DrumsetManiac91]

Great TEDx talk! It is so cool to have seen Akash years ago at a small game audio panel at RTX, and now he has been blessed with this amazing opportunity. VERY COOL!

[@AkashThakkarAudio]

+DerrikSpiegel You are SO kind. Thank you so much.

[@ZeroSkerbo]

Excellent Presentation Akash! To me, the music in games is one of if not the most critical component to ones immersion in a story or world. I'm constantly blown away by how far we've come from the 8 bit tracks of yesteryear

[@peacewayfateswayer530]

Brawl's Opera song made me cry, FF8's opening+Eyes On Me, Guile's Theme (Goes With Anything), Bethesda's music, the list just goes on and on, unnoticed by many.

[@RockFreedom]

Great presentation! I can truly relate to this. My life was changed forever by Video Game Music too... Silpheed, Space Quest, Hero's Quest, Keef the Thief, Bards Tale, and of course Legend of Zelda (anything), Final Fantasy VII, just to name a few.

[@BillDeanCycle]

Terrific talk! Well presented and eye opening!

[@Schematist]

This was a fantastic talk. I am a bit biased though :)

[@peacewayfateswayer530]

Koichi Sugiyama, Nobuo Uematsu, have you heard how beautiful FF15's version of Stand By Me is? I learned Air by Bach from Megaman Legends 3, Diablo 2's epic soundtrack, you got games like Pop n' Music, all kinds of musical games... Video games are truly multimedia and multidisciplinary.

[@uniworkhorse]

Akash is the best!

[@infinitelyexplosive4131]

Jeremy Soule is amazing.

[@georgesonm1774]

that thing about 'being maestros in your own world' in bs (except maybe if you mean Sentris). And the whole idea seems to be, oh, great, some real talent and loads of money are put into enhancing the experience of gaming. Which in itself is mostly an addictive waste of time. It's trying to glorify something which may be cool but only uses advanced techniques and some actual creativity because it's become this behemoth industry based on the need so many people have for playing with a toy and dopamine hunger - my point is best exemplified by this ridiculous phone game with a 100 orchestral cues xd And yeah, I know, a hundred years ago people probably had a similar take on how movies are a waste of time... :)

[@eszimmerman]

Mr. Thakkar provides a useful short survey of video game music if you can ignore his distracting hyperbole.

[@TruthSurge]

Everyone can be a musical genius! Well, isn't that... unspecial. :) I don't really get the point of this talk. Is he wanting them to play more games or hire him to write a soundtrack?

[@georgesonm1774]

yeah, that's all bs