Aaron Marks

Composer, Sound Designer and Owner of On Your Mark Music Productions

Home: Oceanside, CA

Email: aaron@onyourmarkmusic.com

Web: www.onyourmarkmusic.com

Numerous online casino games — Vivendi/Universal (Flipside.com, iwin.com and VirtualVegas.com)

I, of the Enemy — CDROM game, Enemy Technology, developer

Just completed — "The Complete Guide to Game Audio", published by CMP Books

Engineering and Producing — HogBladder's 3rd CD project, Bacon Necklace

ESPN MSL Extra Time — Konami Computer Entertainment of America. Music cues and sound bank programming for this PlayStation 2 soccer title.

Online casino/arcade game sound effects and music — Flipside.com, iWin.com, VirtualVegas.com, PrizeCentral.com. Currently completed 61 individual Java based games for these extremely popular free websites.

Bloxx, Shanghai Express, Palm Reader, Zillionaire, LoveOMeter, Mezmerized, Kubis, Slide 'Em — uWink, Inc. Sound effects and music cues for these and many other touch screen arcade games.

Dragon's Lair 3D — DragonStone Software. Initial conceptual game music.

The Many Faces of Go Deluxe — Smart Games. Sound effects for this CDROM strategy game.

1st Earth Battalion — Enemy Technology (Developer). Musical score, sound effects and narratives for this upcoming space strategy game.

Hardwood Solitaire II — Silvercreek Entertainment (Developer). Sound effects.

Hardwood Hearts — Silvercreek Entertainment (Developer). Sound effects. Finalist at 2nd Annual IGF held at GDC.

Fallen Heroes — A&B Entertainment (Developer), ionos, inc (Publisher). Sound Effects and character narratives for this currently unreleased CD-ROM title.

SC3 — A&B Entertainment (Developer), ionos, inc (Publisher). Musical score, sound effects and character narratives for this currently unreleased CD-ROM title.

"Where did we go wrong?" his parents often muttered after discovering Aaron had gone into business for himself. "We had groomed him for the mundane life of government service. We just don't understand." Today, operating from his fully equipped digital recording studio, he divides his time between his wife, 10 year old daughter, the Rottwieler, 7 cats, 2 parrots, 1 endangered California Desert Tortoise and his first love, music. The constant flow of traffic through the studio keeps this one-man band actively creative as he composes and produces broadcast quality scores and sound effects all in the comfort of his own home. "You can't beat working at home. I can get ideas to down quickly and work at my creative peak, even if it's 2 o'clock in the morning!"

By age 15, Aaron Marks considered himself jaded. He had lived a year in Moscow, USSR; a year in Frankfurt, Germany; traveled through England and Europe skiing the Swiss Alps and walking the ancient ruins of Greece. He'd seen belly dancers and Big Ben, eaten "Borsch" and real "Fish and Chips", been tailed by and had ambushed Soviet KGB agents with snowballs. (His father served a time as an American diplomat.) He'd even been playing guitar for over 2 years.

Then he wrote his first song...

"It seemed music was always part of my life. My father played organ, piano and accordion; my mother played stand up bass; my brother, drums. Even my grandmother was musical, she played sax." In between jam sessions, he managed to become an Eagle Scout, attend military school, learn to play piano and drums, attain a private pilots license and graduate from college with a Bachelors Degree in History (University of Texas at Austin). Somewhere in there, he grew up a little and decided he had to make a living.

Duty and patriotism called. He received a commission as a young Second Lieutenant, USMC and headed to California. Fellow officers and his troops as well, enjoyed working with him, his creative problem solving and good humor setting him apart from the status quo warrior stereotypical Marine. "The Marine Corps gave me the discipline to see every project through with attention to detail and vigor. It even carries over today in how I run my business." In his off duty hours Aaron played in his cover band "just for fun", organized a small 4-track studio and attended the Studio and Recording Arts program at the local college.

It started with "What do all these buttons do?" and ended with him becoming a much sought after engineer and producer for the yearly college album project. Three albums later, working innumerable sessions, dealing with the talent, the groupies, the mastering facilities... he was ready to shift gears. With active duty behind him he set off to manage a popular local band for almost 2 years, learning the ropes and the club scene, engineering innumerable live sessions, dealing with the talent, the groupies, the booking agents... until a radio commercial contest piqued his interest. Within a week, he had written and recorded over a dozen 30-second spots. "I really felt like I was on to something, I had found my niche." The seed had been planted.

Fate instead took its own turn. With a pregnant wife in one hand and the fickle music business in the other, Aaron opted for the sensible approach, government service. The steady paycheck and challenge of working as an Air Traffic Controller seemed to satisfy his paternal responsibilities and his sense of adventure until a chance meeting. A jingle writer and score composer rekindled the dream and pointed him in the right direction. "I upgraded my studio to commercial grade equipment, put together a demo reel, developed a marketing strategy and told everyone what I was up to. I wasn't going to let this get away again."

While sitting at a radar scope "moving the metal" at Southern California TRACON in San Diego, he jumped into On Your Mark Music Productions with both feet and hasn't looked back since. "It has been quite an adventure throwing aside a steady paycheck but the rewards have been beyond anything I could have dreamed."

Practically falling into the gaming business, his sound design talents also exploded leading him to music and sound effects credits on a PlayStation 2 game, 5 CDROM game projects, 61 online casino and novelty games, a dozen touch screen arcade games and numerous multimedia projects. He continues to pursue fame and fortune while also sidelining as a writer of game music and audio interests for Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra and Music4Games. His first book, "The Complete Guide to Game Audio", was just published by CMP Books September 2001.

Sound Forge Batch Converter, especially when doing the numerous online games I do each month. All of the sound effects are created as 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, stereo, wave files, converted to 22 kHz, 16 bit, mono for presentation to the producer, and then finally converted to 8 kHz, 8 bit, mono, .au format. Since I initially create up to 50 sound effects for each game, I usually end up spending my entire day just doing conversions if I didn't have this awesome tool! I upgraded from Sound Forge 4.0 to 4.5 just for this feature!

I also love Vegas Audio for its simplicity! Programs like Steinberg's Nuendo can be so cumbersome when creating complex mixes.

Advice for Game Audio Artists:

Believe it or not, even though I spend a lot of time in the studio, I still enjoy making music while also spending quality time with my family and taking my little Italian automobile out on Sunday drives.