advice | Ben Prunty's Blog

The most important advice I can give to an aspiring game musician

March 3, 2014 by Ben

As you probably know, I made the music for FTL, Gravity Ghost, Star Crawlers and a bunch of other games that are on their way. I am what you would call a successful indie; I get to write music full time and make a comfortable living doing what I do. I’m going to tell you a little about myself and the things I learned, because I think the information might be useful to an aspiring indie, musician or otherwise. First, […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: advice, career, game music, story time

Making Computer Music – A Buying Plan for Dabblers and Absolute Beginners

November 23, 2013 by Ben

I get emails from students and other folks who want to dabble in computer music. They don’t know where to start, or at least they read this FTL article and cringe at what the bill probably was. If you’re not really sure where to start and don’t want to spend a whole ton of money, what should you do? Dabblers and beginners, this article is for you. The cool thing about modern music production is that you don’t need a […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: advice, hardware, music production

Ben’s Reading List: all the best books I read on my way to becoming a game composer

October 30, 2013 by Ben

Sorry video games and music; the written word is my favorite medium. Thankfully though, my prodigious appetite for more words fits well with my tendency to teach myself everything. In the last 15 years or so I’ve digested a lot of books in my journey to become a musician for games. Here are the best ones. They don’t all involve music or games, but I found them all invaluable. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory – I pimp this […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: advice, books, career, game music, recommendations

The Best Book on Music Theory

June 6, 2013 by Ben

I get asked about this all the time, so here’s the best book I know of for learning music theory: It’s fifteen dollars on Amazon.com. I’ve read a lot of books on theory, but Michael Miller is the only author with the balls to actually teach the reader the actual mechanics of music theory instead of just saying, “you should just memorize this stuff because I hate math.” Trust me, this is how a lot of theory books are. Buy […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: advice, books, composition, recommendations