Sound design student Nate Lyons ’25 brought home a Bronze Award in the Audio Engineering Society (AES) International Student Recording Competition. Lyons won the award in the Sound for Visual Media category for his sound design audio replacement of a video game.
“I got the idea from one of my other classes where I was learning how to program sounds for video games. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to practice that skill with the programs that we use for video game sound design,” said Lyons.
Students have an opportunity to attend and present at the international AES convention in New York City as part of VPA career development and professional presentation travel and study away courses. This is the second year in a row sound design and audio production and technology students from Michigan Tech’s VPA have received awards in the prestigious international competition.
Lyons’ project included atmospheric sound design, sound effects, and music for the video game Celeste. To create it, he removed all existing sound for the game and programmed his own.
“The game itself is very dream-like and ethereal and it deals with a lot of mental health struggles. I wanted to evoke a very dream-like, ethereal feel because I feel like that matches not only the landscape of the game but the themes of mental health and anxiety,” said Lyons.
The submission was comprehensive, with sounds for everything from background music to character death to what players hear when they press the play and pause buttons. Lyons’ creative process used a range of techniques, combining synthesizing technologies like Vital Synth with old school Foley work, and made use of skills from music composition and electronic music classes. All of the sounds were grounded in the landscape and themes of the game.
Lyons was originally planning to study computer science, but his parents urged him to apply his interest in theater and sound to one of his other passions; video games. Michigan Tech offered him the perfect opportunity to combine those interests.
“I love video games. It’s why I came to Michigan Tech. The Husky Game Enterprise was a big selling point to me. It was a great decision and I am really happy I made it,” said Lyons.
“One of my favorite effects was playing with a sample of glass shattering. It has a very pretty, twinkly sound but also kind of a slight anxiety to it,” said Lyons.
Lyon’s project was chosen as one of two Michigan Tech submissions in his category out of half-dozen student projects. He was humbled and excited by the selection. While working on his submission, Lyons enlisted critiques from Tech alum, VPA sound mixing instructor and video game sound designer Steve Green ’14.
“It was unreal to even be a finalist,” Lyons said. “It is insane to me that I did that. I feel really accomplished. I am really thankful for all the professors here who I talked to and gave me feedback and critiques, who helped me polish it to make it much better.”
Lyons was one of several students who attended and presented at the AES convention, led by assistant professor Jeff Sherwood (VPA). The weeklong study away experience included networking with Grammy-winning and Academy-winning professionals at the convention. Students had a curated experience including private meetups with AV consulting and acoustics firms, facility tours, backstage tours and shadow opportunities, Broadway and other live productions, sightseeing, and Michigan Tech VPA alumni meetups for students to form industry connections as they launch their careers.
“Knowing that there are going to be professionals looking at my work and critiquing it in front of me is terrifying, said Lyons, “But it was very nice, especially because a lot of the people from Michigan Tech showed up to watch my presentation. Which was very nice because there were very limited seats, but the fact that they all got there early enough and watched and were very kind was amazing.”
Though Lyons was blown away by his own victory and struggled to articulate why his project stood out, the AES judges had no trouble giving positive feedback.
“One of the things that the three judges in New York said was that it really made them feel like they were playing games again. The sound design reminded them of games they would play when they were kids, which was really nice to hear,” Lyons said.
The award winner’s prize includes audio software from Bettermaker, Empirical Labs and Eventide.
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