Game Music Adventures in Listening with Panel Feedback

The Academy of Scoring Arts is excited to announce our upcoming live event, Game Music Adventures in Listening, where participants will have the opportunity to receive professional feedback on their music! A distinguished panel of game music composers, led by Kole Hicks, will offer valuable insights, perspectives, and suggestions on your submitted works. Please see instructions and submission links below. Submission deadline is Feb. 15th, 11:59 PM and the event will be held on Feb. 22nd at the First Baptist Church in Glendale. We will spend the first hour listening to submissions and getting feedback from the panelists. We’ll follow that with a moderated discussion with the panelists about their experiences working in the field of game music plus some additional time at the end for Q&A. As always we’ll have lunch together following the discussion. We can’t wait to hear your music! Everyone in our community is welcome to attend this event, even if you choose not to submit music. There will still be a lot to learn!

Submission Prompt: There’s an opportunity to score a new game. However, before selecting the composer, the studio is requiring demo submissions. They are asking for the following:

• A Full Stereo Track
• An Ambient Version of this Track
• An Imminent Danger Version of this Track

All three of these tracks must be exactly the same duration and work as if they are layers that can crossfade into each other seamlessly, all based on a hypothetically changing game state.

An example track can be heard here: LINK.

The Full Stereo track must contain the following qualities

• Memorable
• Sonically Unique
• Elements of Modern Production
• Represents the Feeling of Overcoming Insurmountable Odds

Additional Information on Submissions:

• Each Participant may submit 1 entry (3 tracks; 1 Full Stereo & the 2 Versions/Layers).
• Submissions must be between 30 - 45s in length (per track). These (3) tracks must all be exactly the same in duration.
• There is no requirement for this to be newly created.
• Submissions can be anonymous.
• Musical Genre/Style can be anything, as long as it captures the qualities mentioned in the Prompt

SUBMIT YOUR TRACKS HERE: LINK

Panelists

Maclaine Diemer

Maclaine Diemer is a Los Angeles based composer for interactive and traditional media. After graduating from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he joined the rock and roll circus, climbing speaker towers and playing to sold out crowds across the U.S. and Canada with several bands before entering the game industry. Now, with 16 years of experience in games, he has worked on some of the highest profile titles across PC and multiple game console generations. In 2023 and 2024, Maclaine was nominated for the Game Music Award at the prestigious World Soundtrack Awards.

An insatiably curious musician and multi-instrumentalist, he works in a wide variety of styles. Whether performing stripped down arrangements of his Guild Wars 2 score at the first Twitchcon or conducting a full orchestra in Boca del Rio, Mexico, he lives to carry the torch for game music all over the world.

Notable credits include ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2, Firmament from legendary development studio Cyan, Inc., makers of Myst and Riven, Harmonix’s Rock Band franchise, Riot Games’ League of Legends, and Amazon Game Studios’ first major original title Crucible.

Ayriel “rel” Hunt

As a hands-on Creative Director with over a decade of experience in leading multi-disciplinary teams and with a background in Visual Design, Ayriel specializes in crafting compelling creative narratives through authentically unique 360 marketing campaigns and holistic design systems that look to resonate on a global scale. Ayriel has led teams to create campaigns that properly ignite players across gaming with intersections in music, fashion and entertainment. Much of this work spans across various mediums like: live events, product branding, and digital experiences.

Ayriel has a proven track record of driving creative vision for some of the industry's most recognizable IPs, including League of Legends, VALORANT, and Netflix’s Arcane, through innovative campaigns and collaborations that fuse digital, experiential with game elements.

Ayriel is passionate about mentoring emerging talent and establishing long-lasting relationships across an organization to drive towards a shared success. Collaborative, fearless, and relentlessly creative, Ayriel looks to craft creative strategies that propel a game from just a game IP, and ultimately evolves it into a fandom.

Colin Andrew Grant

Colin Andrew Grant is a Los Angeles based Music Designer that has spent the last eight years getting to experience a wide array of jobs in game audio including dialogue coordinator, composer, and sound designer. Having obtained an undergraduate degree in Music from the University of Pittsburgh and a Professional Studies Diploma in Technology and Applied Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Colin began his journey in game audio as a music intern at Playstation. Since then he’s been fortunate enough to be able to work on a multitude of games in a multitude of different positions. Some of his most recent credits include music designer on Jedi Survivor, music editor on Halo Infinite, dialogue coordinator on Days Gone, and many more. When Colin is not working his day job as a music designer at Respawn Entertainment, he’s volunteering at The Game Audio Diversity Alliance as they're fundraising chair.

Kole Hicks

Kole Hicks is a Composer, Songwriter, and Music Producer with over a decade and a half of experience in writing music for some of the most successful games in the world. Games like League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and the indie hit, Kenshi. Throughout his career, with nearly seven years in-house at Riot Games, Kole has written music that has been listened to, streamed, and viewed over half a billion times.

Over the years, Kole has had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with different artists on a variety of musical projects and songs. Most recently was a collaboration with Forts, Tiffany Aris, and 2WEI on the Season 2024 League of Legends cinematic, Still Here. A piece which received over 100 Million views in its first week and was later performed live at the 2024 League of Legends Worlds Finals at the O2 Arena in London.

He’s also had the opportunity to collaborate with artists like Becky G, Keke Palmer, SOYEON of (G)I-dle, Duckwrth, and Thutmose on the song GIANTS; for which Kole was producer, co-writer, mixer and received a Game Audio Network Guild award for ‘Best Original Song.’ Prior to leaving Riot at the end of 2023, Kole did a remix collaboration with Steve Aoki for the first music-centric set for Teamfight Tactics, REMIX RUMBLE.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

First Baptist Church of Glendale, 209 North Louise Street, Glendale, United States