Audio Developer
Jagex

Sam J

00.01 My name is Sam J, I work at Jagex Games studio and my job title is I’m an Audio Developer. On a day to day basis I typically come in and play through a new quest or something that’s been created by the content team and I go through, dream up new sounds for these imaginary creatures or I kinda write music for areas within kinda the quest specific content.

00.28 I think I probably got my first guitar when I was about six. And fell in love with it and just played it all the time. And really enjoyed it. When I was doing my A levels I just kind of decided music was what I do for fun and I was going to go and be a physicist or something like that so go and study maths and physics. I basically found out that I could potentially go into a route which incorporate maths, physics and music together, and so at that point I then took music and stayed on and did an extra year of A levels, basically because I had to start my first year of music in my second year. And then I got onto a University course call the tonmeister course, which means sound master. And then, through them was lucky enough to land a placement at Air Studios, which was a recording studio in London where I learnt my trade. My responsibilities were things like rigging microphones, an engineer would give me a set up, you know how he wanted the orchestra positioned in the, in the recording venue, I’d then kinda set it all up. The projects that spring to mind were things like the Casino Royale, Pirates of the Caribbean three. I think the Bourne Ultimatum was the first one that I actually managed to get to the cinema and go along with my friends. Everyone wanted to leave at the end of the film, but I made them stay, I made them watch, to squint just to see Sam J come up in lights at the end. Which was great.

01.53 Probably the reason why I moved from films to games was there’s not really much of a work life balance there. I was kind of loosing touch with my family and friends. And I didn’t really like that very much. I was lucky enough to find this job just on a jobs website, you know, Monster.co.uk or something like that. They actually advertised which was great.

02.15 My entire family are nurses, my sisters a nurse, my brother in laws a nurse, both my parents and all my aunties and uncles are nurses, so I’m a little bit of a black sheep. My dad always worked really hard and I always respected that. My mums brilliant she thinks I could be an astronaut tomorrow if I tried, she, she believes in me which is great. And at times when I didn’t believe in myself, she’d yeah, turn that around.

02.37 My family, they’re not musicians in the slightest. But they are music lovers, they absolutely love music. They are big folk fans actually. And I remember growing up, and they’d always take me to folk festivals, you know there are stories of them kind of their partying until like you know the early hours, I’d fall asleep and they’d just put me to sleep under the stage, and maybe that drummed it into me, maybe that kind of force fed me musicality or something, I don’t know.

03.06 I play quite a few instruments, primarily anything stringed is my forte as it were. I like to play a lot of folk instruments, so I’m learning the fiddle at the moment which is quite good fun. On paper probably the thing that I’m supposedly best at is singing, I’ve got my grade eight at singing but I am a little bit out of practise.

03.29 It’s quite rare that people get to do something that they really genuinely enjoy on a day to day basis. You know the grass is always greener, you always, you sometimes forget actually what a luxury it is that you know, kind of you walk into work, have a good laugh and yeah, make some great music, it’s yeah, it’s easy to forget that but I guess actually taking a step back, I’m incredibly lucky.