In the continued theme that "it would be nice for you to know a bit more about the people working at myTrueSound", we present you with another interview type post.
This time we meet Mikko, an audio engineer by day and rockstar by night!
Hi Mikko, please introduce yourself.
Hi I’m Mikko a music and audio freak, audio expert @ daytimes, rockstar 24/7!
I’ve been, and still am, a professional music producer and an artist for the last 20 years or so. A 20 cool years full of adventures people have a hard time believing when I tell my stories. I’ve done loads of albums for artists representing many music genres, I’ve been a touring artist for the last 20 years mostly in Finland but other countries also. I’ve had the whole gig spectrum from the tiniest clubs, private parties to national TV and biggest festivals in Finland. The amount of gigs I’ve done is somewhere between 2500-3000.
I’ve been a keen gamer (computers, consoles, arcade games, phones you name it) throughout my whole life. Now I’m finally making one of my big dreams come true, I’m part of developing an actual real game!
How did you get involved with myTrueSound?
Well, I am blind and was advised to contact David who was looking for a blind audio expert. I was looking for a job outside music production which nowadays is quite a hard way to pay your bills… so I contacted David asking for a job. From the very beginning I felt that this is something I really wanna do. From the very start we had similar ideas.
I’ve played games my whole life, and games not being accessible has always bugged me. I’m an active Playstation player, even though there aren’t that many games I’m good at, and I felt that this would be an opportunity to grow the gaming culture among us blind and bring new cool games to the table. I just had to jump on board.
You mentioned “among us blind”. Tell us a little more about your condition?
Oh yes, I sometimes forget since that’s not something I think of every day, haha. But yes, I’m blind. Achromatopsia is the name of the diagnosis. I’m completely blind in sunlight and bright lights in general, I see something (shades, shapes, figures) when it’s darker. I’m a braille user but have just enough sight to use computer with a 6x-7x zoom. Tablets and phones I use with speech.
What’s your role at myTrueSound?
Well, in the beginning it was more like everyone does all the things they can to help things get started. I work with the sounds, do the final mastering and mixing for them. Also I do kind of the same stuff I do with music. I verify the quality of audio and try to make it better every way I can. I also help David with social media and marketing.
What challenges have you had to deal with?
This all is very new for both me and the whole company that so many things have had to be tested and learnt. Some the easy way, some the harder way. Like all game companies, I suppose, we’ve had technical challenges. Things such as third party plugins and libraries not working like they’re supposed to and such. We’ve had to find solutions, change plans on the fly and so on.
I think quite a lot has changed along the last year, from the ground idea to the first game due for release. There is this common sentence in Finland, “Do it fast or do it with a computer”. We do everything with computers, sometimes a man of action like myself gets frustrated, haha… but that’s not always a bad thing.
The whole mess has united our core team together quite nicely. There are so many cool and talented people in our team, I hope you readers get to know them in later interviews, and without all the trial and error we wouldn’t be where we are now. This is just the very beginning for all this, the team, the games, the whole thing.
What has been most rewarding about working at myTrueSound?
The people. We have so much talent and cool people in our team. It’s like even though things can be tough or “out of reach right now”, nothing is impossible. Now that we have one by one collected our team together, we now have “talent and the will” to produce pretty much everything we need. I don’t know if you get me there, but that’s one of the things I also love in music production. How your group starts to work and produce together. How two people can achieve much more than someone alone but when you have the talent of a whole team, things really start to happen.
What are your future ambitions and plans for myTrueSound?
We’ll probably have to make another blog post just to cover all the details of this topic. However to keep it brief, I have ambitions considering the sounds with immersion, true 3D, and wall reflections, as there are so many things I hear around me that haven’t yet been implemented into games. The graphics have come a long way over the years but the sounds are still “on the way there”. It’s cool that we make audio games, so that the whole focus here is on the sounds.
I also have game ideas and ambitions. We tested a mobile multiplayer game, around the middle of 2018, so we have the technology and knowhow to make them happen. A multiplayer fighting game or adventure as an audio game would be something I personally would play a lot!
What else do you enjoy doing?
Is there anything else other than music and gaming?
OK, I have some weird hobbies, haha...like herbs. That’s something I’m interested in and something little by little I try to learn more. There’s so much in the nature we don’t know of or have forgotten. I have a good collection of herbs that have natural effects. I have herbs for energy, better sleep, weird dreams, anti-depression, concentration, love, headache, flu, you name it. Many of them can be found in nature, like nettle and mint for instance. Then there are these places like iHerb or Yrttilato in Finland that you can buy, then try, more specialist herbs, for example Calea, African dream root or Tulsi. I mix them with food, make tea, vaporize. A little bit weird but hey, that’s how it is to be at the frontline of new things.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
My motto in life is “just believe in your dreams”. I guess that’s something I’d like to say to everybody.
Well thank you Mikko for taking the time provide this information.
Thanks for the interview. I hope I can tell more fancy stuff about myTrueSound in the future once things have progressed more and we will have more to tell.
All the best to everybody!
Another interview concluded in the series of introducing you to various team members at myTrueSound. We hope you enjoyed reading about Mikko’s story and come back to see what we have in the future. If you didn’t catch the previous interview and would like to read it click on: