We were lucky to catch up with Nir Shor recently and have shared our conversation below.
Nir, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.
What I love about the gaming industry is that the word “Boss” is not really used all that often, it being a very collaborative industry. However, I can definitely bring up a very enjoyable collaborative experience I am currently taking part in.
I have been contacted by “Minted Loot Studios” with an offer to compose music for their next steampunk themed video-game “Chronoforge”, the game has so many interesting prospects such as traveling to different worlds, special enemies and an interesting gameplay mechanic based around the concept of a “Prisoner’s Dilemma”.
I took on the project and was given complete creative freedom over the music. I got to explore a Viking musical style for our Ice age setting, Tribal music for our Jungle themed levels and even futuristic electronic music for our steampunk outer space setting.
As development progressed I showed keen interest in the games’ sound design and offered to integrate some into the music so I can have an output for these creative ideas, time went by and seeing as I was so passionate about the game they offered me a chance to create some sound effects for the game, not long after they offered me a position as an Audio Director at the company.
Audio Director basically means that you are in charge of everything that comes out of the speakers starting from sound effects, dialogue and even music, this was such an interesting challenge to tackle that has no limit in its creative options so it was very exciting!
This position allowed me to expand my horizons and collaborate with composers, musicians and even coach, direct and record voice actors. And all of this made possible because of the trust the people at Minted Loot Studios have in me, and I will always be grateful for this opportunity and experience.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I started out as a YouTuber mainly taking themes from some of my favorite video-game and movie soundtracks and turning them into rock styled arrangements, this enabled me to learn digital orchestration, composition and marketing all while creating content.
This evolved into composing music for video games I was a fan of which I turned into “mods” allowing other fans around the world to download my music to be enjoyed within the games they were playing, this allowed me to study how my music works within game engines alongside sound effects and other elements.
Having all this experience made me feel confident about reaching out for my first video game scoring gig, not long after I stumbled upon a Facebook post from a developer looking for a composer to score their video game.
I reached out and this is where my YouTube channel came in handy as it took the form of a portfolio showcasing my various skills as a composer in various styles and genres in addition to positive feedback with views and comments of people appreciating the music, taking all of this into account the developer decided to extend an offer to score my first video-game “Eximius: Seize the front lines” as a lead composer which became my breakthrough into the industry.
After more than a decade in the industry I became versed in various other aspects of audio production such mixing and sound design which allowed me to work on projects in different capacities and even include some work beyond the realm of video-games.
Some worth mentioning are: “PUBG Mobile” (Hollywood Music in Media Awards Nominated album as a Mixing Engineer), “Destiny: Rising” (Additional Music), “Chronoforge” (Audio Director, Sound Designer, Composer), “Try Harder” (Sundance Festival Nominated film as an assistant mixing engineer), “Outtahand” (Trailer composer for a VR title).
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I have been playing video games from a very young age and there are certain memories that have been engraved in my mind while gaming, whether it was a story plot point, a crazy action sequence, lore and world building, art design or even technology.
But there is one common element to all of these moments, they were all accompanied by some of the best soundtrack music written for video games.
In some way it made me realize that these games as amazing as they are simply would not have the same impact without the soundtrack that helped me resonate with the game, the concept of being a part of a person’s core memory during a gaming experience is my goal .. because this will be something that they will always remember.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Well the first thing that comes to mind is when I actually pivoted to music composition full-time.
As every musician knows, making any income on music when you are starting out is incredibly difficult so I worked various jobs that had to do with music such as working as a music teacher and retail at a musical instrument store.
At a certain point I made the decision to pivot to hightech as I had very good technical abilities that I picked up along the way both in the digital and hardware realms of technology.
This made me a bit concerned that I was neglecting my musical ambitions however it proved to be one of the best decisions I could have made, I got a job as a Customer Support representative at a gaming company, during my time there I worked my way up to where I was managing some of the company’s games.
At that point I realized I could make this work to my advantage and get to work on some of the artistic aspects of the games such as sound design and music which ultimately led to my first real although small experience in composing music for video games.
In addition this position also gave me an insight to the inner workings of a gaming company and provided me with critical negotiation, communication and management skills that would later help me manage my business.
The second pivot point was actually leaving the comfort of a well-paid position at a company to pursue a full time career in music composition which was not an easy choice but with all the knowledge I gained I had enough confidence that I had something unique to offer in this industry.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nirshor,com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nirshorcomposer/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nir.shor.5/
- Linkedin: https://il.linkedin.com/in/nir-shor-617726219
- Twitter: https://x.com/nirshor
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/nirshor
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nirshor
Image Credits
Aya Zakh