Recently I did a talk at the inaugural "Our Sonic Landscape" audio conference about practice and skill development within game audio. This was a surprisingly larger topic than I had initially anticipated and I thought sharing my notes from this talk would be a helpful reference for anyone unable to attend.
There is surprisingly not a lot of information on this topic for game audio specifically, so I'm borrowing heavily from a bunch of other sources and doing my best to translate this information along with my own experiences, to the field of game audio.
Hopefully there's something you may find helpful to improve your own practice, but nothing here is sacred.

The Practice of Sound (Part 1)

It's not exactly a secret, but a method by which you can improve your skills and knowledge is by simply - practicing.

But what does practice look like within the context of game audio?
Do you need 10,000 hours before you're any good? Does it mean learning all the plugins and programming languages? Does it mean recording every sound you can?
Most game audio folks have some degree of musical training (whether self-taught, through school, or proper lessons) and this may bring back fears for some of boring practice sessions running scales or being forced to play music you didn't like. Is practice within game audio the same?

The more we ask what practice is, the more a follow up question starts to appear - what are you practicing for? What are you working towards? What are your goals?
The answer to these questions is going to be different for everyone. So it's going to be impossible to provide a standard set of guidelines for practice that appeal to everyone, and that's okay but that shouldn't steer us away from still considering what good growth and development within the context of game audio could still look like.
We should also acknowledge the fact that everyone is aiming for different goals and has different ideas what success looks like. Please don't take from this writing that the intention is for you to only focus on work in life. Maybe your goal is to work on an award winning title? Maybe it's to get employed? Maybe it's more financial freedom? Maybe success to you is a flexible schedule to spend more time with your family? Almost any goal is a fine goal, as long as it's your goal.
Achieving your goals is likely to require growth and development at some point within your career. My hope is that this outlining this growth may provide some things to consider to improve your own craft and help you along your path, whatever your goals may be.

Why Practice at All

I mentioned practice is a well known way to improve your skills and knowledge - but how? and why is that important?

Personal and Professional Growth

• Simply, you want to learn something new or improve at what you already know

This will likely be in the form of; Proficiency, Efficiency, or Mastery

• Proficiency - Learn a new thing

• Efficiency - Get faster at what you know

• Mastery - Become "the best" at something you know

Exposure to New Domains

• Within game audio, "Mastery" is not a requirement to do work or necessary for problem solving. You can be "okay" and still earn a living. Sometimes, simply having an awareness or very light knowledge of another tool or technique can let you identify it's strengths and weaknesses. Issues may arise here when people assume their knowledge is greater than it is (see; Dunning-Kruger). But, if we remain self-aware and humble about the limits of our current knowledge, even a small amount of experience with a new tool or technique may help you identify whether it's worth digging into further. So you do not need to practice something to the point of mastery before it can have an impact in your work.

Networking and Community

• No one said you had to practice alone, this is not the same as learning an instrument. Involving others can make practice easy, keep it fun, and improve the results. No one said you had to choose others who were at the same skill level as you either. This can be a fantastic way to leverage the knowledge and experience of others to help develop your own skills and knowledge.

Learning How to Learn

• Brain plasticity is real - but we know of this mostly in the negative context of "Brain Rot". Simply put, your brain gets good at optimizing. Repeat an action and your brain makes it easier to repeat the action. If you make that action something positive, you use the powers of plasticity for good.

Try, Safely

• Trying something new is scary and it's you're probably going to suck when you start something new. This is normal! But if the first time you try something new is when your reputation or livelihood is on the line, that's terrifying and stressful. Try new things when it's okay to fail.

…Fun

• Practice isn't a term that's maybe synonymous with "fun", especially for anyone who may have been forced to practice or study something in their early years. But no one said practice has to be boring. Have you ever wanted to record a volcano? What about play with a big modular synth? There are endless options for ways to improve in the field of game audio, and lots of them are fun and exciting.

So if all of the above reasons for practice are awesome and amazing - surely we must all be engaging in good meaningful practice daily?...right?

Current Trends

I conducted a small, informal survey asking game audio folks of varying levels about their practice. The goal was to try and learn more about what others were actually doing to learn and develop, and not just make assumptions based on my own experience. These results should still be taken with a grain of salt - but some general take aways.

• Majority of audio professionals surveyed rely on their day-to-day work as their primary source for learning/development

• Roughly half of audio professionals surveyed are unsatisfied with their current source for learning/development

• No clear preference of practice method/delivery (ie. Hands on training, videos, etc.)

So most people are showing up, doing their job, and going home, and relying on this as their primary means of growth in their craft.

Is This Good Practice?

Arguably your job is the “best” form of practice - but it's temporary

• Most people have felt the excitement and nerves that comes with a new job, project, or role. You might be at the edge of your comfort zone (or outside of it), but learning a lot. Not only are you learning, you're being paid to learn! And, you've already got time carved out of your day to do this.
  This balance between growth, compensation, and time - means that when your work is working for you and helping develop your craft, this is one of the best forms of practice. What better way to get good at professional game audio...then by doing professional game audio.
  The issue here, is that it's almost certainly temporary.

May outgrow your work (Stagnation/Boredom)

• Those on cyclical and live service projects may fall into this situation sooner. But eventually the challenges are no longer new, and your growth may begin to stagnate and you may even find yourself bored by tasks which you once found challenging.

Growth may be controlled by project/company needs

• You may still be excited by potential tasks or opportunities, but then watch as scope cuts remove them from the plan outside of your control. You may wish to pivot to another role but are not given that opportunity. Or lead a project but aren't yet at the appropriate level determined by the company.

Changing variables

• There are also many conditions which may just simply be outside of your control. Such as the project you're on, the members of your team, your role within that team, and larger industry trends - just to name a few.

Different employment types predispose us to different experiences

• Freelance folks may be able to gain an impressive number of credits very quickly, but lack deep project knowledge jumping between projects. And they may arrive on a project later after most of the creative decisions have been made. While in-house folks may get more deep level knowledge, they may spend years on a single project and not have the same range of experience to show for it. Both have their pros and cons.

Results driven

• Lastly, your work is results driven. You are being compensated to produce quality results and your name will be associated with the project. This creates a certain kind of environment and dynamic which may not be the best place to practice.

So your professional work could be a fantastic opportunity for growth and development, but what if you haven't found employment yet? What if you're not working on projects that excited or challenge you any more? What if you're working on proprietary or deprecated tools? In these situations it's important to identify when to seek practice and growth outside of your professional work.

What Does Good Practice Look Like?

Not bound to any specific activity

• Good news everyone, here in 2026 you can do just about any activity and call it "practice" in the context of game audio. That might be field recording, playing with a synthesizer, following a programming tutorial, or working on a personal project. It all counts.

Focus on process, not results

• The big difference between your work and your practice. Your practice should focus deeply on the process, not the results.
  Imagine you've identified field recording as an activity you wish to practice and you feel would help you further in your career. Which situation do you think will help you more?

  • Situation A: You plan the recording thoroughly, make deliberate decisions about recorder, microphones, windshielding, mounting options. You scout the location, you make a shot list or a plan. You check gain structure, ensure batteries and SD card are ready, along with sample rate, bit depth. You monitor your recording in the field and choose the best placement for your mics.
    And after all that...the results are pretty mid.

  • Situation B: You wing it, grab a recorder off the shelf. Don't know if the batteries are good, no windshield. Who cares about gain right? 32 bit baby!
    And at the end of that...you get an awesome sound that immediately goes into your library.

  • Obviously - if field recording was an important activity, you've learned much more from option A. Not every recording session is a winner. With option B, you likely just got lucky. Yes, you have a new sound but you also didn't learn as much.
    
    So care about the process with your practice and you'll be better suited to produce results when it matters.

Intentional and measured

• Practice should have an intention and be measurable. That intention can still absolutely be "I'm going to wing it and just grab my recorder today and see what I get", so this doesn't mean that every practice session needs to be methodical. It just simply means that you should have an intention for what you wish to achieve before you start. And by being measurable you will know when your session is complete.

• "I'm going to design 5 explosion sounds", "I'm going to work for on my personal project and get a system functional", "I'm going to mess around with a synthesizer for 30 minutes". All of these are examples of intentional and measured practice.

Challenging, but achievable

• You should try to find things at the edge of your comfort zone. However, you shouldn't do this every practice session. This is obviously hazy in creative fields but transfer this to fitness. A runner does not set a new personal best every time they go for a run. And most of their practice sessions should not be at racing pace. Choose the sessions you want to push yourself and find something challenging. Take it easy on the other sessions.

Match your energy level

• Different mechanisms for practice require different energy. Watching tutorial videos may be an example of "low energy" practice. While a full day of field recording may be "high energy". But if you try and do "high energy" practice when you're in a low energy state (ie. exhausted), you're going to get less from it and potentially hurt yourself through fatigue and burnout. So identify during your practice sessions what your energy is and find methods that match your energy, as best you can.
  Yes, sometimes pushing through is fine but if you're routinely doing this or not practicing because you're energy is off consider evaluating and finding a different time or task.

• In addition to this, most people have branded themselves a morning person or a night owl. I would argue that most people are neither. We simply have times when we are naturlaly well suited to different tasks. If you ask me to sit at a computer and do technical thinking first thing in the morning, I'm a zombie that requires 5 coffees. But if you ask me to run around and do something physical, I'm wide awake and might go the whole day without coffee. Energy ebbs and flows throughout the day naturally, so try and identify the time when you've got the right energy for your practice.

Have an output (Storing, Sharing, and Shredding)

• I think having an output is one of the best "multipliers" for the value of your practice. I suggest 3 main options;

  • Storing - Whatever you create, save it for later. Maybe it a sound that ends up in your library, a preset, or effect chain. I guarantee whatever you make will help you at some point. But this output has diminishing returns in the long term.

  • Sharing - I'd argue the best option for growth. Simply share your practice with others. If you remember earlier though, I said practice should focus on process, not results. And here I'm saying now share that with others. That can be really scary - but this is good. It allows for feedback from others, it shows that you're active and what you're up to, and it's an honest look at your process. Don't dwell on what you share, put it out there and carry on.

  • Shredding - There is a catharsis that comes from creating something pretty good, and then pressing the delete button. Building a confidence where you know you could reproduce the results if you needed to. Eventually when your sound library grows to a decent size, you'll realize that just padding it with more sounds you already have doesn't help as much, but deleting and gaining some mental clarity and confidence really does help. It's scary, but try it sometime.

Better with friends

• I spoke about it earlier - but get some friends.
  And if you happen to try things together, even better. It can be a great boost or change of pace to practice with others. Maybe this is a field recording you do with others in-person, maybe it's collaborating remotely, there are many options here. It's also worth noting that these people do not need to be at your skill level. I particularly love using practice as an excuse to speak with people more experience in a particular field.

Direct or indirect

• If you're looking to get proficiency or efficiency, do direct practice and learn the exact thing you want to learn. But if you're looking for mastering or general creative problem solving, try indirect practice.
  An example of this might be "I want to learn how to use metasounds" - then you should practice with metasounds. But if it's something like "I'm confident with metasounds but I want to try something new with them", then maybe playing with a modular synth would lead to some interesting ideas you could take back into a metasounds later.

Has a feedback mechanism

• Ideally the feedback is immediate, but it's rare to get immediate and trustworthy feedback in creative fields. If we were learning to play a song, we might just compare ourselves against a professional record. When we're only practicing with original or abstract work, feedback is often difficult to trust.
  Leaning on others for their thoughts or feedback is great, but this is where "intention" is really helpful. It frames the context of your practice and making it easier to get feedback exactly where you want it, and it frames the context for what your intention is. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of subjective/taste related feedback notes that you get.

• Try not to outsource your opinions about your practice to others though. If you feel like you're progressing, sometimes that's enough. Remember, try not to get too caught up on the results - focus on the process.

Led by curiosity and fun

• Everyone has knowledge and experience gaps. It's a great idea to work on those areas. But just because you have a knowledge gap, doesn't mean you're interested by the subject you may be lacking in. For example, you might not know much about music composition. That could be something to try practice, but if you're not interested in it and don't find it fun, it's likely not helpful to practice this much. Try stick to areas that you're curious about and that you find interesting.

So at the end of all of this, you may think the expectation is that you must be practicing every free moment you get. Shunning your friends and family, embracing the hashtags of "grind life" or "hustle culture" or whatever other trending branding is used to hide toxic work habits?

Thankfully - this is not the case. In the next part I'll talk about balance and awareness in the context of practice to shine a light on what healthy practice habits can look like and how to balance growth and development with your core values, priorities, and curve balls that life tends to throw our way.