Lead Music Designer, systems builder, recording artist. 17 years at PlayStation Studios. Now building the tools that should've existed a decade ago.
"The question that drives everything: if the music in a game is different every time, who composes it?"
Ted Kocher is a classically and jazz-trained trumpet player with perfect pitch who spent nearly two decades as the trusted musical ear inside PlayStation Studios — and is now building at the frontier of what interactive audio becomes next.
The career started in music editorial — the discipline of making a score work inside a finished film or game, frame by frame and system by system. It's precision work at the intersection of music and technology, and it taught a fundamental truth: the best interactive music isn't placed, it's integrated.
Across 17 years at PlayStation Studios, Ted worked with composers like Gustavo Santaolalla, Ilan Eshkeri, Sarah Schachner, and Nier Automata composer Keiichi Okabe — bringing their scores into games that demanded musical systems as sophisticated as the stories being told.
The through-line across all of it: story and music first, technology in service. That hasn't changed. What's changed is the tools now available to act on that principle.
Ted operates from a Dolby Atmos studio in Traverse City, Michigan — where he teaches, builds, records, and consults.
An artist persona built on the principle that raw vulnerability beats coolness every time. Esoteric electronic ambient with synth-heavy arrangements — Rhodes, Hammond B3, analog gear, and a methodology called the GMA Standard that defines how to approach AI music generation as a music director, not a consumer.
Recent releases: Bracing For The Fall (2025), what we could build instead feat. BAILEY (2026). Also recording as AIDAxPOUROVER.
Apple Music Spotify