I was very pleased to get this project off the ground, recently I have spoke out publicly about the decline of programmers numbers and the absurdity of removing computing from the curriculum, so I feel very fortunate to be able to make a change to this however small that is. Over the last couple of weeks I have put together a teaching plan to teach secondary school children the basics of computing and video game making.

Firstly using tools like Game Maker and then Processing, making a game in Game Maker and then recoding it in Processing so they can learn about game dynamics and computing. Today was their first lesson and they were very good, very polite and very talented. We have only designed the “Good Guys”, “Bad Guys” and “Items” but things are looking good for the next lesson in which we will look at the backgrounds and level design.

Unfortunately there isn’t a qualification at the end of the course, but hopefully they will be inspired to use computers more creatively, even if it’s only one of them that goes on to program, that’s one more.

I should have some pictures of the games soon, and I will keep you updated on their progress.

This was a follow up to the Circuit Bending Lecture @ Suffolk New College, this time it was the students turn, after last lesson they were sent off to look through charity shops and car boot sales.  Some came back with some baragins, some didn’t.

I brought in my enormous suitcase full of  components and crocodile clips. Some good sounds were made, as you can hear below. (Warning Pretty Loud)

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Enjoy!

The video pretty much says it all.

Yup, you can read the article here or here, but in addition to this I’d like to say that I will be making a new version of Music Tech Master Stroke for the event featuring several percussion pages to allow for groups of people to perform together.

The workshop will be based on Samba style music it will just be using a very very modern device to create the sound.  The software again will be made available for free to the general public after the workshop has taken place.

Many thanks to Ross Dalziel at SoundNetwork and those wonderful people at FACT for helping me get this project off the ground. Many thanks to the Chip Tune Marching Band for letting me talking part in their workshop, which helped convince me to take chip tune music to the streets.  Now I need to get back to writing the new version of the software. Cya.

Check out an in-depth interview with me, my upcoming projects and a very good look at chiptune music on the Nerdy Show here. The show was recorded at 2am UK time thats why I sound so sleepy, I had to wake up to do it as I am always in bed by 11:30pm.

I also went on to discuss the decline in programmers at the Suffolk e-learning forum in my talk “A Choice To Compute”.  I am amazed I made it through it especially as I am feeling very coughy and coldy at the moment. Enjoy! I’m off to bed I go with my cold.

Photo courtesy of Eddie Dougan @ UCS

I am very fortunate in that, amongst my research and music composing I get to teach music. Not music in the traditional sense, and certainly not things like music theory, but things like sound design, Circuit Bending, Graphical Scores and Found Sound.

Today was a circuit bending lecture, I sat at a small table with the students huddled around me and over the course of the three hours I disected two keyboards and discussed basic electronics. Below are some of the sounds I made with the two keyboards I demonstrated, they were amazed at the sheer range of sound that a £3 or $5 keyboard could make with a few simple additional components.

Next week is their turn, they have been sent off to find cheap keyboards and electronic musical toys from charity shops and car boot sales, for us all to take apart next week. So I will post some examples of the noise we make next week. The overall aim with the two groups over the course of the year is to give them 22 very different ways of looking at sound, and we are only on week three.

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Special thanks to Geek Dad Paul Govan and fellow game critic at Game People for bringing this to the attention of Wired. I was very pleased to see it pop up on my iPhone during a lesson teaching degree students how to program. You can read the full article in the USA here and the UK here. You can find out more about Processing here.

Last week I asked via Twitter and Facebook what format would you prefer the album to appear on. I recently have become more aware of the environmental impact that the production of physical CD’s make , instead of go on and on about it, I would just do it.  “And The Revolution” will only be released digitally, either MP3 192Kbps or FLAC Lossless, as per request from most of my fans that responded.  It will also be available direct from me at my online shop here, you’ll still be able to get it from places like iTunes and Napster as well, but some of you asked for a format which didn’t require specific devices or use DRM. I listened.  So here it is “And The Revolution” I sincerely hope you like it as much as I do. It has been a long time coming and an immense amount of work for me.

Pixelh8 “And The Revolution” available here, on MP3 192Kbps or FLAC Lossless, included in the download are the graphics for printing your own CD too.

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Pixelh8 “And The Revolution” Medley ©2008-2009 Hidden Youth Records UK

Well impressed by the in depth and comprehensive reporting on the article about chip tune music, 8bit Heroes. It was also good to see some of my favourite UK based chip tune bands like Casio Kid, Henry Homesweet, Syphus, DJ Scoth Egg & Sabrepulse getting some well deserved coverage too.

So check it out it’s a three page article and a guide to getting into chip tune music by yours truly. Many thanks to all the FRONT team, it was a pleasure, and well done on the excellent article. Enjoy. FRONT Magazine is available from all good news agents.

You can find out more about the magazine here.

Pixelh8 Circuit Bending Workshop & Q&A
February 27th,2010 Time TBC
V&A South Kensington
Cromwell Road
London SW7 2RL
+44 (0)20 7942 2000
More details and price to follow closer to event.

Pixelh8 Q&A
February 28th,2010 Time TBC
V&A South Kensington
Cromwell Road
London SW7 2RL
+44 (0)20 7942 2000
More details and price to follow closer to event.