I have recently been working with the first year Video Games Design Degree students at University Campus Suffolk over the last couple of months teaching them about video game and film sound, the first four sessions we looked at Star War Clone Wars cartoon’s use of sound, Star Wars: A New Hope for its use of music, and then several video games to discuss the use of sound within them.

It has been really good seeing a change in the students understanding and appreciation of sound and its role within video games.

For the last two weeks we are recording our own sound effects for new games using classic foley techniques, allowing them to not only create the sounds but get confident in using the recording equipment themselves.  Today we made a roaring fire, lasers, screeching doors, footsteps and sounds of flying objects whizzing by.

I look forward to emails they’ll be sending in about what they want to make in next weeks workshop.

I was fortunate to give a talk to first year Music Technology students today about the Internet, Music and more.

It was interesting to discuss the various techniques available to them to get their music out there and to share some of the success stories I’ve had and how could improve their chances of success.

A good bunch of students and a good range of questions from these first year students who are just starting out.

I wish them all the best success and I am sure I will be back soon to talk some more about circuit bending and more in the near future.

It is always good fun to talk to other musicians and you can find out more about their course here @ Suffolk New College.

Good fun was had by all and it was nice to meet several other artists making interesting things, I am featured in the video @ around 7:36 talking about “Childhood Remixed”.

I was fortunate to have a chat with fellow artist Mark Dixon and discuss all things electronic and creative this evening, it is always good to meet other artists,  especially when there is dinner involved.  I was shown around his studio (which I am envious of) and some of the projects he is working on,  so hopefully there might be some collobarations or at very least more chats like this in the future.

Today I ventured out to Hadleigh as part of a new library initiative to provide alternative activities  on Saturday evenings for teenagers. So we decided to design and make a platform game in two hours (see screen shots).

Each person got to design a level, draw the good guy, bad guy and items and we managed to do it all. I let them use a new new piece of sprite editing and composite software I made in Processing which helps speed up the editing (I do love Processing).

The new software I created allows the participants to draw in a 64X64 grid and the software edits and composite the graphics ready for the game engine. I suppose in a kind a way it’s like a platform game version of the Shoot-em-up Construction kit on the Commodore 64. It’s good the participants get to learn about game mechanics, and just what goes on behind the screen, not the coding side but cause and effect and how objects interact with one another. Good fun was had and hopefully some of them will carry on making games.

I was very fortunate and dare I say honoured to give a talk at the John Cage “Everyday is a good day” exhibition at the Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. I admittedly was nervous Cage’s influence on me as a musician was extremely important in my formative years and it was a little shaky at the start when discussing his ideas about chance and silence. During the talk I discussed how through Cage’s work I learned to stop and listen to the sounds around me and got in to chip tune music, how I expanded those concepts and included them in “Obsolete?” and “Observations” by way of visual and sonic chance. And finally how I created a piece of software called “SONUS (One)” (out soon) to illustrate a spatial realisation of chance music on the Apple iPhone and Android phone. It was good fun and good questions from the audience, I do really like Cambridge hopefully I will be there a lot more soon.

I had a great day today at the V&A Digital Design Weekend which was part of the London Design Festival. I took several toys from “An Apple A Day Day” from the “Childhood Remixed” project for the public to play on an record noise from. Got to bump into Sophie McDonald of mztek, Davide Della Casa of sketchpatch,  Daniel Soltis of Tinker London & Andras Szalai who were all running great projects in the design studio.

Good fun was had by all even though I think my stuff was a little noisy at times, Sophie and Davide were demoing sketchpatch and I think I will do some pieces for them soon, Daniel was building amazing physical storytelling environment and Andras was coding in fluxus which I will definitely have to check out soon.

Many thanks to the V&A for asking me to come down to London and talk about my past, present and future work today. The three hour session had me answering questions on coding to composition, gaming to educational software. I was also really chuffed to finally meet Bill Thompson from BBC’s Digital Planet during the talk and answers some of his questions too.

All in all it was a good day and I will be back there on the 25th and 26th of September with several circuit bent toys from the “Childhood Remixed” project. Come along make and record some sounds between 10:30-5pm. See you there.

I was fortunate to be able to be given the opportunity to present some of my research in the fields of Music Technology and Education at the Society for Education, Music & Psychology Research conference.

I was also pleased to meet other researchers all very keen in same areas I am, Micheal Clarke‘s keynote on “interactive audio analysis” was an incredibly useful tool and Yu Tai Su’s (Department of Early Childhood Education, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan) poster presentation on how children “responded to musical time from steady tempo to ritardando through an Alternative Instant Notation Program (AINP)” was also of interest.

I was a bit nervous as it was not only my first conference to present at, but the first conference I have ever attended, everyone  made me feel very welcome and I will certainly be attending future SEMPRE conferences.

Department of Early Childhood Education, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan

Today I attended the Young people’s media use and creative participation event at the University of Westminster organised by David Gauntlett and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Amusingly I ended up taken part and presenting some of my research to the group to fill in for one of the presenters, my research was very different to the others but none the less well received. It also allowed me to break the ice with several other researchers during coffee. All in all it was good fun and it made me aware of several other organisations and research projects.

You can find out more about David Gauntletts book “Making is Connecting” here.