Modulus - rehearsals

Today at 11am, Modulus met in the School of Music common room at Kingston University to clarify the way forward for the band. It seemed, to me at least, bizarre that we have been formed for well over a year without any demos being recorded. I strongly advised the other band members that we ought to rectify this immediately; the outcome being that we will have a 3 hour band rehearsal on Tuesday 3rd November at 9am. Fortunately, our drummer Emma has every Tuesday and Thursday available until Christmas, so it was felt to be essential that we make the best use of our time with her, as she is insanely busy settling into her MMus studies at Trinity.

After this rehearsal, we can decide if we need another rehearsal before heading into Coombehurst Studio to record our first demo tracks. Another aspect of getting a demo CD recorded is that we will need something to show prospective venues and promoters to land future gigs, which is especially important around the Christmas and New Year period when bands are often best paid. We have slimmed our existing set list down to around ten songs for the purposes of recording. These songs were chosen mutually by the band, on the basis that they provoked the best audience reaction at Jenni's wedding.

We certainly hope that it will take a single rehearsal to 'get back in the groove', and can then begin the process of recording a week later, on Tuesday 10th.

collaboration - Zoe Coles

In the near future, I will be doing some sound design & music work to help out Zoë, a graphic communications student at Bath Spa University who I also used to work with at Sutton Virgin Megastore. Like virtually all projects of this nature, it is mutually beneficial: Zoë will have a quality soundtrack to go with her work, and I, in pushing my creative boundaries even further, will have another composition credit placed on my CV. I look forward to getting started!

Her website is here.

specification - 'Goats and Tigers'

Discussions are currently being held as to the feasibility of porting Goats and Tigers to the iPhone. It would be available as a downloadable application from the Apple Store. The actual concept depends on a few variables, notably if Dan can get an SDK kit to work with a Mac (we don't even know if he has one!) and some extensive rewriting of the game in all areas.

We have come to realise that, as a student project, the original version of the game served its purpose well. However, if we are to take on the fierce competition of mobile phone games, we need to acknowledge that the overall quality of these games is usually exceptionally high.

For this reason, we will need to go back to square one in terms of graphic design, programming, and music. Most mobile phone gamers these days, for instance, are accustomed to being able to stream their own music and playlists from an iPod or other portable device, so there needs to be a wider range of accessibility options available. The technical requirements of the iPhone will need to be taken into consideration as well, since the display size will be uniform and not necessarily the same as a PC version.

With the kit, Apple also reviews the game code to make sure that the fundamentals are in place, and even suggests modifications from its own programmers. This is excellent technical support for software that costs £60. Ben has been telling me about an iPhone application in which a guy has taken several photos of each tube stop in London where the trains stop, presumably so people know how far down the train they can go before the doors won't open. I wasn't aware that people would be so eager to waste their money on a seemingly limited-use application, but what do I know? Apparently this guy has made £10,000 already!

Clearly, there is still a lot of hard work ahead, but the potential rewards are vast. According to the Apple Store, each iPhone application costs 59p to download, and approximately 67% of the price is paid to the game creators. So, for sake of argument, each sold copy of the game makes the creators 40p. We would therefore need to sell 900 copies of the game to raise £360, which is the forecast outlay for this project. (£60 for the SDK kit, and £300 for a Mac Minibook)

composition - videogame soundtracks for 'Bridges' and others

Today, I will be beginning work on another video game programmed by Dan Newman, which is entitled Bridges. After this work is done, there is the potential to write soundtracks for two more of his games, Tic Tac Toe and Suicide Chess. This continues the collaboration instigated with Goats and Tigers. Ben Gaskell will also be involved with elements of graphic design.