Lately I’ve been much more interested in games that don’t feature dudes shooting guns and saving the world from evil bad guys (or on an extra special occasion, a lady will shoot guns and save the world!). This has been a slowly growing trend for me (as evidenced by my (sort of) recent Undertale blog). I’m well aware that there are a ton of greatgames out there with thesesorts of stories (and indeed, there’s still some that I’m really looking forward to), but I’m just getting a tad worn out on the ubiquity of them.
Life is Strange is the perfect antidote to this disillusionment.
As a composer (and, I’m sure, in any creative endeavor), it’s extremely, deceptively easy to fall into a rhythm and habit and just write without thinking too much about it. We simply write what we think sounds like it should come next in that moment alone; where the melody “wants” to go. Often, this leads to a very natural, effortless style of music that flows out of the composer as if it just had to.
This is another post adapted from an extended Facebook post, this one from (I think) early December 2015. I think this was one of those rare, exceptionally lucid moments where I captured what I was feeling fairly well, and I stand by it now. I know two kinda political posts from me in a row is a little bit weird and probably slightly uncomfortable and maybe even not what you were looking for following this blog? But, you know, you get a little bit of everything with me, I suppose!
As of today, I’ve officially started work as the Program Coordinator of Western Washington University’s Department of Music. After a long summer of waiting for the position to open up, applying, interviewing, and finally being offered the position, I’m extremely excited to be able to serve the very people that I was among just last year, helping young musicians find their way in the department on a full-time basis.
I recently listened to an interview with Glenn Beck. As you might guess, I’m not a huge fan of the guy, and I was expecting that the interview wouldn’t change my perceptions of him.
PAX is one of my favorite times of year, primarily because up and until recently, it’s where all of my real-life interaction with game industry folks happened, and every year it manages to reinvigorate my love of games and the people that make them. This year was no different.
Inspired by Junkie XL’s intriguing video series on his studio and film work (especially on Mad Max: Fury Road), I decided to make some custom instruments using Native Instruments’ excellent industry-standard sampler Kontakt (don’t buy it at full price; it and Komplete go on sale at least once a year) and some drums I had access to; so far, one small bass drum at the nearby university, and one small bass drum at home that I got for free a few years back.
For the past several months (years maybe?), I’ve been reading a lot (and attempting to implement) about how to better promote myself and market myself and network and all the weird Silcon-Valley-etc-online-entrepreneur mumbo-jumbo that goes along with that. Some of the folks that do it seem to get along fine with it but I’ve decided that I’m just… done with it. I’m not interested anymore in trying to convince others that what I’m doing is worthwhile.
Participation in music can sometimes get kind of a bad rap. My tendency is to associate it with somewhat patronizing practice of having the audience clap along or do some kind of call-and-response thing, which in practice usually only goes to show how little said audience remembers from the meager music education many of them probably had.
I write music. Some of it is more electronic, some of it is written for instruments, much of it is a combination of the two. Some of it is light-hearted and off-kilter, some of it dark and immersive. It kinda runs the gamut, for better or worse.
