The Video Game Music Club brought in top local composers and sound designers to critique student works. On the panel were Duncan Watt, Michael Sweet, Gene Rozenberg, Scott Haraldsen, and Jim Booney. They made insightful comments such as; game designers get stacks and stacks of demos, and know within the first 8 seconds if they like a piece. For that reason, be unique and original, put your best work first, don't have a weak MIDI mock-up, and with all the talented musicians at Berklee, get real players for your music. Be careful of using scenes from the most popular games for your demo, everyone will know these and your music or sound design won't be better than the original. Use something more obscure, or take a flop game and make it better. Make sure your description or title of your piece fits the music, and beware of referencing specific games to describe your music. Instead use something more abstract, such as a line of literature, a color, a piece of artwork. Gene mentioned www.deviantart.com as a resource for cool art as inspiration for your music. Develop your sound design skills as well, and if the gig is for sound design, don't send music.

The panelists were:
Michael Sweet (Professor for Interactive Music in the Film Scoring Department)
Scott Haraldsen (Audio Lead, 2K Boston, www.2kboston.com)
Jim Booney (Audio Director, 2K Boston)
Gene Rozenberg (Composer, Sound Designer, www.38studios.com)
Duncan Watt (Composer for "Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway", www.fastestmanintheworld.com)

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Berklee alumni Neil Goldberg and Dave Fraser travelled from NYC to present their new critically aclaimed sound library Evolve. Housed in the Kontakt player engine, Evolve is a 6 GB collection of contemporary loops and instruments created through multiple combinations of sampling, synthesis and sound design techniques. In addition to discussing their product, Dave and Neil related their odyssey over many years through the music industry. From college graduation to work in recording studios, as touring musicians, TV composers, video game composers and as sound designers. They graciously answered many questions about trying to break into the music business and remained after the forum ended answering questions for a long while until none remained. Thanks to Neil and Dave for everything, especially the discount code for Evolve!

www.heavyocity.com
www.heavymelodymusic.com

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Andrew Hlynsky attended Berklee College of Music, then worked for SoniVox, a virtual instrument company in Cambridge. He DJs under the name Nanocannon, and says he is in love with Live. Andrew gave us a look into how he uses the program, showing time warping, using autopan as a volume gate control, beat repeat, external plug ins like LiveCut and iDrum. He recorded a few guitar notes, making use of one of his favorite things about Live - the ability to use any external audio editor, and built a sample mapped patch in Kontakt 3. Stressing the importance of having control over your mix - using faders and EQ, he demonstrated Live's extensive and fluid MIDI-mapping capabilities. Showing the different ways Live time-warps audio, Andrew built a track and discussed what he referred to as "artistic time stretching".

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In a slight change of pace from previous forums, Wednesday night's forum had a greater emphasis on hardware than software. Cory Washington from Open Labs showcased the capabilities of the NeKo media production workstations while faculty member Prince Charles Alexander interjected periodically with questions related to specific workflow possibilities. Incorporating an audio interface, keyboard, midi controller, touchscreen display with dual monitor capability, CD burner and computer with up to 4 tetrabytes of storage, the NeKo workstations are a powerful all-in-one solution to studio production. Pre-sintalled with software and sound libraries from Open Labs, it is also possible to install your preferred DAW on the built-in Intel processor based computer. Many thanks to both Cory, Prince and all who attended the forum in spite of the rainy weather.

For more on Open Labs, check out these links:
www.openlabs.com
Video 1
Video 2

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Javier Zuniga and Nazer Lagrimas of the Video Game Music Club (www.vgmcberklee.org) treated us to a look at implementing music and sound effects into a video game engine. Javier gave us an intro into implementation, showing the program Audio Overload (http://www.bannister.org/software/ao.htm) and its ability to play back and isolate different channels of the game audio. Nazer described Middleware, the history of game engine coding becoming more sophisticated with programs like Wwise (http://www.audiokinetic.com/4105/wwise-introduction.asp) and F-mod (http://www.fmod.org). He showed the game The Cube, which has demo testing levels that work with Wwise.

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Nik Marinelarena walked through using Ceclia and Soudhack (free plug-ins that you can download and use) demonstrating incredible sound manipulation. For a music synthesis class, he took one 5 second audio file and used nothing but sound editing techniques to compose an entire piece of music, and during the forum he walked us though the entire process. Explaining complicated topics like vocoding and convolution, Nik encouraged the crowd to get creative with their own compositions using sound design.

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Robin Hodson, Eastern Region Education Manager for Avid (makers of Pro Tools and Sibelius) was on hand to show off eagerly awaited features of Pro Tools 8. Robin took a look at elastic time with Melodyne, plug-ins, virtual instruments, MIDI and score editing. E-mail Robin at robin_hodson@avid.com with questions and to give him any feedback on Avid products.

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Berklee film scoring faculty Michael Sweet and Music Synthesis chair Kurt Biederwolf gave an outstanding forum on sound design tips. Michael (who has had music featured in the Xbox logo startup, and multiple award winning video games) discussed sound design functioning in a similar manner to the music score. He showed video clips from Apocalypse Now, Alien, Lost, The Shining, and video games Bioshock and Hitman. He showed off the Nanosampler in Digital Performer (a simple, easy-to-use sampler plug-in) run through delays and reverbs. Kurt built a synth patch from scratch using audio recorded from a rattly, prepared piano sample, run through multiple effects in Peak and Kontakt.

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Tonight we were treated to a close up look of the North Cambridge Family Opera company (http://www.familyopera.org) and their production Chincha-chanca Cooroo or The Weaver's Wedding. On the panel were Bernard Hughes (composer, Holles School, London), William Radice (libretist, University of London) David Bass (founder and artistic director, North Cambridge Family Opera), Carla Procaskey (Production Manager, North Cambridge Family Opera) moderated by Ricardo Poza (orchestral sequencer, Berklee College of Music). The discussion gave great insight into potential artistic outlets and career endeavors for Berklee graduates. Beginning with the origins and organization of the North Cambridge Family Opera company, they discussed the connection with the W11 Opera company in London, preparation, auditions and production of a family opera, the collaboration between composer and librettist during creative, and the logistics of performance. The Weaver's Wedding (Chincha Chancha Cooroo)
The Weaver's Wedding is a story of a clever Jackal who arranges the marriage of a foolish Weaver to the King's daughter - who really changes his life.

North Cambridge Family Opera
The North Cambridge Family Opera Company began as an informal group of children and adults who gathered to perform at the NoCa (North Cambridge) all arts open studios weekend in May 1999. We found the experience of singing opera to be a unique way to strengthen families, to build friendships, and to enhance relationships between generations. Our mission is to provide children and adults the opportunity to experience and enjoy the telling of a story through song.
http://www.familyopera.org

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The Electronica Club was on hand to show multiple recording, synthesis, and sampling techniques, across multiple software platforms including Logic, Reason, Ableton Live and Recycle. We'll definitely have them back for another forum in the summer semester.

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Andrea Pejrolo discussed the benefits of using two distinct sample libraries, recommending one recorded dry and one wet. He demonstrated Vienna Symphonic Library (link) and Garritan Personal Orchestra (link) for the dry libraries, and East West Quantum Leap (link) for a wet library. He stressed the importance of libraries with different articulations, and overlaying select live musicians. The more the better, but a violinist, violist, cellist, a woodwind player, brass player and percussionist suffices. He recommended overdubbing multiple takes to make the live performances more full. He played tracks demonstrating these techniques, highlighting the quality differences.
Dr. Pejrolo highlighted many helpful tips, such as controlling dynamics with continuous controllers, like 11 for expression, and modulation for volume in Garritan Personal Orchestra. Using a breath controller he was able to perform amazingly expressive woodwind, and brass.

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Alison Plante, Assistant Chair of the Film Scoring Department, was here to discuss networking and demo creation. She examined the importance of networking, role-played some do's and don'ts, where to network and with whom, tips for how to prepare, and how to follow up. She shared demo material and talked about what to include in a demo, what length it should be, how it should look and the format it should be in. She prepped students to use these tips for the upcoming Music for Film Networking Event coming up on Friday, April 10th!

Forum DVD available in the Media Center (call no. 3454)

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