It’s been a wild couple of months since the first post went out. My wife and I have our first child, Ramona! Although everyone calls her Romana for some reason. She is not a pizza.
Having a newborn has brought about its own challenges, mainly lack of sleep.
“Based on the science, you can make somewhat clear statements: The number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep without impairment is zero.”
Matthew Walker
From general grumpiness to hallucinations, lack of sleep does weird things to you. The strangest for me was something called jamais vu. It’s the opposite of deja vu and is when you experience a familiar place as if it was totally new, like you were a visitor to your own home town.
With the sleep now a lot better and having started to settle into my new role as parent, I’ve found the time to start adding things back into my life.
The Podcast
I’ll be starting the podcast back up again as soon as I can! I think it will be a solo endeavour for a while, along with some interviews. Are there any solo-hosted podcasts that you listen to? It’s going to be a change not being able to bounce ideas off a co-host. Who should I try and get as a guest on my next interview episode?
What I’m Watching
While I haven’t had a chance to go back to studio and write more music yet, I have been watching a lot of YouTube and making sure to keep my creative brain active. I really enjoyed this video by Austin Wintory. It describes how he implemented the music to a game called The Pathless (available on all platforms, even Apple Arcade!). He goes into detail and shows how the music adapts to the environment you’re in and how he made it work in an open-world game setting.
What I’m Playing
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and Grand Theft Auto IV. I’ve got my new gaming PC in the garden studio and managed to set it up so I can turn it on remotely and stream games directly to my iPad. And it works! All the power of a gaming PC with the portability of a laptop.
What I’m Listening To
Colter Wall. If you like Johnny Cash, I think you’ll dig him. He’s a real-life Canadian cowboy with a voice to match. His guitar playing is a lot more difficult to pull off than it sounds. I don’t have much more to say about him except that I’ve got him on repeat at the moment.
My Next Project
When I have the time, I’m going to start a new music project using Wwise. For those who aren’t familiar, Wwise is a software that gives composers and sound designers the tools to implement dynamic audio into games. They offer some example projects that you can use to learn their software. I’m going to have a go at replacing the music in their Wwise Adventure Game project. The stock music is fully adaptive based on location and even what enemy is standing in front of you.
Why wait for the opportunity to come to you when you can do it yourself? If I want to write music for a video game, here’s a perfect opportunity to do it myself.
Head over to the contact page and get in touch if you have any comments or follow me on social media and say hi.