Hey there Everyone!

We have a lot of exciting things happening this semester so far. We have composer Heather McIntosh doing a residency with us for the next 7 weeks, and she has been an absolutely amazing teacher. I know all of the second year students can agree that she is extremely dedicated and puts in a lot of time with us. Outside of our class hours she takes the time to meet with us about how we are doing and taking a look at our music, as well as emailing us to check in over the weekend. We are truly honored to have such an inspiration with us. Although I would love to speak about what we are working on, I cannot as we are starting to work with NDA contracts (Non-Disclosure Agreements).

As second years we’ve also started working with games and scoring for them. We’ve had two classes so far of bringing in music for specific styles of games. The first game we created music for, as well as sound design, was a Mario level. For mine, I decided to utilize some original sound design. I recently recorded a musical saw, a vocalist, an original instrument, and a chainsaw. I ended up utilizing the vocalist saying “oh” and used a higher pitch of her doing that for when Mario hits another character with a fireball. I used the chainsaw sounds for the actual fireball sound, but also pitched it higher and changed it in some different ways. I also used the musical saw as a sound effect when Mario would run into a flower or some other artifact within the game. Doing the sound design was probably the most fun part of working on the Mario clip because I really got to create some new unique sounds for it.

The second game that we’ve worked on is a layering game for an RPG. I actually went full on metal, which I have never created musically before. There’s an atmospheric layer, then a tension layer and then a layer for when combat would occur. The best thing about this program is being able to test out waters you’ve never been in before. It’s the time to try something new and really find what your sound is, or to see what different kinds of sounds you can do. Our teacher, Drew Edwards, has connected us to the gaming undergraduates in order to work on their thesis games. A lot of them have very interesting concepts and are very willing to hear what we have to contribute to their games. We’re going to collaborate in pairs to work on the games, although we could tackle them alone if we wanted to. But with the workload that we have with school and outside projects, we’ve decided that collaborating is both a good thing to start doing as well as helpful with our schedules.

Outside of school, I just received a podcast and another film. I’m also still currently working on the feature animated musical “Bongee Bear and the Kingdom of Rhythm.” Doing the music and score for Bongee has been an amazing experience, although there is still so much to write! My band Doomerang, which I’m the bass player for, is also exploding right now. We have a bunch of shows coming up in Chicago, and next week we will be on the radio as a live broadcast. September 29th, Thursday, from 6-8 pm We will be live on wluw.org. If you’re not doing anything, or need something to listen to while you’re working, check out our live stream!

Thanks for tuning in!

Katrina