Graduates 2024: Miles M Reid: Digital Music and Sound Arts

“As an interdisciplinary artist, this course has been the perfect way of building my skill set in various mediums. I have been able to dive deeper into the world of animation in my free time while developing my musical and artistic abilities.”

 

Please tell us a bit about your work

“The Arcade Project (2024) is an A/V, animated found footage horror installation consisting of a 5.1 sound setup in 3 arcade cabinets. An overwhelming concoction of visual and self-plundered sonic noise builds as we are left to feel helpless, dominated, yet awestruck. We watch as the once-perfect games become corrupted and mangled. The Arcade Project is a look into fantasy culture, tech gore, narrative and nostalgia in a short span of 10 minutes.

I took inspiration from a variety of source; the analog horrors of Martin Walls; the anti-piracy horrors of ZeroVR; the noisy rebellion of Dreamcrusher, the Plunderphonic attitudes of John Oswald; the orchestration of Peter Gregson’s Patina (2021). These and so many more have led me to create something truly special.”

 

What made you choose your course?

“I considered so many other courses. I have such a wide range of interests – from visual arts to R.E. Once I dove deeper into the world of sound art, I was hooked. I recall getting odd looks in secondary school for sampling water bottles and rubber bands for bass tones. I’ve always loved sampling. My current methods of textural and Plunderphonic exploration are the direct result of my prior risk-taking.

“As an interdisciplinary artist, this course has been the perfect way of building my skill set in various mediums. I have been able to dive deeper into the world of animation in my free time while developing my musical and artistic abilities.”

Can you tell us about your favourite part of your studies and how it helped the development of you and your practise 

“I enjoyed exploring alternative sound systems. The SDL and 5.1 surround systems were truly fun to experiment with as I combined spatialisation with my interest in orchestration. The Arcade Project was birthed from these concepts – moving away from the stereo field inherently creates freedom in composition and audience perception.

“I also enjoyed learning about noise culture, graphical scores and film scoring, each providing fresh, alternative ideas.”

Can you tell us about any staff who particularly inspired you?

“All of them!”

Can you tell us your plans after graduation?

“I will work both commercially and artistically. I have a very entrepreneurial mindset. I want to have that solid financial foundation while I build up my artistic expression. Many artists sit on this spectrum of art and income – I want to strike my own balance.

“I want to continue to develop The Arcade Project while working on my other installation, Swimming Pools (2021), featuring Daithi “Electronic Child” Donnelly. This memorial project almost feels full circle, it being the first project I worked on during my time at DMSA.

“I will also be working on publishing my final essay surround fantasy culture and modern day found footage horror.”

Finally, if you could give 17-year-old advice, what would it be

“Find purpose in what you do.”

 

 

Miles M Reid was the DMSA nomination for the Nagoya Prize 2024

Find out about studying Digital Music and Sound Arts BA(Hons)

DMSA Showreel 2024

including works from: Miles M Reid // Error_0_X106 – The Arcade Project Daithí Donnelly // Electronic Child – Rhythm: In Potentia Greta Carroll // currentmoodgirl – Contact Jude Bowden // Bleedinhart – Neuromancer Avery Laverty Caldwell // Minkgirl – A Little Witch Betwixt the Here and There Denis Sapuntsov – Echoes Bertie Myhill – Bird Talk Denette Lowry // Foamswords – The Moon and Back Harvey Penfold – Home in a Feeling Kristan Brown // Minxxyy – Escapism B. B. Martin // Slitlamp – Puretone Luca Lycksten-Miselbach – Metal Memoir Chloe Lubinska – Visualising Sonic Soundscapes Dante Ombima // DayC 3 – Feet Follow the Flower Owen May-Jones – Echos of Time EDITING: MILES M REID ORGANISATION/FILMING: CHLOE LUBINSKA & BERTIE MYHILL GRAPHIC DESIGN: DENIS SAPUNTSOV

 

 

Jade Gunner to start internship at Criterion Games (EA)

Our second year student Jade Gunner has been accepted for an internship at Criterion Games (EA) as an audio designer, working on creating and implementing sounds and audio for their upcoming games.

Jade has been developing a very unique sonic vocabulary that is present in all her sound design work for the course and beyond.

Here you can watch Jade’s portfolio that she developed during her studies on the course:

and ‘Her Body’, an audiovisual piece about the objectification of the female body in creative media industries

DMSA Feature: Alan Myson Aka Ital Tek

Since graduating from the course, Alan Myson has been leading a quite successful career in the electronic music scene for over a decade now as well as working as a sound designer and composer for films, TV commercials and video games including Roll7-505Games’s award winning Laser Leage. We talk to Alan about his background, inspirations, impressions from the course and his recent release on Planet Mu, titled ‘Bodied’.

DMSA: Where do we find you now?

AM: Hi! I am currently in my studio in Norwich where I have just very recently moved to from Brighton. Sad to say goodbye to Brighton after having been there for so many years but fancied a change and it’s a beautiful part of the world around here.

DMSA: Three important words that represent you as a creative person

AM: Naivety: I think it’s really important as a musician to keep learning and (at least try to!) hold on to the magic of why you love making music in the first place. It is so easy after years of working in music to get stuck in your ways or start thinking of it purely as a job, I find I have to keep finding new ways to keep myself inspired and excited in what I’m doing, surprise myself and not take things for granted.

Experimentation: This is kind of an obvious one but there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re sticking to your comfort zone. It can feel like a safety net if you’ve established a certain way of working and if you just keep repeating that you’ll stay fulfilled or productive, but for me I just can’t work that way. I don’t believe anyone does their best work when they are too comfortable!

Process: By this I mean I’m a firm believer that nothing is really wasted in art or music. Everything you do is a process and you have to take a lot of wrong turns, missteps and frankly write a lot of crappy music in order to get to the good stuff. You also never really know when you’re going to come back to an idea from years ago which at the time seemed like nothing. I have on countless occasions re-appropriated some weird idea I had previously or had even forgotten I’d written. I think its important to just churn out as much music as possible, you always learn something even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time!

DMSA: When did you start working with sound and music?

AM: I’ve been involved in music since a very young age at school where I was in orchestras and sang in choirs, played in bands and the like, but I would say my real passion for creating and writing music rather than just performing was when I got my first electric guitar around aged 13. That opened the door for me into the world of experimenting with effects pedals and loopers. From there I began making very lo-fi electronic music and beginning to teach myself the basics. Once I managed to get myself a computer and a copy of Ableton Live around 2004 I was just totally obsessed with it and have been ever since.

DMSA: In what ways has the DMSA course supported or helped you to develop into who you are today creatively and professionally?

AM: We had a great bunch of people on the course whilst at Uni, I feel we all inspired each other and I still regularly collaborate with and keep in touch with a few people from my DMSA days. I was signed as an artist just as I was starting the course in 2007 so it was a really good time for me to experiment and learn both on the academic side and starting out on my career as well. I was able to combine techniques and experiences from the course into my work straight away as I was doing both in parallel.

DMSA: Can you tell us a bit more about Bodied, your recent release on Planet Mu?

AM: I definitely feel I’ve had a change in my musical approach and attitude over the last few years with my album ‘Hollowed’ in 2016 and this latest album ‘Bodied’ I’ve had a strong urge to change things up. Over the last couple of years making this album I’ve also been working on a fair few composing projects for video games/film and other stuff. Doing this gave me some space from my own work and let me look at it in a different light. It was refreshing for my own solo musical output to not be my only creative outlet. Having been working as a musician for over 10 years now I found it really important to give myself a new focus and way of working. This album features a lot more live recording, which is usually totally mangled. It’s very firmly an electronic record but I’ve used recordings of Cello, Guitar, Piano etc as a backbone for a lot of the textures. I was also keen to work with a vocalist to give the record a human element, it’s totally non-lyrical – more ghostly and choral but gave me a different sound palette to work with than on previous material of mine.

DMSA: Other plans for the future? projects, events, visions?

AM: I tend to take a bit of a break from writing any of my “Ital Tek” music for a while after completing an album. I’ve been working on a number of composing projects and have some that I’m excited about coming up but unfortunately I can’t mention! I’m also working on a few collaborative projects which is not something I’ve done a great deal of in the past. I’m a bit of a control freak with my own music so it’s refreshing to get involved in projects where I have to leave that at the door. It makes me work in a different way and leads onto results that I could never have come up with myself.

Links:

www.italtek.co.uk
www.alanmyson.com
www.twitter.com/italtek

Alan will be giving a Masterclass to our students on Monday 12th November, at 4:30pm in our performance studio. More info here.

Masteclass: Production and Composition Masterclass with Ital Tek

Monday 12 November 2018 | 4:30pm | Performance Studio, GP

DMSA alumnus Alan Myson returns to share his experiences, skills and tips with our students.

The masteclass is going to be part practical demonstration of a load of techniques Alan use’s – breaking down a track/tracks from recent album and explore some examples of work from his career – alongside composing work for video games etc.

About Alan

Alan Myson aka ‘Ital Tek’ is a recording artist and composer for Film, Video Games, TV based in Brighton UK

Over the past decade Alan has had an esteemed electronic music career. Signing to the renowned British record label Planet Mu in 2006 he has released five albums, many EPs and has toured playing live worldwide.

His 2016 album ‘Hollowed’ saw a more cinematic, abstract and impressionistic approach and was one of the most highly acclaimed electronic music releases of the year, cementing his reputation as one of the most exciting voices in electronic music.

Alan’s highly anticipated new Ital Tek album ‘Bodied’ was released on September 7th 2018.

Also working as a composer his music has been heard across BBC, ITV, Channel4, MTV, Amazon, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel, FX. And brands including Go Pro, Red Bull, DKNY, Google Glass, UEFA Champions League, Playstation.

Alan recently worked with BAFTA winning studio Roll7 composing the original score for the sci fi video game ‘Laser League’. The game released on Playstation 4, XboxOne & PC in May 2018 to critical acclaim.

links:

www.italtek.co.uk
www.alanmyson.com
www.twitter.com/italtek

Wwise Workshop – Fundamental Concepts and Audio Feature Example

We are happy to have DMSA Alumni back for a session on sound design for video games. For his final degree piece, Andrew developped Symbiosis, an open-world music game which places the player in an environment that responds to their interactions with music.

Since his graduation, Andrew has been working with game audio for 4 years, and currently works for The Creative Assembly, one of the UK’s largest games studios, based in Horsham. He has worked on audio implementation and audio testing for the BAFTA-winning audio team behind Alien: Isolation (2014), Total War: Warhammer (2016, 2017) and Halo Wars 2 (2017).

www.andrewhair.co.uk
Twitter: @AndyHairAudio

About the workshop

In this session, Andrew will introduce students to the Wwise sound engine, a common audio design tool used in the games industry. Students will be guided through the process of integrating Wwise into a game project, using Unity. We will then move on to add the sounds of a lake or sea shore as an example audio feature, giving students an understanding of the kind of problems and solutions that arise in game audio development. Through this tutorial, students will be given a grounding in fundamental game audio concepts, such as sound positioning and attenuation, soundobjects, listeners, and game-to-audio parameter sync. Students are encouraged to bring their own recordings of lake/seashore water (approx. 1 minute of recording), though preprepared recordings will also be available.

https://www.audiokinetic.com/discover/wwise-in-games/