Week One

This week has been my first week of timetabled lectures and lab sessions, this really making me look forward to some of the topics I'll be learning about this year.
Firstly the business unit I am taking aims to provide the skills and knowledge needed to run a business in the music technology industry also providing transferable skills for employability. This should be good fun as it will give me time to start looking for work after I graduate.
Mobile programming is another unit I'm looking forward to. Mobile application development is something I've wanted to do for a while and have never had any formal training in it. Previously I have tried to build simple apps for android and android wear but they have only been simple tests. This unit should give me knowledge of developing in Java, HTML 5 and CSS, this can be applied to mobile web and desktop audio applications. We will also cover GUI design, something that has only been touched on in previous years.
The strangest unit will be creative audio technology, in this we will explore different ways of using the skills we have learnt through the course so far. I'm looking forward to this a lot as I have always loved building strange prices of hardware. Our first assignment is to create a unique instrument, this will involve building the hardwear, most likely to be based around an Arduino, and some form of digital sound creating and signal processing. I really hope I enjoy this unit as much as I think I will.
This week I have also started work on my final project. Doing lots of research in to existing products and and looking at the bandwidth of the human mind. I'm looking forward to really get the project moving in the next few weeks after I have completed my research and proposal.
Now it's time for me to watch some rugby and this weeks Google press conference as I missed it earlier in the week.

Final year

I have just completed my placement year as part of my course at Bournemouth university and am now starting my final year. It's very daunting!
I've had my induction lecture about the units I will be taking and most terrifyingly my final project.
This makes up 35% of my degree so it could make or break it. Once completed it should be around 10,000 words about a study I have I have conducted or about a product/prototype I have made.
Currently I'm looking into making a product, a DSP pedal, with additional sensors, but I'm still ironing out the idea.
In the mean time I'm completing a log of my year long work placement along with a document describing what I have learnt while working.
I hope this year is as enjoyable and rewarding as my previous years but the work load is going to be a lot higher, hopefully I can take the pressure.

Placement

Over the last twelve months I have been working full time at Bournemouth University to satisfy the work placement requirement of my BSc sandwich degree in Music and Audio Technology that I am studying at Bournemouth University.

After searching long and hard for a placement and over a hundred email I decided to apply to the placement offered by Bournemouth University. This was not my first choice however it was a real struggle to find a placement let alone one that was paid. Previously I had been offered a placement by however this was unpaid and required a lot lot of traveling and was not really a viable option for me. The technician job offered had lot of others applying as many others in the same situation were also struggling. I was offered an interview as a result of experience working in a computer repair shop for almost two years prior to starting university.

The interview was relaxed however I was asked a lot about my past experience and my knowledge of Mac’s and audio hardware. Along with many questions about technology in general and my practical skills such as soldering.

To my joy I was offered the position, having shown a good knowledge of the field and a genuine interest in the music technology field. Upon starting my I had a week long crossover with the previous technician to learn about the tasks required on the job. Three hours a day were spent running the tech store, this is where students from music technology and games technology can rent out equipment such as cameras, microphones, graphics tablets and many other things. Other time was spent doing repairs on equipment, maintaining lab machines and studio equipment, building cables and anything else to aid the running of the creative technology department.

The job gave me a good insight into how a course like my own is run, how a studio is run and maintained, and offered lots of challenges in fixing hardware and software issues. During the placement I feel I improved a lot, in my organisational, communication and technical skills. I really enjoyed the year I spent working at the university and I am looking forward to completing my final year at Bournemouth and feel my placement year has helped me prepare for it.

Android M to Introduce Native MIDI Support

This years Google I/O saw the announcement of Android M, the next iteration of the Android platform, along with it a bunch of new features; USB Type C support, Fingerprint support and most interestingly to me MIDI support.

Although not explicitly mentioned it did show up twice; once on a images showing features to be expected in "M" and again when showing the new USB type-C connection menu.

Google I/O Keynote Presentation shows MIDI as a new feature in the far right side of the "M" - Google I/O Keynote

USB Type-C connection lists MIDI as a connection option

This will open up a lot of new possibilities for music and audio applications on android, especially as the new USB connection will allow android phones and tablets to power compatible devices. This teamed with chrome now supporting MIDI could push developers to look at Google products as a serious platform for music creations software and audio tools.

You can still watch the keynote on youtube to find out everything new with Android and other Google products.

Devil's Canyon 20th Anniversary Unlocked Pentium Specs Leak

Intel's Devil's Canyon CPU series is on it way, expected to launch on the 2nd of June and today detailed have surfaced about the 20th anniversary unlocked Pentium. The processor was announced by Intel a few months back and over the past week or we learnt that it would be the G3258.

Today Chinese.VR-Zone  displayed a screen shot from CPU-Z showing the G3258 to run a native speed of 3.2GHz with 2 cores, no hyper-threading and max TDP of 53 watts. No information on how well it will overclock with Intel's improved thermal interfaces material promised for devil's canyon but not long till we can see for ourself what the Pentium G3258 has to offer.

Drum Machine Project

I recently created a drum machine in C# using the directX sound programming library as part of a university project. Through the first and second years of my course programming a been prominent  part however this was the first time working in C#. The project was simply to create a drum machine with 4 voices, that could be play 4 bard of 4 beats. As I progressed in making the program some useful features were added such as:

• 6 Voices
• Voice active indicator
• Voice pan and volume
• Playback head
• Beat and bar indicator
• Set BPM and time signature
• 3 Presets
• Temporarily save presets

Visually I tried to keep it simple however with the additional added features it became slightly over crowded.

Infinity Drummer - The drum machine in use

Here's a short demo video of the drum machine in action. Please comment and let me know about what you want to see added and what you think should be changed.

Blink Stick

I got myself a blink stick! A small USB device with a single RGB LED I've not had much time to do anything with it yet but its built and ready to go.

Building is simple with only a few components to soldier then its all ready to go.  I'm looking to set it up to show email notifications from multiple email addresses to be displayed with different colors. If that goes well i'm already looking at doing a project with the BlinkStick Pro and some NeoPixles as the ability to control multiple LEDs could prove to be very useful.