Music Technology Input Devices Demo

Hello Entertainment Systems people. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we're having a bit of a class excursion down to the College St. campus (Good Shepherd) to view a Music Technology demo that's taking place as part of New Music Week here at WIT.

The demo focuses on input devices for controller synthesizer events. There are two main parts:
1. Using Wii Remotes and Nunchucks to control sound, pitch and also trigger sample events.
2. Translating sound generated from a pots and pans drums kit into WAV format, then analysing that WAV and generating MIDI information which can then be fed into a synth.

This is of interest to students of both games and music disciplines. The music side is pretty obvious, but for the games people you will see how a gaming device (Wii Remote) can be co-opted for other purposes. Will this have an effect on games in the future?

ALL students need to be at the Bunker's Hill entrance of the College St. Campus at 11.25am tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. The demo is set up in the dance studios.

YouTube Branded Justice?

From the Irish Times: THE INTERNET can be a window to some dreadful cruelty: but physical cruelty always takes place elsewhere. When an anonymous teenager uploaded videos of himself mistreating a small household cat to YouTube, the crime was in what he had done, not that he’d shown the world the evidence. But what happened next was a direct result of that upload. It’s either an illustration that justice can be reached even in the less salubrious parts of the net; or it shows that sometimes the net reaches further into the real world than most people are comfortable with.

Read on.

DJ Phone

A young designer has came up with a phone concept that smashes together design elements from Nintendo's Wiimote, Tonium's Pacemaker Portable DJ, and the iPhone to make an interesting portable music system. Read on ...

Skills Shortages

In a recent report commissioned by UK games industry TIGA, the following was noted:

"Of the 100 UK-based CEOs and managing directors surveyed, 63% had faced skill shortages in the last year, with programmer vacancies as the most challenging to fill by 74% of those respondents. Tax burdens and foreign competition were listed as the top two barriers to expansion. TIGA CEO Richard Wilson hopes that the government will introduce a 20% tax break for local developers so the region can compete against Canada and a growing number of US States with tax incentives."

A quick scan of the web will reveal lots of opportunities for multimedia developers. A bright spot in a gloomy economy!

Read the report here.