Release – In Your Own Time Part #3

This is the third in a series of post rounding out my experience of putting out In Your Own Time in April 2013. The previous posts covered the inspiration behind the project and putting it together as an app. This post will talk about putting the app out into the world and what that has meant for me.

Release & Press

The release date for the app was April 2nd and in advance of that I sent out some press releases to magazines and blog who I thought might be interested. There wasn’t an immediate take up on the idea. It had a summary write up in Noise in the first week. It also got a tweet from Harmless Noise. Largely though, initially at least, the response was a bit disappointing. Read more

Pre-release – In Your Own Time Part #2

This post follows on from a previous post about the inspiration behind In Your Own Time. In this post I talk about taking the prototype that I created for my thesis and recruiting people who could help turn that idea into a reality. Read more

Inspiration – In Your Own Time Part #1

The length of the initial post was starting to get a bit out of hand so I’ve separated it out into two posts. This one contains the backstory of the app: the inspiration behind it and how it came into being as a masters project. The second post is about what happened when the app went out into the world. What worked, what didn’t, the ups and downs of putting something out, and the lessons I learned along the way.

It’s been a little over a year since I, along with the help of Shane Finan and Mick Cody, released In Your Own Time. The app has now been downloaded over 1000 times in over 20 countries and has been a massive step for me both personally and artistically. I want to share the journey to date with you here. Read more

In Your Own Time #1 – A mobile music app

I’ve been working away over the last few months making an app for a masters, which is similar to the works I’ve been covering in my ongoing posts about Mobile Music. I’m really excited about the possibilities of creating music in that way and wanted to give it a go myself. I hadn’t been able to try most of the works I’ve been writing about so I was interested in to create a musical experience that I would be happy with as a listener and that I could make available to other people. Read more

Interview with Robert Thomas from RjDj – Mobile Music #7

Robert Thomas is a composer, performer and the Chief Creative Officer with RjDj. Through his work with RjDj he collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the Inception the app and was responsible for composing the music for Dimensions. I contacted him to ask about working with mobile music and he kindly offered to do an interview. We got to talk about his work with RjDj and some of his thoughts on the future of mobile music.

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When I think about mobile music one of the most exciting/challenging aspects is balancing creating the interactive/adaptive experience with creating something is musical. Do you think about this when you’re composing?

Yes I think this is the key challenge really. For me its really about simultaneously thinking as both a composer and a software designer. The questions which come up for me are: How important is the interactivity? How obvious do you want the control to be? When do you want to give them control and when do you want to take them somewhere? Read more

Inception – Mobile Music #6

Inception the app is a collaboration between Reality Jockey, the people behind RjDj, and Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer, who worked on the Inception film. The app provides the listener with dreams–augmented sonic experiences– featuring music from the soundtrack of the film. It comes with one dream and listeners are able to unlock others by using the app in different situations. There is a traveling dream for when you’re in a car or train or a Sunny dream if you’re using it in good weather or the Africa dream in case, you guessed it, you’re in Africa. Read more

What is mobile music? – Mobile Music #5

While writing a post about the difference between mobile music and locative music I realised that I hadn’t defined what I meant by mobile music. I’ve been discussing different examples of what I’ve been calling mobile music but hadn’t been explicit about what this meant. I started thinking about it a bit and realised that I need to give a definition to avoid ambiguity.

Mobile Music is an ambiguous term. Do I mean music to move to or music that is mobile, like a marching band, or music for mobile phones? There are lots of ways the phrase could be interpreted. I did a quick search of mobile music which turned up a the Wikipedia Mobile Music entry. This describes mobile music as music streamed and listened to on mobile devices. This is not what I’ve been writing about, I looked to the top of the page and noticed “This article is about music on mobile devices, for the musical form see aleatoric music.” I clicked the link. Read more

Location33 – Mobile Music #3

Location33 is a locative music work set in Culver City, California that explores the idea of an album in space and time. People listen to the album by walking through audio nodes throughout the city. A different song is available each day as the album evolves over the course of the week. As implicit in its title, Location33: Envisioning Post iPodalyptic Mobile Music, this work looks at the question “What’s next in personal stereo listening?”. It was created by William Carter and Leslie Liu at the University of Southern California. Read more

Sonic City – Mobile Music #2

Sonic City was one of the earliest mobile music works and is regularly cited in discussions of the field. It was one of the first works that allowed the user to “play” their environment and become an active participant in their urban musical experience. The user was fitted with sensors, headphones and a laptop. Sensor readings were taken as they moved about their environment which triggered musical events. This created an interactive music experience which allowed the user to improvise with their environment. The project was created by Layla Gayle, Lars Erik Holmquist, Ramia Mazé, Margot Jacobs and Daniel Skoglund at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. Read more