The day I spent yesterday at my practicum at Artech Studios was an important one I think for my portfolio project. We're working on putting sound and music to an interactive DVD for a Tropical Monopoly game, and yesterday was my first experience in writing music where I was completely out of my element. I was asked to sit and write music that sounded tropical, something that might be played for a menu screen on the DVD. I was plunked down in front of Reason, which I've never used before my time at Artech and had to produce something musical. In the beginning it was very difficult, my musical ideas generally had nothing tropical or beach-like about them, but what I was able to do was to take a melody that was my own style of music and then expand upon that until it turned into something suitable for a menu screen in Tropical Monopoly. It certainly was a first attempt at working like this and I still have much developing to do, but I think this has been a very good first step towards what I hope to accomplish with my portfolio. I really would like to expand myself as a musician and sound designer and I think yesterday I was able to broaden myself just a little bit by working towards creating something that is completely foreign to my creative ability. Hopefully now I will be able to continue this broadening with my piece of music that I am creating in the format of music for a video art piece. It's saturday afternoon and I am locking myself in my studio so that I can make some real progress on this piece that has had me stuck in a rut.
