This week, Bravura began reviewing our various design ideas. We presented to our client, spoke with Roger Powell, began investigating tech, and have also begun work on team branding.
Having spent our first week researching and brainstorming, on Tuesday, we presented various design proposals to our client and advisor, Jiyoung Lee. The team pitched 4 ideas: 1. a simplified digital audio workstation, which used voice as input; 2. a mechanical bouncing ball contraption that was a physical analogue to sheet music; 3. a line-drawer that would be translated to a pitch graph; 4. a node-based tool that combined distinct visual shapes with pathing. Jiyoung expressed her preferences for ideas #1 and #3, particularly the features of voice input, the ability to arrange samples, the ability to generate accompaniment, and a function to output and share the final product. After speaking with Jiyoung, the team compiled a more detailed feature list to investigate as we move forward in determining the final design.
On Wednesday, the team met with Roger Powell, a Senior Producer at EA with a long background in music and computer programming. He gave the team constructive concerns about the tasks ahead of us, especially in terms of creating a voice to musical notation detection system as well as our own sequencer to play sound samples. There was also the possibility for a demo next week of some of his past projects; we’re keeping our fingers crossed. Roger’s deep knowledge in music and software engineering is just what the team needs to help us approach the impressive and novel challenges laid out before us, and we look forward to keeping in contact with him.
In terms of internal progress, our Lead Designer, Nathan, has been busy compiling all of the potential design solutions that the project may need. The team’s programmers are all acquiring Mac Minis so that research can begin on developing our app for iPad: Pei-Lin has begun researching sequencers while Cheng will apply her proven skills upon voice pitch detection. Our other two programmers, Romain and Mike are beginning to investigate the development framework for our game. Moreover, Mike has also begun setting up our team’s website, and if you are reading this newsletter from the website, this was the first week that was possible. Meng, our Art Lead, has made excellent progress on the team’s logo as well as our poster, and with a bit more iteration, our team branding will be done in preparation with moving forward with the product. Albert, our Producer, has been arranging the team’s many meetings, as well as speaking with the team both individually and as a group about dynamics and good practices as we move forward.
The team has done a lot of work this week in preparation, and we are excited to move out of conceptual research in to technical research. The team will be looking at our hardware and programming capabilities in the near future as we also begin thinking about what type of complete experience we could deliver based on potential limitations, our client’s interests, but also our own passions.