Kalimba

A day or two ago I brought in my kalimba for Tim to play some music on it for the game. We've finished recording most of the audio as well.

Had Tim play on the kalimba a bit and he figured out the intervals of each tine pretty quickly. Below is the notation that Tim wrote down for the intervals. Each one is a different tine(the metal bits) and the number shows the interval between that tine and the root.

Soon we had twinkle twinkle little stars and Brahms' lullaby on the kalimba. I was quite impressed to be honest. I'm not very good at music to be honest, so I asked him how he recognises intervals so well. He does it by relating the interval to a song he knows. For example, a song knows begins with two notes which are a third apart. He remembers those notes and how far apart they are. Then applies that when he hears two other notes, to see where it's a third apart or not.

I thought that was interesting. It's quite an effective way to remember and learn. I think I could use that more often when I can. I think it would help me pick up new skills faster.

Ben and Edrian did the baby screams. They did regular baby cries at first then used a program called morphVox to warp the voices for the demonic effect we wanted.

The disagreement between Ben and I is fully resolved now, so that's good. We've been talking about how to do the presentation for next week as well. I'm under the impression that it's an informal presentation to get advice and feedback on how best to present the final project.

We're going to have a tv screen with the game running on it. There'll be a video of gameplay, some models and drawings before the game demo. Maybe we'll have drawings on the wall and research that binds everything together as well.

For the research we could bind it into a book, maybe drawings included. But Tim does make a good point about it being in a book. If we put all that in a book does it imply that you can't have a story without a book? Does it imply, "No, you can't tell a story through a game unless you have a book."?

The way the research is written up and the overall look of the exhibition is something I'm not totally sold on either.

You've got this game in a wintry landscape, you've got this sleek screen and a bound book. The aesthetics don't fit. Also, I the research notes are written in an essay/formal format there's a huge distinction between that and the rest of the work. It will stick out because it doesn't fit. We gotta think of a way to make the presentation look cohesive and fit together for a smooth feel. It needs to feel like the full package belongs together.