Time flies when you’re (a) busy (b) having fun (c) getting older (d) all of the above…
I meant to write this blog while I was at AEMCON (Alberta Electronic Music Conference) last year, or shortly after, but (d) kind of kicked in, so here we are almost a year later and AEMCON is edging closer to its 2019 iteration. So I thought it’s about time I squeezed in my 2018 roundup.
The biggest takeaway for me was a massive feeling of inspiration. I had been invited to talk at the conference, held annually in Calgary, with a presentation on Game Music. Those attending the conference are a bunch of people with a love for electronic music, and there is often a cross-over of electronic fans with a passion for gaming, so it was a great fit to include some Game Music lectures.
I arrived the Friday evening, and after a drink with the very friendly drivers (Cheshire Productions from Edmonton) met up in the hotel with my buddy Ricardo Almeida who was Music Director at Electronic Arts for years, also there to do a presentation. I’d met Ricardo, along with another peer John Tennant, when I first moved to Canada in the early 00’s. All three of us had our production suites at Greenhouse Studios, then in Burnaby, and were a a trio of anomalies – the three electronic music producers in a sea of rock-dudes! We all hit it off and one by one all three of us side-stepped into game audio.
Ric and I headed to Studio Bell: National Music Centre, where the majority of the conference was being held (apart from the nighttime events).
On walking in that place, I felt I’d died and gone to heaven. The ground floor had been converted into a synth-lovers dream, with displays by every major recording company, DJ gear and synth company including Roland and Moog. I got to test-drive a Moog One… omg so in love (buys lottery ticket)
The National Music Centre itself had floor upon floor of music history, with such a bent towards keyboard instruments that I could barely contain myself. Having started piano at an early age, I then studied classical music (with a love for all things clavinet, virginal, harpsichord, piano etc), which moved into an obsession with synths from the early 80’s and onwards, so this collection blew my mind! I got a few photos on my phone – these don’t even capture half of it, but here are a few:
The next day I delivered my presentation ‘Demystifying the Pipeline: Interactive Music for Games”. I was stoked to have a full room of very receptive listeners, and lots of great questions from people after.
I was also invited to be on a panel about diversity in the industry, along with Cindy Li (Ciel), Kloves, Curtis Lefthand, & Nancy Lee (Which Nancy). I have lots of opinions on diversity (and gender pay gap) in both the music and game industries, which I’ll leave to another day. This was a cool panel to take part in and I appreciated the opportunity to be included.
The next day I attended a great talk by two Bioware guys on the music of ‘Anthem’ and got to hang out a bunch more with Ricardo, which is always a good time, especially when surrounded by a giant synth!
All in all, I was massively impressed with the organizers of the conference. The AEMCON team had done such a great job of covering a range of subjects during the conference, as well as putting on an amazing smorgasbord of night events (none of which I went to because (c) – see above!)
I thank Matt Carter and Isis Graham for inviting and hosting me. They are consummate professionals, and friendly, lovely people as well.
I wish the AEMCON team, presenters, artists and all conference attendees an amazing 2019 AEMCON.
