Hello. This is Matthew Irvine Brown's portfolio.

Projects About Me

email matthew@irvinebrown.com

Rehearsal Joypads
MA project
June 2006

* My First Award
This project won First Prize at the Conran Foundation Student Awards 2006, held as part of the RCA Show 2.




Background
During my final year at the RCA I focused on product design for learning and music, eager to challenge the implicit assumptions made in a lot of work in this area of sound toys, tools, interactive music and so on.

The work began as a response to the marketing of a lot of entry-level music software, such as Apple's GarageBand. Apple sells this product with phrases such as "don’t worry about your musical talent — or lack thereof" - arguably this is the last thing a beginner should be told, and stands in sharp contrast to the sayings more familiar to music teachers - "practice makes perfect", and so on.

A lot of work in this area also tends to be preoccupied with designing new, unusual instruments, interfaces or experiences for people who may not consider themselves naturally musical.

Seeing people engage with this type of work in exhibitions, galleries and so on, I find that the same thing happens again and again - non-musicians get little or nothing out of it; they play aimlessly, and have fun for a few minutes before walking off, while musicians get frustrated that they can't perform with this inferior instrument.

For me, all of this type of work completely misses the point - it ignores what makes performing and listening to music so compelling; it devalues the process of learning to perform well, and it insults those who have dedicated years to doing so.

I believe a better approach starts by asking how we consider ourselves musical or not in the first place. Natural talent or aptitude is only one factor in this - others being dedication, patience, stamina, physical dexterity, memory, listening and interacting with others, and so on - skills that can improve with daily practice. The big problem most beginner musicians face is motivation - that their practice will pay off.

This work looks at the odd, everyday reality of family homes full of dusty musical instruments that frustrated, bored children give up after a few weeks, and the countless hours these same kids invest in getting to the next level or checkpoint in the latest video game.

The processes involved in playing goal-based games and playing music have a lot of similarities - arbritary notation systems, complex combinations of keypresses, timing and synchronisation, anticipating actions and reacting to them, repeating and practicing routines, and so on.

The important differences are the learning curves and the return on investment. In some games it is an instantaneous reward - more points, an explosion, a power-up, a dragon punch - and a certain satisfaction at completing a game after hours of patience and practice. The return on investment with an instrument may take years to become apparent, but the potential for satisfaction and enjoyment is open-ended, lasting a lifetime. Both have their merits.

Growing up, I found that the best players also tended to be good musicians, and I still hold this view. But I always wondered about how many hardcore gamer friends of mine could have ended up as fantastic musicians - was it only perception that made music practice seem boring?

This was my starting point - to design something that could provide a middle ground between the polar opposites - video games and daily music practice.

Rehearsal Joypads
These are video game controllers with the usual controller interface replaced by that of a musical instrument. Unlike similar interfaces in games like Guitar Hero or Donkey Konga, which use controllers that just look like instruments, these are intended to help the player learn a specific skill needed to play a real instrument - in this case fingering patterns for scales.

Game design
An accompanying video game uses familiar Bemani music game interface conventions - play your part correctly (as dictated by the coloured lines scrolling past), and the brass band stays in time and together; play it wrong and they drop their instruments, walking off in disgust.

The difference is that keypress combinations and music are directly mapped - the idea being that by playing the game, you are also learning a fingering pattern to play the theme tune on a real instrument.

By spending a few hours playing a game that requires button presses and combos which are exactly the same as playing scales, could the player achieve enough muscle memory to use this to get better on a real instrument? If so, could this help a beginner get some basic routines 'into the fingers' that will help them on their way on a real instrument, and get over a few of the classic motivational hurdles all beginners face?

Could a teacher use this as a way of complementing existing techniques? Could the child associate being good at the game with being good at their instrument? What if it was a multiplayer game?

I also love the idea of a kid and his grandad (perhaps and old jazzer) playing against each other - the grandad completely trouncing his grandson, gaining special moves and points by playing advanced modes and scales that he has spent decades perfecting.

The game design is based on a traditional Whit Friday brass band march contest held in villages around Oldham and Saddleworth in the north of England every June. This came about by noting that the particular style of marches by the composer William Rimmer (1862 – 1936) is nearly identical to the style of Koji Kondo, the composer of nearly all of Nintendo’s best known game music (Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, etc and so on).

The in-game music is a Nintendo-style arrangement of one of Rimmer's most famous marches - Punchinello.

Listen to the in-game music here:
punchinello_game_music.mp3


Work in progress photos at Flickr




Selected links:
We Make Money Not Art
PopTech
GameSetWatch
Digital Experience

Big Thanks/Links
Henry Holland - for late nights and killer Flash coding. Joe and Henry at Artful Construction - for modelmaking prowess and the excuse to go to Devon for weekends. Marei, Susana, Jess, Michiko and all the (then) first years from Interaction Design at the RCA for emergency sanding and soldering, as well as staff - Tony, James, Nina, Fiona, Brendan, Tom, David, Tobie, Crispin, Tim and Brigitte.

< back to Projects