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Music & Movie Making in Texas Conference Spring 2024

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Music and Movie Making In Texas Conference Write Up

The 2nd annual Music and Movie Making in Texas Conference was a success this year.  With around 60 people in attendance on Saturday and over (get amount from Zayno) at the School of Performance Visualization and Fine Arts Friday concert at the Grand Stafford Theatre.

Organized by the Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab, the three main organizers were student Zayno Rayne, Professor Jonathan Guajardo and joey lopez phd.  We would like to thank them for all their hard work.

Sponsors of the conference

  • Texas A&M Race Ethnicity Studies Institute ($500 grant)
  • Texas A&M English department (facilities)
  • Texas A&M Performance Visualization and Fine Arts (equipment)
  • Texas A&M Communication & Journalism Media & Gaming Lab. ($1000 for food (special thanks for Professor Jonathan Guajardo)

We would like to thank them for the support given.  The conference went smoothly and offered a well rounded set of panels with good interactions and questions.  Lunch was provided by Blue Baker, a special thank you to Rubi Ruiz, the department of Communication & Journalism administrator for all her help, she makes our lives so much easier.  

PANELS

Media Studies Panel

The media studies panel consisted of four professors, Dr. Campbell, Dr. Ramirez, Dr. Connor & Dr. Sullivan. Each presented about their research. Dr. Campbell presented about AI and the premise of AI’s from outterspace and music knowledge, it was highly engaging. Dr. Connor presented about licensing and we quickly learned he should give a full workshop with local musicians sooner than later. Dr. Ramirez presented about comics and media studies and his journey studying borderland culture in the media, such as comics. Dr. Sullivan discussed his research into television. They then answered questions moderated by joey lopez. Check out the video stream:

Student Media Panel

The student media panel consisted of Diego Valle & David Kang of CSTAT Collage, Kyle Heise of SZNS, Claire Thessen of A Line Magazine and Sophie Villarreal Battalion. Each student media publication previewed their work and spoke about the opportunities and challanges of creating student media. It was great to have two organizations who are officially part of Texas A&M and two orgs that are independent of Texas A&M but started and run by A&M students.

Max Nied Key Note

Max Nied of Monstercat Records delivered a “boots on the ground” presentation where he worked through what it is like to develop a music career and how his career has evolved working with Mostercat Records.

2am Productions Key Note

2am Productions gave a keynote, which consists of Alazar Asrat & Marco Mireles, both graduates of Texas A&M and former participants of the Media & Gaming Lab. Their presentation featured their journey to becoming media makers and how they decided to create 2am Productions, highlighting their successes and lessons learned.

BCS Music Scene Development Panel

The BCS Music Scene Development Panel consisted of local music producers and two music making student org presidents. Their presentation revolved around their approaches to impacting the music scene in the BCS area as well as discussing the challanges of creating an overall community.

Regional Bands & Creators Panel

The regional band and creators panel featured local performers Dylan Zientek, 4kace and Daniel San. Moderator Zayno asked questions about their approach to music making, performing and then had the performers show off their work.

Media Making Panel

The Media Making Panel consisted of students and local media makers. Each media maker spoke about their approaches and then showed their works. It was great to see such creative work being done.

Summary

Plans for the 3rd Annual Music and Movie Making in Texas conference are already in the works. One of the major take aways was the need to have more workshops for the practitioners of music and video production pertaining to revenue streams, business structures and licensing. We have also noticed a desire for a full on film screening, so we may add that into the mix with a film festival. Another take away was the need to have our live music event after the conference, not before. We also are planning to have a new media production track where panelist show their works in VR/AR and other new media fields.

We would like to thank all those who participated in the conference and we hope to see you all again at the 3rd annual Music and Movie Making in Texas Conference in the Spring 2025!

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CMC and MGL Documentation News Texas A&M PVFA

Electric LaTex Student Music Conference 2024

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Over the weekend of January 26-27, 2024, students from the School of Performance, Visualization, and Fine Arts at Texas A&M University attended Electric LaTex, a student electronic and experimental music conference in Baton Rouge, LA, on the Louisiana State University campus. The event focuses on university students from Texas and Louisiana, and is hosted by those same universities on a rotating basis. The event gives the students in music and/or music technology schools or departments the opportunity to exhibit their new works and installations, perform improvised pieces, and present discussions on their compositional and creative processes.

This year, the new music technology program at TAMU was represented by Grace Burton, Ethan Cheney, Nat Cortez, Evan de Anda, Oluwanifemi Haastrup, Breanna Loredo-Rayas, David Neuhalfen, Colton Neuville, Robert Rutherford, and Rolf Rydahl. The trip was organized by Dr. Jeff Morris, the head of the TAMU PVFA music technology program, and the students were accompanied to LSU by Dr.s Matthew Campbell and Will Connor.

The event was an impressive success, both in terms of the overall event and the participation of the TAMU students. Burton, Cheney, de Anda, Haastrup, and Neuhalfen all presented videos created for coursework in music technology classes in the Fall 2023 term at A&M. Cortez displayed her interactive installation, and Loredo-Rayas, Rutherford, and Rydahl also presented new compositions performed by themselves along with Cortez and Neuville. Approximately 100 people interacted with the TAMU students over the course of the weekend, all of whom were from other universities, and the TAMU students were exposed to a multitude of impressive and innovative student works. Perhaps most importantly, the A&M students were able to network and generate new friendships with like-minded students from other universities in the bi-state area.

Video Presentations

The video presentations were mixed in with live performances and were displayed on a large screen at the back of the stage. Oluwanifemi’s video was a still image as a backdrop to her new music piece, A Beautiful Alien Abduction. Grace’s video, Synthia, Cythnia? featured her digital music and a depiction of a day in the life of a digital student (see below). David’s work was concise and pinpointed. Ethan combined footage of driving through the forest with his latest electronic composition. Evan merged a work for string quartet and digital video manipulation in his presentation.

David’s work was concise and pinpointed. Unfortunately, there is no footage of this short, but powerful work. David had this to say about the piece, “This piece is not one of particular note on its own, though with its story, it becomes a living piece of art. When my hard drive was corrupted, this was the only piece lost to time. I was able to recover everything else. The only version I had saved was one I had uploaded to the cloud. This was a piece that took very little time to write, mix, and complete. I like to think of it as a description of a memory or a moment in time. For this reason, I think the piece takes on being something greater than just its sound.”

Ethan Cheney’s piece At Night drifts and swirls with rolling interactive samples, reflected by the drive through the woods as seen in the video. Ethan says, “I recorded the upright piano, which happens to be tuned up a whole step, providing a “middle D”, with a single sm57 in my kitchen. After adding drums via midi in Ableton, I added synth textures to add space. The mix was bare, only really adding panning modulation to offer movement to the melodic moments.”

Installation Piece

Nat Cortez exhibited an interactive installation entitled Musical Threads. Cortez crocheted granny squares using conductive yarn and turned those into triggers to sound samples she created playing a tongue drum. Each granny square was linked to an Arduino pin and was set up to trigger one of four samples, taken from a pool of sixteen such that to play all the sounds available, all of the granny squares would have to be triggered at least once. The triggered sounds were accompanied by an ambient rain sounds so that someone interacting with the installation has a meditative audio pad underpinning the playing of the sounds.

Live Performances

Rolf Rydahl gave a performance on his laptop of a new work. Of his new piece, he says, “I created the piece using a combination of sounds from around my house that I sampled paired with a couple of digital synths. During the performance, I mapped filters and effects to a midi controller in order to control the piece live. Overall, I really enjoyed the finished product, and it seemed to resonate well with the audience.”

Robert Rutherford presented his piece Submarines and Squids as a trio performance, playing a Soma Labs Enner along with Colton Neuville on haunted box and Rolf Rydahl on pedals manipulating the sounds Neuville created. The work was harsh and ambient at the same time, and smoothly navigated the intertwining dynamic ranges the instrumentation provided.

Breanna Laredo-Rayas performed an iteration of her 2023 work Ghosts. This time, presented as a duo with Nat Cortez, the piece converted the piece from a trio work to feature only a haunted box played by Breanna and Theremin played by Nat. The duet version was ambient and exploratory, creating an ethereal soundscape with interplay of drone pads, textural injects from the haunted box, and eerie combinations of “other-worldly” musical statements.

Overall the trip was more than successful. The impact on the students involved was clear – the networking opportunities, the performance opportunities, and representation of TAMU and the PVFA Music Technology by the student creators off campus and outside the state was confident-building, inspirational, and enriching on an educational and professional level simultaneously.

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News Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab Semester Write Up

Fall 2023 Media & Gaming Lab Write Up

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Introduction

To say we had an action packed semester would be an understatement. We had a slew of activities going on within and beyond the lab. So many faculty, students and community members collaborated with the lab and have taken us on so many new trajectories and journeys. We cannot thank everyone who participated enough.

Fall 2023 Grant Projects

Lorefest 2023

Lorefest 2023 was a huge success with 3 nights of local lore programing performed by Dr. William Connor and Dr. Matthew Campbell’s students.  Held in downtown Bryan, Krisy of the Village Cafe and Vino Boheme and Misty of the Frame Gallery hosted Lorefest for the 3 evenings.  It was amazing to have their support.  In addition to their support we would like to thank the following sponsors:

  • TAMU Performance Visualization and Fine Arts
  • TAMU Institute of Data Science
  • TAMU Race, Ethnicity Studies Institute

You can check out a full write up here:  https://www.thecmcollective.org/lorefest-2023/

High Impact Instructional Innovation Grant – Sports Multimedia Skills

The High Impact Instructional Innovation Grant – Sports Multimedia Skills is a collaborative project headed by Professor Angelique Gammon to garner hands on sports broadcast skills.  Professor Jonathan Guajardo Professor Lopez would collaborate with Profesor Gammon to purchase, secure and use new video broadcast and digital narrative equipment.  Specifically in Professor Gammon’s journalism 359 Reporting Sports Professor Guajardo and Professor Lopez provided hands-on workshops with both Broadcast and Digital narrative equipment.  In addition to this experience, Professor Guajardo and Lopez provided a hands-on workshop with the podcasting studio recently setup by the Media & Gaming Lab.  The Media & Gaming Lab hope to continue with hands-on workshops with an emphasis on Sports Reporting.  We hope to bring Kaye Cruz to campus in the Spring to give hands-on workshops where the students gain interviewing and general narrative sports reporting skill sets.  

AVPA Grant – Afro Latinx Life and Writing

The Afro Latinx Life and Writing symposium was developed by Professor Regina Mills & graduate student AJ Baginski made possible by an AVPA Grant.  The Media & Gaming Lab’s role in the grant was to help provide documentation of the event and give support for the development of a website.  We were able to provide photos and videos of the event.  This spring the Media & Gaming Lab will help with any web development and assets needed to help finish the web documentation.   

Lab Projects/Events

Skateboard Art

At the beginning of the Fall semester joey pitched an idea of having local and student artists create Skateboard deck art.  Throughout the fall semester and going into the spring 2024 semester, joey has distributed boards out to interested artists.  The goal of the Skateboard deck art is to create an art show locally at the Vortex, a creative space in Bryan, TX where the TAMU Skaters, local skaters and art patrons will come together and celebrate skateboard culture and beyond.  Here is a sample of one deck created by Clayton Bever, a current A&M student.

Dia De Los Muertos Shoebox Altar

Held on October 23rd, the Dia De Los Muertos Shoebox Altar was hosted by joey and his wife Dr. Corina Zavala who gave a presentation on the history of Dia De Los Muertos.  joey then gave a presentation on building shoe box altars and the attendees created shoe box altars exuding their own lived realities and experiences.  The Media and Gaming Lab provided printing capabilities so that attendees would be able to size and print photos of their loved ones for their altar, the results were great and the event is something we plan to host yearly.

Music Recording Workshop

One of the student requests for the fall 2023 semester was to host music recording workshops.  Dr. William Connor offered to lead the workshops and over two weeks students learned about recordings in the classroom as well as in the studio getting hands-on experience with microphone techniques as well as the recording process.  

Podcast Studio

The Pass Back Podcast Commentators

joey had made it a priority for the Media & Gaming Lab to begin podcasting, Professor Jonathan Guajardo volunteered to head up the effort and together they began building recruiting people to create podcasts and also learn technical skills.  A full write up of the effort can be round here:

Media & Gaming Lab Launch Podcasts

Kang & Co – CSTAT Collage

Kang & Diego of the Media & Gaming Lab further developed content for CSTAT Collage focusing on a story about the student led Texas A&M Bonfire. Their work included multiple on site shoots, interviews and research about the history of the Texas A&M Bonfire. Stay tuned for their publication of the story on their youtube channel.

  • 2AM Productions
  • Guest Lectures

Media & Gaming Lab Member Projects/Accomplishments

Rick Pulos

Rick Pulos survived the last semester of coursework in the CMJR doctoral program! It was a super productive fall that included an exciting trip to see Madonna in concert in Antwerp, Belgium. During that trip, he collected data for use in an autoethnographic account of what being a diehard fan is really like. He also partnered with the Parks & Recreation Department of the City of College Station to conduct research at their senior community centers. He came into conversation with all sorts of older folks who take Line Dancing classes at the centers for exercising and socializing. As a PhD student, exploring potential avenues for his dissertation has gobbled up a lot of his focus but he also managed to create some new media centered works. On September 21 as part of the “Landscapes of Belonging” recital, he performed an excerpt from his longer autobiographical theatre piece Mixing Ingredients or How to Make an American by Checking Off Boxes. He took elements of that performance and incorporated it into a media piece entitled “The ABCs of Trying to Belong.” These are his ruminations on his failures and success throughout his life of trying to belong. Watch it at the link below. 

Rick also continued his work with The Theatre Company of Bryan-College Station. He took the footage he shot of every performance in 2023 and created a 15-minute video Celebration of the Season. It was shown on a huge scrim screen during the company’s 2024 season reveal party and it was unanimously loved by everyone in attendance. Check it out at the link below!

Zayno Rayne

Blue House

Zayno Rayne has been a major contributor to the Media & Gaming Lab on multiple fronts.  This semester he played a major role in immersing the Media & Gaming Lab into the local music scene.  Zayno is now the talent scout for the Grand Stafford Theater, his work there has enabled all of the Media & Gaming Lab students and faculty the opportunity to be part of the local music scene, here is a full write up about it:

GRAND STAFFORD THEATER TALENT SCOUT – ZAYNO RAYNE