Musician, surfer, designer (motion, concept art, user experience).
Lived and worked in Sydney and Melbourne after completing the Bachelor of Arts in Contemporary Music at Southern Cross University.
Important stages of life is an interesting concept. Realisations, perhaps. In 2009 I entered a ten-minute animation work for a holographic screen manufacturer's competition. I didn't win, although a couple of years later they licensed that entry for quite a generous amount to play on their screens at the Hotel of Dreams in Macau.
Once I made a website to sell my animations to video jockeys around the world. I learned about eCommerce concepts, applied the web design knowledge from a previous Cert III in digital design, and ... realised that video artists are fiercely independent, who mostly only want to mix visuals they have designed themselves.
The capacity to learn how to progress is invaluable. I used those eCommerce skills to then make a website for a local fashion company in the Northern Rivers area in 2010. That was amazing, and they now have a chain of real-world shops.
What does your employer do?
Modal Guitar is an online tutorial website for contemporary guitarists. The emphasis is on learning modules, each based around an individual key signature, to discover the harmony and melody options available.
Directly applicable musical knowledge and inspiration is the motivation.
One of the guiding principles of Modal Guitar tutorials is the idea of respecting the student. Put simply, designing the learning experience to be inspirational, sensible, and in no way discouraging. This approach to contemporary guitar tuition involves the research and design of learning modules. How to optimise, how to apply user experience guidelines in real ways to make learning fun. To make learning modal guitar an experience of gaining musical resources. Giving guitarists a repertoire whilst also getting out of the way of the guitarist who is genuinely interested to improve their playing and musicality.
What are your areas of responsibility?
Writer and researcher.
Can you describe a typical work day?
Write learning modules with three or four chords to show how to play a particular modal key signature "sound". Currently, the focus is on Aeolian, Mixolydian, and Phrygian modes.
What sort of person succeeds in your career?
Genuinely interested in sharing musical ideas for progression. Genuine love of music. Willing to learn more about user experience design - in particular, how this is put to work with screen design (online) and page design (print format manuals).
What are the career prospects with your job?
Compositional work that references the tuition work, university tutoring or lecturing, or guest master classes. User experience design is a widely applicable talent, so this does offer wider opportunities to work in a variety of industries.
What do you love the most about your job?
Sharing valuable information and guidance to help encourage guitarists to make beautiful sounds they may carry with them for many decades.
What do you like least about your job?
Good question. Perhaps the amount of work required to bring a few minutes of inspiration to a comprehensible and useful learning format.
What three pieces of advice would you give to a current university student?