News
6th December 2023: A paper that is the main outcome of my final funded project at the University of York, Comparison of modelled pursuits with ESPRIT and the matrix pencil method in the modelling of medical percussion signals, is available in the latest volume of Biomedical Signal Processing and Control.
10th November 2023: A little later than planned, but a few days ago my monograph The Crossings: Defining Slave to the Rhythm was published by Cambridge University Press, and can be ordered from their website. They are making the PDF version available FOR FREE until 20th November.
28th July 2023: I have a publication date for my monograph on Slave to the Rhythm. The Crossings: Defining Slave to the Rhythm is published on 19th September this year. You can pre-order in paperback or hardback now. I'm going to be presenting an album listening session on this at the Awamu Barnstormer this weekend. Tickets are still available.
21st March 2023: I have added a health warning to the section on my VST plugins which are now very old and, in some cases, very unlikely to run on modern Windows versions.
4th November 2022: Prima Facie records have released a new CD, 29 Songs, by David Power that I was the recording and mastering engineer and editor for. More information is available on the recording page.
12th August 2022: The new Dadhaus single, Where Are They Hiding?, is out today with a remix by me. Grab it here.
13th August 2021: One major bit of news is that I have left the University of York, after twenty happy and fascinating years. I will join Creative Technology UK in a senior research role in September, which I am very excited about! In other news, a description of my recent work on reverberation modelling was published by the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society in July. There are links to the paper on my publications page.
26th April 2021: I've updated the publications page.
28th February 2021: I've received funding to undertake a four month project investigating a potential medical application of the decomposition method that I devised for modelling of room acoustic impulse responses. We start work imminently on the project, 'Modal Analysis Of Medical Percussion For Improved Diagnosis And Monitoring Of Pulmonary Disease' with a full-time researcher who will work on this until the end of June.
5th January 2021: Happy New Year! The Sound on Sound review of Paragon is in and very generous in its praise, which is a nice way to start the year. "The final arbiter of any reverb, of course, is the quality of its reverberation and I can't overstate how impressed I am with what Paragon can do .... In summary, then, I'm impressed: Paragon is an excellent-sounding reverberation processor. This really is very impressive technology that takes convolution reverbs to a new level, and I heartily recommend checking out the free trial". You can read the full article here.
16th December 2020: As an extraordinary and intense year draws to a close, I finally have an opportunity to update this site with activities and news from 2020. Dealing with the challenge to our teaching of a sudden global pandemic has been hugely demanding but I am pleased to say that we have exceeded what we, at times, thought might be possible. Our studios re-opened (albeit in a limited way) in August and have been a part of our practical teaching and research work since then. This has all happened without a single case of COVID-19 infection occurring within the Department and this is a credit to the support staff who have put a huge effort into devising and managing safe-working procedures.
During the UK lockdown we were able to continue with my work into high-accuracy modal analysis and resynthesis with a six-month project investigating 'atom start offset' detection and frequency-domain synthesis, funded by the University's EPSRC Impact Accelerator Account. The work from this project is now available, under a GNU public licence, as a C library here.
The Persona project that we began in 2019 had to adapt to the pandemic situation, but was able to respond to it with a relevance that we had not imagined at the start of the project. Absent Sitters explored the nature and possibilities of remote and invisible performers and audiences. This work was funded by XRStories.
In September I began work on a new recording project with David Power for an album of his songs, following on from the success of his A Hundred Years of British Piano Miniatures. Recording sessions took place at the National Centre for Early Music and post-production is scheduled for the coming weeks.
October saw the release of Nugen Audio's Paragon reverberation software which is based on my Interactive Reverberation Modelling System. This was a very exciting moment, the culmination of a significant amount of work dating back to when I first devised the software in 2016, in order to implement my component of an audiovisual collaboration between myself and visual artist Annabeth Robinson. In July of this year Touch Music released a binaural capture of the audio part of this work. Nugen have done a terrific job of creating an intuitive, powerful and great sounding piece of software, along with adding considerable surround capability, from my original demonstrator code. It has garnered significant interest and some very good reviews so far.
20th January 2020: I've added an update to the recording page about a new release on Innova Recordings that is coming soon.
15th November 2019: I have just returned from The AHA Festival in Sweden where I participated in a performance and seminar related to the Footnotes project. This project is described in detail in the book Voices, Bodies, Practices: Performing Musical Subjectivities which was published today by Leuven University Press.
26th June 2019: History Today has just published an article written by myself and John Potter that mourns the (hopefully temporary) loss of Notre Dame De Paris' unique acoustic.
27th March 2019: Tonight there will be another presentation of Traces of Sound and Light at the National Centre for Early Music. This is an installation piece that I and Annabeth Robinson created following a comission from Vespertine. This presentation is part of the Audio Engineering Society International Conference on Immersive and Interactive Audio. More information on the event can be found here.
19th March 2019: Software that demonstrates the Interactive Reverberation Modelling System I have been developing over the last three years is now available. The system is currently being commercialised as an audio plugin
5th July 2018: In February a two year Knowledge Transfer Partnership with RPPtv began, I am the lead academic working on the project. I've added an upcoming gig (happening today!) to the DJing page.
27th September 2017: I've added an upcoming gig to the DJing page. In other news, I've been promoted and am now Senior Lecturer in my department.
6th June 2017: Traces of Sound and Light, an audio-visual piece by myself and Annabeth Robinson will be presented at the National Centre for Early Music on Saturday 10th June. I've devised the sound for this audio-visual piece, using new software I've developed for interacting with and designing reverberation. There will be a short talk with myself and Annabeth at 7pm, with the piece running from 7.30pm to 9pm. Admission is free.
9th March 2017: The DJing page has been the latest to get a tidy-up and update.
28th February 2017: I'm currently engaged in a big overhaul of this site. It's been ported over to a new tablet/phone-friendly layout for a while now but the content has been lagging behind. This is not because I haven't been up to much, simply because I've been too busy with everything to post regular updates. I've now updated the publications and recording sections. You can also find out more about my current research activities at the Music Production, Processing and Analysis research group page. There will be more updates, and a streamlining of some parts of this site, coming soon.
12th June: Yet another long gap between updates. The busier I get, the less time I have to let you all know what's happening. Basically this web site needs over-hauling and updating and I'm planning on doing that over the Summer. Currently it's limping along with an old .css file (which is why you're seeing this horrible frame view; the other css file corrupted and my back-up strategy was not a good one......). Anyway, just to keep you posted on a couple of things. I'm next DJing at Freakin's weekender at a remote castle (tickets sold out a long time ago). I'm then speaking at Brighton's Cafe Scientifique on The Science of Audio Engineering on Tuesday 18th June. Perhaps I'll see you at one of those events!
14th November: Hello, after another long gap between updates here's what I've been up to over the last four months. A lot has been happening:
At the beginning of October I moved from the Audio Lab research group and Music Technology teaching stream in the Department of Electronics to the Music Research Centre in the Department of Music (still at the University of York). Here I am teaching on the Music Technology MA as well as the Music BA course and, from October 2013, I will be pathway leader for a new MA in Music: Music Production course. This is a very exciting development for me. The musical and technological resources in the Music Department offer a unique facility for a new approach to this subject area: one which genuinely combines understanding of the technological, musical and cultural aspects of production. Thinking about, and doing, it in any of its many forms.
In September the Audio Lab was the host of the 15th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx12) . The conference was a great success and hugely enjoyable. All of the scientific papers that were presented can be downloaded from here.
My Fellowship with the Royal Academy of Engineering finished at the end of July but I have continued with research and public engagements in this area. I recently spoke at Cafe Scientifique in Sheffield, and will be speaking in Beverley in January 2013. There is now a web resource for the project here.
The 24 have a released a new CD, New Music from Old York, for which I recorded some of the items and was editor for the whole disc. This month I spent a day recording the Apollo Sax Quartet playing Barry Guy's Mobile Herbarium for Maya Recordings.
On the DJing front, I've continued with fortnightly broadcasts on Purple Radio and Andy Devine and myself now regularly join the Acid House Gentlemen at Freakin'.
30th July: I've just completed a pod cast about panning, which can find out more about here. I've also updated the recording section of the site with details of a new CD release which I've worked on.
26th July: I've posted new versions of the Science in the Studio plugins. These versions have a fix which prevents short burst of noise being heard when the host program goes into play.
20th July: Blog updated.
7th June: Exactly a month after I posted the first of my Science in the Studio plugins, I'm pleased to announce the second, a flexible stereo delay. It can be downloaded from here.
7th May: A new VST plugin which offers combined time and amplitude based panning is available from the software section of this site.
30th April: Blog updated. Andy Devine and I will be playing in the front room at Freakin' this Saturday.
24th March: Blog updated.
2nd February: Myself and Andy Devine are back with the Acid House Gentleman's Club for February's Freakin'. At Stereo on Gillygate in York, Saturday 4th from 10 onwards.
31st January 2012: I will giving a public lecture on audio recording and reproduction technology here in York in February. The talk, entitled Perfect Sound Forever? takes place in the Physics and Electronics building at the University of York at 7pm, Tuesday 28th February. More information here.
10th January 2012: Blog updated.
31st December 2011: Myself and Andy Devine are joining the Acid House Gentleman's Club in the front room of Freakin's New Years Eve Party tonight at Stereo on Gillygate in York. Happy New Year!
1st December 2011: Blog updated.
15th November 2011: Publications page updated with links to paper and other materials for my presentation at the AES Convention in London in May this year.
11th November 2011: Blog updated.
3rd November 2011: I've updated the Is Recording Engineering? blog with some updates on that project including information on the first event which will be held in December, here at the Audio Lab in York. Myself and Andy Devine will be joining the Acid House Gentleman's Club in the front room at this month's Freakin'. More info in the gigs section of the DJing page.
13th October 2011: Next year's DAFx (Digital Audio Effects) conference will be held here in York. I will be paper chair for the conference. More information here.
12th October 2011: Blog updated.
5th October 2011: Blog updated.
27th September 2011: I've just got back from IRCAM in Paris where I was presenting research comparing different time-frequency decomposition methods for directional segmentation of audio at DAFx. The paper that I presented, along with additional materials (including audio examples) can be found here.
1st September 2011: My RAE Public Engagement Fellowship begins today. More at the blog.
7th August 2011: Nicky Losseff's Pianthology, which I recorded and edited has just been re-released by NMC. More information on my recordings page.
4th August 2011: A track of mine has just been released by Psychonavigation Records. Ydok appears on the digital download version of the Mindfield compilation, which also features tracks by The Future Sound of London, The Black Dog and Move-D. You can buy it from Amazon, Juno Download, iTunes, Beatport and Traxsource. You can also listen to the whole compilation on Spotify (the Spotify link is not availaable at the moment, but should be back again soon).
3rd August 2011: I'm very pleased to announce that I've been awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious Public Engagement Fellowship which will start this September. With the assistance of Dr David Beer I'll be asking the question Is Recording Engineering? in order to shed some light on the extent to which engineers and sound recordists, both budding and established, feel that their roles and skills overlap. You can find out more about the project in press releases here and here, and also at a blog I've started to record the progress of the project. Please contact me if you'd like to get involved or something to say on the subject.
Also, the latest update to the site is done: find out about the recording work I've been doing this year.
2nd August 2011: I've finally got some time to update this site and there will be regular updates over the next few days and weeks. First to get an update and tidy-up is the DJ page.
21st March 2011. Another long break between updates but this site will be getting busier again now that a very busy teaching term is over. Recently, I've been to the House of Commons to present my research as part of SET for Britain, have been busy with schools outreach (Rotary Club technology competition judging and getting ready for the University's own Science Trail this week) and have been using complex wavelet packets for directional separation of audio (I'll be presenting the results of this work at the AES International Convention in May).
12th November 2010. Hello! I've been rather busy in the eight months since I last updated this page. Some highlights:
September I attended the DAFx10 conference in Austria (a link to the paper can be found on the publications page and I wrote a quick blog about it here).
August I attended the brilliant Festinho festival and had the pleasure of DJing there as part of the Purple Radio Allstars.
July was a busy month recording-wise. I made two sets of recordings of The 24. The first was incidental music for a production of Goethe's Faust which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in September, the second is for a CD which will be launched very soon (I've just completed the editing and mastering). More info on these recordings can be found on the recording page of this site.
June saw the first of what will hopefully become an annual Purple Radio camping weekender - a tasty sound system in a beautiful location and some of the best weather of the Summer!
The last weekend in May was The Trip festival at a stunning site in Angelsey. I was DJing along with lots of other Purple Radio people. It's a new festival but it was great fun and I'll definitely be back there next year. Also that month I was at the AES Convention in London to present some of my work. You can download this paper from the publications page of this site.
I spent much of April in Bangalore visiting my brother and his family. Wow, what a place!
14th March 2010. I've been doing some research into reconfiguration of the spatial information in recordings made using Blumlein pairs - I'll be presenting this at the AES Convention in London in May. I've got some DJing gigs coming up more info on the DJ page.
3rd January 2010. Happy New Year! DJ page updated.
7th December 2009. A paper I wrote with Damian Murphy A Comparative Evaluation of Techniques for Single-Frame Discrimination of Non-Stationary Sinusoids is to be published in a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing in the coming year.
I'm DJing at the Dogstar in Brixton on Saturday 12th December, More info on the DJing page, which I've updated.
27th November 2009. More radio shows added to the DJ page.
11th October 2009. I'm DJing at the Big Chill Bar in London next Sunday (18th October). I have added 3 recent papers (some with accompanying web pages) to the Publications page. I've added a couple of new radio shows to the DJing page.
23rd August 2009. Well, it's been a while since I updated the site. I've started in a new role at the University of York as a permanent lecturer in Music Technology, meaning that I'll be doing both teaching and research from now on. I've updated and overhauled the DJing page which was getting a little unwieldy.
11th June 2009. Two papers that I've been involved in have been accepted for presentation at this year's DAFx conference in Italy in September.
12th May 2009. A few more DJ gigs: I'm playing at The Big Chill Bar this Sunday (17th May) and at PlinkPlinkFizz on Saturday 23rd May. More info on the DJing page.
5th May 2009. Flyer for A-Z posted
30th April 2009. I'll be speaking about restoration of audio recordings at the I Hear Too event at the British Library Monday 18th May. DJing page updated with new gigs (I'm playing at Aardvaark to Zebra in Camberwell, Saturday 16th May) and the most recent radio show.
14th April 2009. Radio archive updated.
5th March 2009. Updated the radio archive with a new show.
4th March 2009. I've just completed a paper along with colleagues Damian Murphy and Mark Beeson which I will be presenting at the Audio Engineering Society Convention in May in Germany. Entitled Temporal matching of 2D and 3D wave-based acoustic modeling for efficient and realistic simulation of rooms it will form part of the session on room acoustics. I can't post the actual paper on this site until 6 months after the presentation, but as soon as I can I will. I've also updated the DJ page with shows broadcast on Purple Radio during February.
27th January 2009. Links fixed in the music reviews section and DJ page updated with latest broadcasts and a flyer for an upcoming gig at The Big Chill Bar.
24th January 2009. Happy New Year! You can now buy my latest recording project (a restoration of choral recordings from the fifties) online. I've updated the DJ page with details of my most recent broadcast. I've changed to a new web host which means I'm able to host more files so it should be easier to access the broadcast archive. I'm aware that a lot of the links in the music reviews section are broken (the Big Chill's web site has had a face lift and the URLs of the reviews I've written for them have changed). I'm hoping to get this sorted out ASAP (tomorrow hopefully).
23rd November 2008. I've posted some new info (including details of a very special guest at next Sunday Service, 7th December) on the DJ page.
10th November 2008: I am giving a research seminar today in the Department of Electronics at the University of York (where I work). I'll be presenting the results of a comparative study of single-frame sinusoidal discriminators. I've updated the DJ page.
22nd October 2008: A CD of restored recordings from Ely and Arundel Cathedrals from the late 1950s is now complete and being manufactured ready for release at the start of next month. More information here. Also: radio archive updated on the DJ page.
11th October 2008: Radio archive updated on the DJ page.
2nd October 2008: I'm playing at the Big Chill Bar in London on 19th October and Pivo bar in York this Sunday. More details on the DJ page. I've also started my new room acoustics modelling research job.
22nd September 2008: Radio archive updated on the DJ page.
18th September 2008: Two new radio shows posted on the DJ page.
16th August 2008: New Sunday Service flyer posted on the DJ page.
11th August 2008: In October I will be starting a new job in my Department: Research Assistant for Room Acoustics Modelling. After the variety of teaching it will be nice to get into some single-focus research. DJ page updated.
5th July 2008: I will be DJing at the Big Chill Bar in London on 13th July. More information about this and lots of new radio stuff posted on the DJ page.
3rd June 2008: Matlab function for generating swept sine waves for Angelo Farina's impulse response measurement method added to the computer music tools page. Latest radio show posted here.
30th May 2008: I have updated the publications page with more links to papers and I've posted a revised version of my tutorial article Reading the Sines. The DJ page has the latest radio show and Sunday Service information. I will be playing on Purple Radio tomorrow, 7-9pm and then at Sunday Service at Pivo on Sunday night (1st June).
16th May 2008: DJing page updated with news and a new mix. Throbbing Couch starts up again tomorrow and I'm playing at Music at the The Moog in Nottingham on Sunday.
1st May 2008: New flyer posted in the djing page and examples of audio coding (comparisons at low bit rates between mp3 and mp4) posted in the computer music tools page.
27th April 2008: Pianthology is now ready for release. More here.
24th April 2008: Latest gigs and radio show stuff here.
6th April 2008: Latest radio show posted here.
3rd April 2008: Stuff about upcoming gigs posted on the djing page.
23rd March 2008: I'll be DJing at Peepshow v. Purple Radio this coming Friday (28th March) at the Prince in Brixton, 10pm - 4am. Latest radio shows posted on the djing page.
1st March 2008: I'll be DJing at Sunday Service at Pivo bar in York tomorrow night. We're planning on recording the sets for archive broadcast on Purple Radio. Details of the most recent radio show posted on the DJing page.
11th February 2008: Our first Sunday Service at Pivo was a huge success and we'll be doing this once a month from now on. More on this and the latest radio show can be found on the djing page.
7th February 2008: I will be speaking at Virtual Audio and Past Environments at the National Centre for Early Music on 17th March. I will be talking about Audio Heritage - Tools and techniques for the renovation of historically significant recordings. More information here.
6th February 2008: Lots of new stuff on the djing page: Two Sunday Service sessions in York this month, I'll be playing at Drop Beats Not Bombs in May and the latest radio stuff.
27th January 2008: Details of the latest radio show posted on the djing page
18th January 2008: djing page updated with track listing from latest radio show.
9th January 2008: Happy New Year! djing page updated.
20th December 2007: djing page updated with gigs and recent radio shows.
11th December 2007: Broken link on publications page (DAFx07 paper) fixed
18th November 2007: Track list and recording of 17th November's radio show posted here
6th November 2007: Track list from 3rd November's radio show posted.
2nd November 2007: Poster from WASPAA07 uploaded (see publications section).
11th October 2007: Track list from last Saturday's radio show posted.
5th October 2007: At last, the bio is done!
4th October 2007: DJing: posted a new mix and news about a regular radio show that I'll be doing.
3rd October 2007: Recording sessions for a new CD of contemporary piano pieces finished today - hopefully the CD will be available from early next year. The pieces were performed by Nicky Losseff and recorded in the Rymer Auditorium in the Music Research Centre at York.