Ben was first drawn to ECA because of the strength and expertise of the Sound Design course which included specialisms in audio programming and talks on machine learning.

Since graduating, Ben has gone on to receive multiple successful grants and has founded a music production academy with now over 400 students. Wanting to further his own studies, Ben is now currently researching his PhD back here at ECA. 

Why ECA?

The ECA is one of the only institutions in the world that had the expertise and knowledge that I needed to develop my full potential as a sound designer. I entered the ECA with over 10 years of prior experience working in the field, yet I was feeling the limitations of my skillset as I became eager to explore more advanced areas in music technology. My programme’s depth of knowledge included topics that were not taught at many other institutions: audio programming and segments about machine learning, all of which I was very interested in creatively exploiting for my own music. I was also enamoured by the academic prestige of the faculty, as working alongside Dr. Martin Parker, Dr. Jules Rawlinson, and Dr. Tom Mudd is an honour on its own.

Tell us about your time at ECA

I started my master’s during the seventh month of the pandemic, and it came as a welcomed relief to be engaged in an academic community during a sustained period of global disconnectedness. Almost all of my lessons were online, which suited me well considering software is learned on the screen anyway.

In the fall semester I took classes on how to conduct scientific research alongside classes on sound design and audio programming. In the spring I took perhaps the most difficult class, Creative Coding for Sound with Tom Mudd, where I coded my first audio plugin. These classes truly helped me build a foundation in audio coding that I’ve since been able to iterate upon in my own work.

In the summer I attended a week-long workshop with the Fluid Corpus Manipulation research team from the University of Huddersfield, where I coded a Max prototype that was capable of performing the audio mosaicking algorithm that I was most interested in. My implementation from this workshop, “PointZero”, is now one of the number one pages that returns when googling “audio mosaicking”.

My experience at ECA directly led me to later successfully apply for a resident entrepreneurial grant from the Creative Informatics Department, allowing me to form my startup company DataMind Audio, which specialises in the deployment of machine learning algorithms for sound design – a direct culmination of my topic of interest at the ECA.

If I could start again, I would like to have enjoyed my time at school while there was no pandemic happening! University of Edinburgh is a beautiful place, and I wish I got to know it better.

Tell us about your experiences since graduating

When I finished, it felt like a major opportunity to try new things in my career. I had been fairly obsessed with my thesis project. Graduating felt like starting over again in many ways and returning to Earth after a solid year of dedicating my life to the pursuit of upgrading my skill set.

Returning to art, I produced an album with my counterpart Zebbler (Syncorswim) where each track had a visual component attached to the music. The vinyl ended up selling out in less than 24 hours upon release and represented the most sonically nuanced work I’d created to date.

Returning from my teaching hiatus, I started offering electronic music production lessons again, starting with private lessons and then building up towards running a one-month classroom. The popularity of the classroom pushed me into making it a recurring occasion, and after two years I’ve now accumulated almost 400 students that have taken my classes. I’ve recently formalised my teaching into an online academy, Encanti Music Academy, and have just launched my membership site at encanti.com.

Perhaps even more relevant to my area of study, I applied for and won the Creative Informatics resident entrepreneurial grant, allowing my partner and I to start DataMind Audio, and create sound design tools that use machine learning technologies. As AI-generative technology advanced so quickly in the past year, the vision for what was possible rapidly evolved as well. We received two more additional grants, including £50k from InnovateUK, to build one of the first neural audio plugins to be sold alongside neural networks trained on ethically-sourced datasets from artists. Our artists make a royalty on every sale of their neural networks, essentially creating a new cottage industry for the working music producer. As this project gets off the ground in the next few weeks, I am very excited about the possibility of our project’s positive impact on the global discussion around the relationship between the artist and AI.

My biggest achievement since leaving the ECA, however, was probably being accepted back into the University! I recently received the Bucher-Fraser Scholarship for a full-ride at the University of Edinburgh, returning as a PhD student as part of the Creative Music Practice programme. I’m incredibly proud of having won this award and this opportunity to continue my research at the college. 

Alumni wisdom

To all entering students: I think it’s important to discover topics and issues that you are very passionate (or at least, very curious) about. There is no force more academically motivating than being genuinely inspired by the subject of your interests. School is not just the information contained within - it is the time, space, and resources you have designated for the purpose of formally seeking to be better at something. This time and space are precious, and in depleting supply the older you get, so make the best of it.

To all graduating students: Cut yourself some slack when you first graduate. It takes time to return to the “real world” coming out of a serious school vortex. Opportunities are everywhere, and you’re not the same person you were when you entered – doors have just opened on this side of graduating, sometimes in places you might have never looked before.