Some Education History…

My uncle was a programmer, working on traffic light control software (SCOOT) in the 1970s. He got me interested in computers very young, writing my first program in C, on a DEC PDP-11 at the age of six. Shortly after this he got an Apple ][, which I would spend hours on, teaching myself BASIC. My school recognised my talent and got me a Sinclair ZX81 and I would teach friends and even give classes on how to program. I saved up and bought a BBC Micro and taught myself 6502 Assembler, working a school holiday job programming RS232 interfaces to talk to cash registers. I was also a keen musician, and when I could, got myself a Music 500 and started making electronic music from code.

Being in the first year to take GCSEs, my school was concerned that GCSEs might not be taken as ‘seriously’ as O-Levels, so put us through some O-Levels a year early, “just in case”. I had already done an O-level in Computing at this point, a year earlier.

Much of the coursework requirements of those inital GCSEs I completed through programming and digital techniques - submitting my work as printouts, complete with illustrations, charts and data. Apparently I was one of the only students to do this in the entire region, and got high grades across all those subjects.

This is where my interest of using the computer as a media and information tool began, rather than following a more traditional computer science route.

The Alan Parsons Project

At the age of 16, and hoping to follow a career in music, I found out that legendary audio engineer Alan Parson’s son went to the same school as my brother. Seeing him at a school rugby match, I summoned some courage, went up to him and asked how I might get into the music industry.

“You’d better come and have a chat” he said.

And he followed up, meaning I got to spend a day with him at his studio. His advice was harsh. It was that I needed to get myself on something, anything, music related and take it from there.

“Don’t go to university, it won’t help”.

The rest of the day was spent exploring what could be done with an Atari ST, synths and MIDI, and I could see the potential immediately.

However my parents and teachers were of the firm opinion that university would, absolutely, help, so I worked hard to get high grades at my A-Levels and was accepted onto Salford University’s B.Eng Electroacoustics course - the closest I could get to something related to music, recording and audio engineering. At that time, 1990, Salford Uni had just opened what was said to be the most advanced computer lab in the country.

I was excited about the possibilities…

The University Experience

Growing up in the lush green Kent countryside, Salford and it’s grey, industrial, Lowry-esque urban backdrop was a stark contrast, but a very exciting one.

Manchester was going through a music-driven revolution and it was inescapable. By day I was writing acoustic simulations in Pascal, on an outdated mainframe and learning all about the science of sound. By night I was going to clubs like The Haçienda and Soundgarden and meeting other musicians and getting to experiment and explore.

What I loved about audio and music was that it is such a broad church of knowledge and practical skills. I was learning more about electronics, signals and how to address this in code from being practical than I was learning in the lab or lecture theatre. Mr Parsons seemed to have a point.

The whole field was already way ahead of academia and I could feel that acutely. The computer lab felt dull and uninspiring, even with it’s nascent internet access. I already had TCP/IP dial-up at home.

So at the end of my first year, I decided that it would be better for me to follow Alan Parsons’ advice and just get out there.

And I did.

The odds of me ending up working on Pink Floyd, just as Alan Parsons did on “Dark Side Of The Moon” are incalcuable. But somehow, something aligned, and I still fully beleive I took the correct path. Since then, I’ve constantly fed back my knowledge through documentation, talks and presentations on both technical and more general aspects of my work.

From that point on, I have always worked ahead of the curve, and still do to this day. Constantly exploring and questioning what comes next for technology, media and human-machine experience.