jamieonkeys

Edinburgh, Scotland-based jazz pianist, composer and web developer.

[nini-eternalsolentertainment]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O17kvAwh554)

[psych-facts]

If people aren’t laughing at your goals, your goals are too small.

Kai Greene  (via tea-storm)

[thingscalledjazzthatarenotjazz]

as drunk by jazz musicians everywhere

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Reviews

On Kinesis EP (2014)

"Modern, contemporary ... a very listenable solo jazz piano EP." – Bebop Spoken Here [full review]

"[Jamie has] got a nice sense of structure ... each piece is tight and the EP never lacks momentum." – Improvised [full review]

On Attic EP (2012)

"A composer, arranger and Hammondista with a very big future if this, his first (self-produced) release, is anything to go by! Grab it while it’s fresh!" – RootDown FM

"A well focused EP… a downtempo groove that you’ll want to keep coming back to. And hopefully a good sign of things to come from this young musician. Worth seeking out." – JazzWrap [full review]

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Releases

Kinesis EP (2014)

Freely improvised solo piano.

Jamie on piano.

Available at Bandcamp: Kinesis EP

Attic EP (2012)

Acid jazz.

Compositions and keyboards by Jamie. Produced by Outerattik. Mastered by Streaky.

Available at Bandcamp: Attic EP

Clusterphonic EP (2010)

Jazzy funk trio recording with Marek Bruno Chrzanowski on electric bass and David Dukes on drums.

Compositions by Jamie; arrangements by the trio.

Available at Bandcamp: Clusterphonic EP

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Kinesis EP reviews

A couple of nice reviews for my Kinesis EP, out on Monday, currently pre-ordering on Bandcamp:

"[Jamie has] got a nice sense of structure ... each piece is tight and the EP never lacks momentum." – full review at Improvised blog

"Modern, contemporary ... a very listenable solo jazz piano EP." – full review at Bebop Spoken Here

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My new solo jazz piano EP is available for pre-order: Kinesis EP by Jamie Alexander Smith. Download the first track right away upon pre-ordering.

[jamieonkeys-blog]

New royalty-free track

This one is perfect for explainer videos. Upbeat, light and jazzy.

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Will be putting out an EP of solo piano improvisations very shortly. This is the cover, done by Christopher at Fancy Ferret Studios.

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Sinclair QL is 30

It turns out that Mac is not the only computer to be having its 30th anniversary this year. Launched about two weeks before Mac, the Sinclair QL sadly is no longer being manufactured. I never owned one, but got many enjoyable years' use out of my Spectrum +2A and +3, by which time the Sinclair brand was owned by Amstrad.

I'm a Mac user today, and I love Macs, but it would be awesome to still be using a Sinclair as my primary machine. I used my +3 right up until 1996 before spending many years in the Wintel wilderness (Macs were fugging expensive in those days).

Here's a really nice new video (from a growing playlist) of the machine, its peripherals and boxed software.

The design still looks great today.

[jamieonkeys-blog]

My new royalty-free track Perfectly Simple is now live at AudioJungle. Well suited to explainer videos and advertisements. I've bundled 60s, 30s and looped versions too.

[weebles-marie]

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Working on a new track for my downtempo project Outerattik. This one has a bit of a 60s vibe. Plan to record live acoustic guitars and flutes for it.

[jamieonkeys-blog]

New blog on LiveCode game development

Scott McDonald has started a blog on developing games with LiveCode. Looking forward to raiding it for tips, best practices etc!

[jamieonkeys-blog]

LiveCode rendering optimisations

Thought I’d describe a couple of basic, but fundamental, graphics rendering optimisations for LiveCode, especially useful when making a game.

1.

First, set the accelleratedRendering custom property of the current stack to true:

on preOpenStack set the accelleratedRendering of this stack to true end preOpenStack

2.

The layerMode of each control that will be moving should be set to dynamic. This will cache the objects and make movement smoother.

You can do this in code (below), or in the object's Property Inspector:

set the layerMode of graphic "foo" to "dynamic"

I'm new to LiveCode so that's about as much as I know on optimising rendering. I'll post more as I learn more...

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Walkthrough of a couple of levels of the mobile game Tripods I'm developing. Hit me with your thoughts and suggestions!

[jamieonkeys-blog]

Hello, world

Back in the early 90s I made games and other bits of software for my ZX Spectrum, selling them directly and then through a PD library called Prism PD. Twenty years later, I thought I'd try my hand at making a game for mobile. I've been developing it in LiveCode for a couple of months now and thought I'd start a developer blog to chronicle my efforts.

By day I'm a web developer at the University of Edinburgh, and I also write and produce music. My production music is at AudioJungle, and I also have a SoundCloud profile.