Kyle Kirkpatrick

Programming, Technical Sound Design, & Teaching Based in Canberra, Australia

[kylekirkpatrick]

Power Your Gear with USB-C Power Delivery Decoy Adapter

An easy beginners electronics project: make a barrel jack to USB-C Power Delivery decoy adapter and ditch the wall wart power supply.

In this tutorial I make the adapter for my Synthstrom Deluge, but these instructions work for any device that takes a DC input through a barrel jack socket. Just ensure you look up the correct pinout and voltage for your device.

Music made on the Deluge.

[kylekirkpatrick]

Odyssey of the Faceless Men by Coffe789, stoogebag, paperpenpiano, TheMintyMan, make_nothing

Space brawler featuring Canberra's most iconic rocket ship

Odyssey of the Faceless Men

A space brawler, featuring Canberra's most iconic rocket ship. Created for Canberra Jam 2024.

We worked as a team of 5 to create this game using the Godot game engine. I contributed the following things to this project:

Programmed features: astroids, music handler, various sfx handlers

Implemented graphics: particle effects, many enemy models, some cutscene animations and materials

Sound design and implementation

The astroids were a fun challenge. It was important to me that they would spawn randomly and have a limited number on-screen, which required its own system as our enemies spawn in preset waves. There is a different maximum number of rocks for each level. The astroids split into progressively smaller rocks when they explode, using the classic mechanic from Astroids. I implemented the rock exploding in a scalable way, so we could alter the number of rock sizes to balance the gameplay. It was also important to me that the player could intentionally break astroids in a given direction, so advanced players can launch the rocks into enemies.

The music handler had to be implemented in a global way so that music would carry across the separate scenes comprising the cutscenes. I wanted music to transition on-beat, so I designed the music playing function to wait until the end of the next phrase to launch the next song. I scripted music changes into the cutscene system so music would play at pivotal moments in the scene. I provided tools to our music composer to allow them to try their drafts in-game and easily swap out music in cutscenes and levels.

Much of the sound design started with assets from https://sfxr.me/ , but few were used directly. I combined and embellished the sounds in Ableton Live, and for many of them I did a mastering pass in Adobe Audtion. I am proud of the laser sound (an epic power-up in the game). When the laser is fired, all other sounds in the game are muted, giving the laser sound a massive impact. Each projectile in the game has a looping sound that is fully spatialised, so keen players with headphones can get a strategic advantage by hearing the projectiles moving around the screen. Additionally, each enemy type has a unique sound that it playes prior to performing an attack, which telegraphs their intention to the player.

[kylekirkpatrick]

3D-Printed Kick Drum Riser and a Blown Subwoofer!

All the mods I've done to this 16" kick drum (so far).

3D-printed drum riser, 3D-printed spur mounts, and an attempt at installing a subwoofer in the kick. The speaker is broken, but I made a sample pack of distorted kick sounds with it, coming soon!

[kylekirkpatrick]

Giggle Blocks by Coffe789

Giggle Blocks is a 2D puzzle game created for the 2024 global game jam. The friendly Bluub monsters are bored and lonely, try and cheer them up showing them something funny!

This was my first foray into using the Godot game engine. We worked as a team of 5. I contributed the following things to this project:

Game design and initial planning

Programmed features: moveable block, ear, boombox, butt, fart sound interaction, sound handler, music handler, reversed sound effects

Sound design (many assets created from original field recordings)

Music

Implementation of animations including music notes, fart animation, and butt animation

The ear/boombox interaction took much of my development time during the game jam. I wanted the boombox sound to eminate in a circle from its object, but be occluded by objects in the environment. We communicate to the player the range of the sound by placing dancing music notes in the cells where the sound is audible. I'm quite proud of how this feature panned out and the gameplay experiences it adds.

Making sounds play in reverse when the player uses the "undo" feature was quite fun, and not as straightforward as I inititally expected. I think this adds quite a bit to communicate what the undo action is doing.

The duck sounds were curated from field recordings I made around my sister's home. I chased her duck with a shotgun mic for some time, collecting many interactions and vocalisations.

The laughing sounds are granular. I sliced individual "ha"s from a recording of my sister laughing. I did some formant shifting to change the quality of the laugh so it didn't resemble my sister. The laughing is implemented with pitch and speed ramps to emulate the behaviour of laughing, but also to loop seamlessly without repeating. We needed the monsters to laugh continually when activated, and multiple monsters can be activated at the same time. It would not have sufficed to use a simple looping sample of laughing-- we would have had phasing issues and it would sound strange when it started over.

The music was composed on the Synthstrom Deluge groove box, and had a quick mastering pass in Adobe Audtion.

[kylekirkpatrick]

Itch.io

Indie games that I have contributed to.

[kylekirkpatrick]

In this comprehensive video log I record samples of reverberation in my apartment's parking garage and apply the reverb to musical sounds in my digital audio workstation. I test several recording methods and post-processing techniques to see which one yields the most desirable result. At its most basic, reverb can be recorded with just a balloon and a field recorder, so anyone can accomplish this with basic recording equipment. Watch this video to learn about impulse responses, convolution, deconvolution, spectral noise reduction, and batch processing. 

The impulse responses from this recording session can be downloaded here: https://freesound.org/people/kirkpatrick.live/packs/31913/

Download the video on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/recording_reverb_in_the_parking_garage

[kylekirkpatrick]

Listen / Purchase: Sleep Walker [EP] by Payge Turner

Play on YouTube: Sleep Walker [EP] by Payge Turner

Released May 28, 2020

Paige Roopchan - Vocals Jerett Samples - Guitar Ben Jahn - Bass Kyle Kirkpatrick - Drums

Recorded by Wyatt Harbaugh at Soundhouse Studio in Seattle

[kylekirkpatrick]

Brendan is Making a Song a Week - Nihonzaru

A Seattle/Canberra collaboration with a lotta Linnstrument!

Written by Kyle Kirkpatrick and Brendan Milburn Kyle Kirkpartick: LinnStrument, mixing, and mastering Brendan Milburn: melody, lyric, keyboard solo, vocals

This song is (c) 2020 by Brendan Milburn & Kyle Kirkpatrick, my hat music (ASCAP) administered by WB Music Corp

[kylekirkpatrick]

Listen / Download: Fishin’ for Permission Soundtrack by Kyle Kirkpatrick

Play on YouTube: Fishin’ for Permission Soundtrack by Kyle Kirkpatrick

Released April 13, 2020

Musical soundtrack of the educational video game, "Fishin' for Permission", available now on the Apple App Store, Google Play, and the Microsoft Store. 

I composed the music in Ableton Live playing software instruments on my LinnStrument (USB MIDI Controller) and programming drums using velocity-sensitive sample sets recorded from my own drums. The soundtrack features 3 fun songs with a jaunty under-sea theme.

Sunrays Through the Waves (part 1) is a linear arrangement of the looping menu music from the game. This mellow, ambient guitar track has stylistic elements of surf rock though it maintains a relaxed vibe throughout. Though it isn’t readily apparent with the loose meter, the composition is in 5/4 time.

Sunrays Through the Waves (part 2) is the music for the game’s tutorial. It embellishes on the menu theme, creating a logical transition from the menu to the tutorial. The first half of the song is designed to be mellow but progressive, giving the player a little momentum into the tutorial. It is expected that the player will complete the tutorial before the song has completed playing. If the player takes longer to complete the tutorial, they will hear the portion of the song that increases in excitement and intensity, encouraging them to progress and anticipate the forthcoming game play. We don’t want to exhaust the player, so if they continue to listen, the song reaches a crest, like a wave crashing, and descends into a mellow reprise of the intro. It washes into reversed sounds, looping gracefully.

Reef Rag is the main theme of “Fishin’ for Permission”. It is a ragtime tune with instrumentation that is more evocative of undersea cartoons than the jazz era. The song is designed to loop, but this linear arrangement starts with the piano reduction, whereas in the game the song starts with the whole band.

[kylekirkpatrick]

“Fishin’ for Permission” is now available for free on iOS, Android, and Windows 10. I contributed sound design, dialogue editing, music, and audio integration to this project. https://raindropgames.com/games/fishinforpermission I constructed sounds for this game from my personal library of field and studio recordings combined with synthesized elements. I composed the music in Ableton Live playing software instruments on my LinnStrument (USB MIDI Controller) and programming drums using velocity-sensitive sample sets recorded from my own drums. The dialogue was recorded remotely by the voice actors, with some direction from me, using Blue Yeti USB mics. I cleaned up the dialogue in iZotope RX Editor, and did batch processing across all the assets (more than 500 in total) in Adobe Audition. The game is built in the Unity game engine, and all sound was implemented using native Unity tools and custom C# scripts. I wrote a system in C# that handles music playback, allowing features like gradual fades, queuing of tracks, global mute/unmute of music, and random track selection. I also integrated randomized granular sound samples to playback with particle effects to create particle-accurate bubble and coin effects.

[kylekirkpatrick]

Trailer for “Fishin’ For Permission”, an educational game for iOS, Android, and Windows.

I did the sound design, music composition, dialogue production, and audio implementation for this game. This included designing sound assets using my personal library of field recordings, as well as synthesizing UI sounds that are harmonically consistent with the musical elements of the game.

I produced this trailer in Adobe Premiere using captures of the game (recorded in OBS), footage of our producer’s niece playing the game, graphic assets designed by our team, and some beach footage I recorded while on vacation. There are subtle sound design elements throughout, including field recordings of waves, bubbles, water pouring, and plastic wrap crackling for the movements of the crab in the outro. The music is two pieces I composed for the game, slightly re-worked to conform to the runtime of the trailer. The narration, performed and recorded by Aryn Rozelle, was cleaned up in iZotope RX Editor and normalized to broadcast loudness standards.

[kylekirkpatrick]

Logo and Sticker Design for “Champagne Honeybee” Client’s reference sketches included to show the progression of the graphic.

[kylekirkpatrick]

Promotional Materials for “BassFienD Presents: A Love Supreme / John Coltrane’s Signature Album”

Includes: - 11″ x 17″ (tabloid) Poster - 16:9 Web Banner / TV Still - (3x) 1:1 Instagram Advertisement Graphics

[kylekirkpatrick]

Insignia and Text Logo for “BassFienD” 

Client’s reference sketch included to show the progression of the graphic.

[kylekirkpatrick]

Listen / Purchase: Matter by Payge Turner

Released January 31, 2020

Paige Roopchan - Vocals Jerett Samples - Guitar Ben Jahn - Bass Kyle Kirkpatrick - Drums

Recorded by Wyatt Harbaugh at Soundhouse Studio in Seattle

Video by Ben McBee and Morgan Jones

[kylekirkpatrick]

Curated packs of fodder for sound design.

On Freesound.org I am sharing packages of sounds I’ve recorded or designed. Generally, these are granular sounds separated and labeled to be used as fodder for sound design. They are meant to be the basic building blocks of complete sound assets.

[purveyorsofsequim]

“Architect of Reality Remixed”

Featuring:

ZKRY

Aqueous

BassFienD

kaplundafunk

A collection of remixes of Kathleen Parrish’s “Architect of Reality”

Released by Purveyors of Sequim December 15th, 2018

Keep reading

[kylekirkpatrick]

In 2017, I produced a song called “Architect of Reality” for Kathleen Parrish. In 2018, I gathered a group of talented producers together to remix the song in different styles. I mastered the collection and published it under my independent music label, Purveyors of Sequim. I am proud of the original production of “Architect”, as it incorporated field recordings of motors, detailed acoustic percussion, re-amped synthesizers and sample instruments, and painstakingly-humanized sequencing. Between the instrumentals, sound effects, and layered vocals there was so much source material that it seemed apparent that the components could be reconstituted into other songs. It was really gratifying to see it reinterpreted by these 4 producers.