Rick Ogden

Project Catharsis

Something I have not yet mentioned here is the music side of my life. Music is incredibly important to me, having been playing instruments from the age of 6. The one instrument that I have stuck with ever since that age is the piano, which I absolutely adore.

As well as playing for bands, I have been working on a solo project; an album called Catharsis. It is a 2 part concept album (the concept will be published at a later date), and will contain 8 or 9 tracks. It’s going to be progressive rock/metal but incorporating different styles from various genres.

I have resisted recording any demos until the entire thing has been composed, this is due to it being a concept album and needing to work “as a whole” rather just as a collection of pieces. However, the composition stage is almost complete, so in the near future I plan to start the demoing process.

The plan is for the demo to be entirely piano and (multi-tracked) vocals, to give an overall idea of how it will sound (this is also the closest to how I’ve gone about it in the composition process). I will then build up the orchestration around it.

I will of course be blogging for the duration of the recording (and continual composition) of this piece, and if you’re lucky may even upload some sneak previews.

Stay tuned.

Rick Ogden

Breadth Vs Depth

Something that I’ve recently been thinking about a lot is what should be taught at Universities, particularly in my area (Computer Science). What has been bugging me is trying to think about the balance between coverage and detail. Is there a bias as in you should focus more on one and not the other, or should they be covered in equal amounts.

A great way of applying this is using development concepts. Do you teach students many programming languages, giving them experience of many different syntaxes, and methodologies of programming. Or do you concentrate on fewer languages, but going into more detail about what you can do with them.

Personally, I’m inclined to go with the latter (to a point). Concentrate your efforts and get them able to apply their current knowledge to other areas, which they have not been taught. However, this has problems. Could the jeopardise the students in the future, make them feel restricted from branching into the unknown? Could it also mean that they don’t look as good to an employer?

Although I’ve used programming as an analogy (as it’s something I’m familiar with), this balance can be applied to any learning situation.

Comments please.