Hello everybody, and happy new year!

It's been some months since my last email -- a lot has been going on! Here's an update on what I've been up to.

First: I finished the Sound for Picture and Games Program at the Pyramind Audio & Music Production Institute! This program has been incredibly valuable to me in building up my music production skills and learning middleware for game audio, such as Fmod and Wwise. Lots of music was written. Many sounds were made. And one of the songs that I worked on during that time will be dropping next Friday! Keep your eyes and ears peeled for my new track, titled Dreams or Nightmares! It will be on all of the streaming platforms, including Spotify, Youtube, Apple Music, etc. Here's a sneak peek of the cover art:

Second: I am now working with an independent label, Deux Ex Mania. It was created by a buddy of mine that I met at school, who also produces music under the artist name Manic Year. My latest track will actually be released with his label, and this will be incredibly helpful for me in promoting my own personal work (music marketing and promotion is hard and takes a lot of time!). Manic Year has been fostering a great local community of music producers here in the SF Bay Area, and his music is super rad as well, so definitely check out his work!

Third: Folks who've known me personally know that I had a previous career in software engineering, and I did that for many years. After a few months of introspection, I've decided to return to some of my coding roots, and am now working on some small indie game dev side projects of my own! So far, I have been doing some exploratory projects involving both the Unity and Unreal game engines, and I have to say it has been a blast! Here's a little snippet of a small project I did during the holiday downtime where I made a real-time 3D light show in Unreal for a music sketch that I wrote:

Yes, I did actually hook up Unreal to my Ableton session! It's using a little music protocol called OSC :) Anyone want a 3D light show for their music?

Aside from my music light show shenanigans, I have also been working on small games that require regular sound design as well to build out my portfolio, and am planning to work on a couple of new music asset packs for the Unity and Unreal stores later this year.

That's all from me for now! If you're interested in following what I'm doing on a more frequent basis, I tend to be pretty active on my instagram. Also, now that school is no longer taking up all of my time, I am once again open for commissions and work. If you are in need of a composer/sound designer/game audio implementer (game audio generalist? I don't know what I should call this skill set) don't hesitate to reach out to me!

All the best,

Christine (Cris) Luu

Ariyassa

​https://www.ariyassamusic.com​

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