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Category Archives: hardware

Tales of an Apple fanboy

Sunday, April 18, 2010

I’ve now had a couple of opportunities to play around with an iPad, and to surreptitiously watch other people use it. I have strong and mixed feelings. The touchscreen interface is pretty wonderful and I have no doubt that it’s going to send the mouse the way of the floppy disk. But the walled garden [...]

Also filed in software | Tagged apple, history, interface, ipad, iphone, mac, midi | Comments (0)

What does live music mean in the laptop era?

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

This weekend my electronica band Revival Revival is doing some shows for the first time in many months. We’ll be doing a lot of what my non-electronic-musician friends consider to be cheating. The lead vocals and guitar will be live, as will some of the synths. Everything else will be canned, recordings played back from [...]

Also filed in autobio, music, software | Tagged authenticity, electronica, guitar, improvisation, lionel richie, michael jackson, midi, miles davis, pop, pro tools, reason, remixes, revival revival, songwriting | Comments (0)

Inside the recording process

Friday, February 26, 2010

The vast majority of music that I hear is recorded, and if you’re reading this the same is probably true of you. Most people don’t have a clear idea what the recording process is like, especially using computers. Here are my adventures in recording. I grew up in the eighties. Cassette recorders were just starting [...]

Also filed in music, software | Tagged analog, audio, audio editing, autotune, book, computers, electronica, hip-hop, improvisation, looping, mashups, music, pro tools, recording, remixes, revival revival, sampling, sequencing, synths, tape, tape editing, visualization | Comments (2)

Blogging is a real-time strategy game

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Anna watched me Twitter over my shoulder for a while, and then announced: “I get it. It’s a video game where you compete for attention from strangers on the internet.” She’s completely correct. Having a web presence is a real-world immersive internet game where the scoreboard is your stats page or follower list. Like any [...]

Also filed in autobio, software, web | Tagged attention, blogging, civilization, recursion, simcity, social media, social networks, stats, twitter, video games, wordpress | Comments (0)

Auto-tune on the iPhone

Saturday, September 5, 2009

It was only a matter of time before the Autotune The News people got T-Pain on board. The newest version of this software lets you sing with Auto-tune over anything in your iTunes library. Pretty amazing hip-hop and electronica scratchpad, except that it crashes two minutes into each recording. Still. Auto-tune the Pro Tools plug-in [...]

Also filed in music, software, web | Tagged advertising, autotune, book, fan art, hip-hop, interface, iphone, karaoke, social media, t-pain | Comments (0)

Game controllers as musical instruments

Friday, August 21, 2009

This is a picture of my electronic funk-soul-R&B band doing a show. From left to right, it’s Nicole Bishop, me and Barbara Singer. We were the whole band for that show. I did all the beats, samples and keyboards from my computer using a video game controller. Here’s a screenshot of the program that the [...]

Also filed in autobio, music, software, video games | Tagged book, composing, electronica, hip-hop, improvisation, interface, keybs, mapping, max/msp, midi, programming, reason, sampling, sequencing, synths, video games | Comments (2)

His name is Prince, and he is funky

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Hip-hop artists love Prince. Like them, he blends drum machines, live jazz-funk musicians and samples of other songs.

Also filed in music | Tagged book, drum machines, eighties, george clinton, guitar, keybs, pop, prince, remixes, rock, sample maps, sampling, synths | Comments (0)

Welcome to warp zone

Monday, August 17, 2009

When I was a kid I played a lot, and I mean a lot, of Super Mario Bros. My grandpa once asked me to explain the game to him after he’d watched me play it for the nine thousandth hour. I tried hard and couldn’t do it. There’s a lot that defies intuition. Like how [...]

Also filed in autobio, math, music, science, software, video games | Tagged autobio, book, chiptunes, computers, eighties, electricity, electronica, microchips, nintendo, remixes, super mario bros, video games | Comments (1)

Tuning systems, jigsaw puzzles, Giant Steps and Tetris

Friday, August 14, 2009

Expanding on “Learning Music Theory With Autotune” If you’re a science geek and you find yourself in San Francisco, the most fun thing to do there is to go to the Exploratorium.

Also filed in math, music, science, video games | Tagged audio editing, book, coltrane, exploratorium, giant steps, india, keybs, lego, midi, music theory, pitch, pitch shifting, sequencing, tetris, tuning, video games | Comments (2)

Brian Eno writes songs with the mixing desk

Sunday, August 9, 2009

“Once In A Lifetime” by Talking Heads and Brian Eno is one of my favorite songs by anyone ever.

Also filed in music, science | Tagged attention, beatles, book, brian eno, david byrne, improvisation, meditation, mixing, philosophy, recording, recursion, reggae, remixes, sly and the family stone, talking heads, tape, tape editing, time | Comments (0)

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- Reason has a very decent set of sampled bass clarinet sounds, and those are fun and all, but I want to let rip on a physical one.
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