Friday, September 23, 2011
Anna and I caught one of the best performances we’ve seen in years the other night by Tune-Yards. My friend Andrew, who was at the show, said this afterwards: “I can’t decide whether hearing the president say ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math’ or the fact that this band could become popular makes me [...]
Also filed in Music, Race and Identity, Sampling
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Tagged africa, audience participation, drumming, hipsters, indie, looping, merrill garbus, race, tune-yards, ukelele
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Back in June we went to see the incomparable Reggie Watts perform at Central Park Summerstage. I think Reggie is one of the most exciting artists of our time, but it’s difficult to verbalize exactly what he does. His performances combine improvisational music and absurdist standup comedy into a free-associative yet oddly coherent and impactful [...]
Also filed in Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Race and Identity, Recording, Sampling
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Tagged comedy, hip-hop, Improvisation, jake lodwick, jazz, looping, reggie watts
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Computers can only do a few very simple operations consisting of flipping electrical switches on and off. You can represent numbers in patterns of the on-off states of sequences of switches. By flipping switches on and off in particular patterns, you can perform simple mathematical operations on the numbers. You can do more complex mathematical [...]
The other day Brian Eno was on NPR talking about his process. He likes to have people walk into the studio without any preconceived ideas or written out material. Then he has the musicians improvise within certain constraints. Usually these constraints are more about a mood or a vibe than a particular musical structure. After [...]
Also filed in Autobio, Improvisation, Interfaces, Music
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Tagged brian eno, buddhism, comedy, electronica, groovebox, guitar, Improvisation, intuition, meditation, revival revival, singing, upright citizens brigade
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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 [...]
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, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Software
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Tagged authenticity, electronica, guitar, Improvisation, lionel richie, michael jackson, midi, miles davis, pop, pro tools, reason, remixes, revival revival, songwriting
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In keeping with my posts thinking of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix as electronic musicians, I thought I’d round out the techno-hippie trifecta with the Dead. Their fans might lean to the crunchy granola side, and they did some of their most endearing work in unplugged mode, but for the most part the Dead were [...]
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 Autobio, Composition, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Software
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Tagged analog, audio, audio editing, autotune, computers, electronica, hip-hop, Improvisation, looping, mashups, Music, pro tools, Recording, remixes, revival revival, Sampling, sequencing, synths, tape, tape editing, visualization
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Here’s a live rendition of Imogen Heap’s song “Hide And Seek.”
Also filed in Improvisation, Music, Recording
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Tagged authenticity, autotune, brian eno, electronica, harmony, imogen heap, Improvisation, interface, keybs, midi, Music, pop, remixes, Sampling, synths
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Wednesday, December 2, 2009
One night, Anna was watching me Twitter over my shoulder. After a while, she 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 effectively a real-world immersive internet game. The scoreboard is your stats page or follower list. [...]
Also filed in Autobio, Social Media, Software, Writing
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Tagged attention, blogging, civilization, recursion, simcity, Social Media, social networks, stats, twitter, Video Games, wordpress
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