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Category Archives: science

The envelope, please

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Here’s a track I’m working on, based around a couple of envelope filtered samples of Beethoven’s string quartet in A minor, opus 132, 3rd movement. Filtered Beethoven [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Me vs Guarneri Quartet vs Babsy Singer vs Don Henley vs DJ Trace mp3 download, ipod format download Envelope filter is [...]

Also filed in math | Tagged bjork, effects, electronica, envelope filter, jerry garcia, led zeppelin, mutron, posthuman, reason, stevie wonder, wah pedal | Comments (0)

May the weak force be with you

Thursday, August 5, 2010

I follow science news the way normal dudes follow sports. If you’re geekily inclined like me, you may have heard that the particle physics people are getting closer to producing the Higgs boson. You may have wondered what that is exactly, and why you should care. The science press has nicknamed the Higgs “the God [...]

Also filed in | Tagged cosmology, higgs boson, physics, science, symmetry, weak force | Comments (0)

Dig the big bang

Monday, May 24, 2010

In Annie Hall, young Woody Allen explains to his doctor that he won’t do his homework because the universe is expanding, so what’s the point? His mother exasperatedly tells him, “You’re here in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not expanding!” I post this because I’ve been rereading Coming Of Age In The Milky Way by Tim Ferris. [...]

Also filed in | Tagged astronomy, big bang, cosmology, douglas adams, hubble, meditation, space, stephen hawking, time, woody allen | Comments (2)

Life in one day

Monday, April 26, 2010

One of the funnest wikipedia articles is their timeline of evolution, a chronological listing of all the major happenings since the Earth’s formation. I’ve been familiar with this story since my geeky childhood, but the pacing came as a big surprise when I saw it all laid out. Life appeared very early in the planet’s [...]

Also filed in | Tagged biology, birds, emergence, evolution, fish, mammals, meditation, microbes, reptiles, space, time, wikipedia | Comments (7)

Here comes the sun

Friday, April 23, 2010

Today in the NY Times there’s an article about NASA’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory. Check out this amazing video of the sun in action. The sun was on my mind today anyway, it being so nice and cloudless outside. But days like today also cause me anxiety. I’m a fair-haired sunburn-prone type, and my dad [...]

Also filed in | Tagged antimatter, beatles, electromagnetism, fusion, george harrison, gravity, nina simone, paul simon, physics, quarks, science, space | Comments (0)

Songwriting and genealogy

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The best tool for understanding where music comes from is evolutionary biology. Songs don’t spontaneously spring into being any more than animals or plants do. They evolve, descending from reshuffled pieces of existing songs, the way our genes are shuffled together from our parents’ genes. The same way that all life has a single common [...]

Also filed in music | Tagged cassettes, dna, evolution, family, genealogy, memes, midi, music theory, originality, sample maps, sampling, sequencing, songwriting | Comments (5)

Auto-tune the cosmos

Friday, September 25, 2009

Not much context to offer on this except that I saw it on Wayne Marshall’s Twitter, it has Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, and it’s beyond delightful.

Also filed in music | Tagged autotune, carl sagan, cosmology, electronica, meditation, nerds, physics, remixes, sampling, science, space, stephen hawking, video | Comments (1)

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, hardware, math, music, 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 hardware, math, music, 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 hardware, music | 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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