How Infrastructure Works

Deb Chachra, one of the smartest people I have ever had the pleasure to meet, has a new book out. You should read it!

It’s not directly related to the subject of this blog but, hey, it’s my blog, I can write about whatever I want. Besides, it’s Thanksgiving, and what better thing to be thankful for than functioning water, power, sewage, roads, transit and communication systems? (To the extent that those things function in the US – looking at you, public transit systems.) An alternate title for the book could be “What Infrastructure Means”. Another could be “move slow and fix things.” You can get a taste of it in this Guardian article that Deb wrote about Electric Mountain.

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Artificial intelligence in music

We are kicking off my Musical Borrowing class at the New School with a discussion of artificial intelligence in music. I decided to start here because 1) we are covering concepts in reverse chronological order; 2) the students are going to want to talk about it anyway; and 3) this is the least interesting topic of the course for me personally, so I’d prefer to get it out of the way. To get everybody oriented, I assigned this mostly optimistic take on AI music from Ableton’s web site. Then we did some in-class listening and discussion.

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Technology in Music Education – updated syllabus

This fall, I am teaching Technology in Music Education at Western Illinois University. The students are in-service music teachers who are working toward masters degrees. Here’s my syllabus.

I have left out administrative details and university boilerplate. Feel free to use any of this as you see fit, but if you do, please tell me, I’m always interested to hear.

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What is the difference between analog and digital recording?

All microphones are analog. They convert pressure waves in the air into electricity. Pressure waves in the air vibrate a little piece of metal, and that generates a fluctuating electrical current. Different kinds of mics have different specific ways of doing this. In dynamic mics, the air vibrates a magnet. This magnet is wrapped in wire, and its motion produces a current in the wire. In condenser mics, the air vibrates a metal plate that’s part of a capacitor with an electrical current already flowing through it. As the plate moves, it blocks or admits more of the current, making the current fluctuate. There are other kinds of mics with other physical setups, but they all do the same thing: they send out an electrical current whose fluctuations match (are an analog for) the fluctuations of air pressure.

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The microphone placement playlist

Last week in music tech class, we talked about audio recording, and how the placement of microphones relative to the voices or instruments can shape the sound of a recording. Mics don’t just pick up the sound of the voice or instrument itself. They also pick up the sound of the voice or instrument bouncing off the walls, floor, and ceiling. Depending on where the mic is relative to the sound source, it might pick up more direct sound or more indirect sound. The specific blend tells the listener a lot about the environment that the sound was recorded in, and carries information about style and genre too. 

Here’s a highly simplified diagram of sound in an environment. The solid line represents direct sound, pressure waves going straight from the guitar into your ear. The dotted lines are indirect sound, pressure waves that bounce off the walls, floor and ceiling before reaching your ear.

In a recording, microphones are a stand-in for your ears, receiving pressure waves and converting them into electrical fluctuations. If the mic is close to the sound source, it will mostly pick up direct sound. If the mic is far away from the sound source, it will mostly pick up indirect sound. 

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Warp factor

In this post, I dig into a profound and under-appreciated expressive feature of Ableton Live: warp markers, the “handles” that enable you to grab hold of audio and stretch it precisely. Warp markers have practical applications for getting your grooves sounding the way you want, but they also open up unexpected windows into the nature of musical time itself.

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Technology Trends in Music Education

This semester, I am teaching Technology Trends in Music Education at NYU Steinhardt for the first time. The class was originally developed by my doctoral advisor, Alex Ruthmann. I took it as a masters student, and the experience was critical to the eventual development of the Groove Pizza. So you can understand why I am excited to be teaching it. My syllabus is below. I expect it to evolve a bit as the course goes on, especially toward the end of the semester as I adapt it to the needs and interests of the students. The reading list draws extensively on the same body of research and practice that informed Will Kuhn’s and my book Electronic Music School: a Contemporary Approach to Teaching Musical Creativity.

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