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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Here is a web based music education tool that I wish existed

It is awesome that you can embed interactive Noteflight scores in a web page, like so:

But for optimal music education results, I also want to be able to show that same example in MIDI piano roll view too. Imagine if the Noteflight embed included a pane that showed this:

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Deep dive into the Bach Chaconne

You can now read this post in Spanish on Deviolines

I have been spending much of my free time during the pandemic learning how to play the Bach Chaconne on guitar, drawing heavily on Rodolfo Betancourt’s transcription. Here’s Christopher Parkening doing my favorite interpretation by a guitarist (I do not sound remotely like this):

This journey has been one long reward for the obsessive-compulsive side of my personality. As of this writing, I can stumble through the whole piece, and can get through the first half in a way that sounds almost musical. If you want to try too, here’s a violin score. Also, here are measures 81 through 117 of the Chaconne from Bach’s manuscript:

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Brandon Bennett interview remix – What is hip-hop education?

For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. Here I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Brandon Bennett that I recorded on September 22, 2020 in Washington Square Park. The remix is made from the twenty most interesting/pertinent/relevant minutes of several hours of conversation.

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Online music teaching resources

This is my curated collection of online music teaching, learning and creation resources. Use in good health.

Big collections:

A spreadsheet of online music theory resources and projects, plus my New School syllabus that uses many of these things.

A spreadsheet of online music technology resources and projects.

The NYSSMA Best Practices Database.

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Announcing the Theory aQWERTYon

A few years ago, the NYU Music Experience Design Lab launched a web application called the aQWERTYon. The name is short for “QWERTY accordion.” The idea is to make it as easy to play music on the computer keyboard as it is with the chord buttons on an accordion. The aQWERTYon maps scales to the keyboard so that there are no “wrong notes,” and so that each column of keys plays a chord. Yesterday, we launched a new version of the app, the Theory aQWERTYon. It visualizes the notes you’re playing on the chromatic circle in real time. Click the image to try it! (Be sure to whitelist it on your ad blocker or it won’t work.)

Theory aQWERTYon

In addition to playing the built-in instruments, you can also use the aQWERTYon as a MIDI controller for any DAW or notation program. Just set the input to the IAC bus (Windows users will need to install MidiOX before this will work.)

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The Groove Pizzeria

For his NYU music technology masters thesis, Tyler Bisson created a web app called Groove Pizzeria, a polyrhythmic/polymetric extension of the Groove Pizza. Click the image to try it for yourself.

Note that the Groove Pizzeria is still a prototype, and it doesn’t yet have the full feature set that the Groove Pizza does. As of this writing, there are no presets, saving, or exporting of audio or MIDI. However, you can send MIDI via the IAC bus to the DAW of your choice (Mac OS Chrome only). You can also record the Groove Pizzeria’s output using Audio Hijack.

Like the Groove Pizza, the Groove Pizzeria is based on the idea of the rhythm necklace, a circular representation of musical rhythm. The Groove Pizza is a set of three concentric rhythm necklaces, each of which controls one drum sound, e.g. kick, snare and hi-hat. The Groove Pizzeria gives you two sets of concentric rhythm necklaces, each of which can have its own time duration and subdivisions. This means that you can use the Groove Pizzeria to make polyrhythm and polymeter.

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Samuel Halligan’s awesome Pop-Up Piano for Ableton Live

I recently met a gentleman named Samuel Halligan, who, among other things, makes music education utilities using Max For Live. One of them is called Pop-Up Piano. If you use Max or Ableton and you could use some help learning music theory, you should go and download it immediately. It’s a Max For Live Device that you can place on any MIDI track in Ableton, or just open as a Max standalone. The concept is simple: as you play notes on a MIDI controller, or as MIDI plays back from a clip, the Pop Up Piano shows you the note names, and notates them on the staff. It also shows them on a cool pitch wheel. You can also set a particular key and scale, and then the Pop Up Piano will show you whether the notes you’re playing fall within that scale.

Samuel made this thing to help pianists navigate the Ableton Push. But I could see this being useful for any musician. I’m going to use it in my intro-level music theory course that I’m teaching at the New School this fall. I’d be interested to hear from any theory pedagogues out there how you would structure lessons or assignments around this tool. Continue reading