The seminar I’ve been taking with Morton Subotnick is sadly drawing to a close. As part of the end of the semester, we were invited to Professor Subotnick’s home studio, a few blocks from NYU, to get a demonstration of the setup he uses in performances.
Filed in Composition, Hardware, Improvisation, Interfaces, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged ableton, avant-garde, buchla, Composition, electronica, experimental, Improvisation, midi, morton subotnick, nyu
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This post is longer and more formal than usual because it was my term paper for a class in the NYU Music Technology Program. Questions of authorship, ownership and originality surround all forms of music (and, indeed, all creative undertakings.) Nowhere are these questions more acute or more challenging than in digital music, where it [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Key Musicians, Music, Music Business, Politics, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged ableton, afrika bambaataa, amazing grace, amen break, authenticity, bach, beatles, beyonce, biz markie, brian eno, compulsory licensing, copyright, danger mouse, david shields, dj, dj earworm, dj premier, double dee and steinski, entropy, Evolution, fairlight cmi, fugees, girl talk, grandmaster flash, harold bloom, hip-hop, informationtheory, jay-z, jesse walker, john coltrane, jonathan lethem, linkedin, looping, marcus boon, mashups, memes, midi, missy elliot, mohawks, nas, nyu, originality, plato, plunderphonics, questlove, reason, Recording, remixes, richard dawkins, Sampling, sasha frere-jones, stravinsky, susan blackmore, theodor adorno, walter benjamin, william gibson
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Here’s an email conversation I’ve been having with my friend Greg Brown about Kanye West’s recent albums. Greg is a classical composer and performer with a much more avant-garde sensibility than mine. The exchange is lightly edited for clarity. Greg: I’ve been listening to 808s and Heartbreak and Twisted Fantasy. I’m really enjoying them. Far [...]
Filed in Emotion, Key Musicians, Music, Recording, Software
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Also tagged 808, 808s and heartbreak, autotune, distortion, fiona apple, frank ocean, hip-hop, jay-z, john adams, kanye west, pop, posthuman, rnb, Sampling, singing, soul, watch the throne
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Steven R. Livingstone, Ralf Muhlberger, Andrew R. Brown, and William F. Thompson. Changing Musical Emotion: A Computational Rule System for Modifying Score and Performance. Computer Music Journal, 34:1, pp. 41–64, Spring 2010. The authors present CMERS, “a Computational Music Emotion Rule System for the real-time control of musical emotion that modifies features at both the [...]
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The mind constantly works to find tonal centers in any music. The best atonal music is really just very complex tonal music, challenging our ability to get our harmonic bearings without totally overwhelming us. Music that strikes the right balance between predictable, functional harmony and randomness is the stuff that people find exciting; the unexpected [...]
Several US presidents and other prominent politicians have also been musicians. Here are some highlights. Harry Truman played classical piano.
Filed in Music, Politics
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Also tagged alan greenspan, america, bill clinton, condoleeza rice, harry truman, jazz, john ashcroft, mike huckabee, Music, Politics, presidents, richard nixon, rock
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Thursday, November 17, 2011
There’s a certain jazz lick that’s so heavily used that it’s just known as The Lick. It’s the only jazz lick I know of that has its own Facebook page. Here’s a greatest hits compilation:
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged akon, bobby hutcherson, cliches, digging the crates, Evolution, facebook, freddie hubbard, grant green, Improvisation, jazz, john coltrane, memes, miles davis, Music, player, pop, reggae, rock, santana, stravinsky
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Monday, November 14, 2011
For my tastes, you can’t beat the Ellington Nutcracker. Ellington’s Peer Gynt suite is also pretty wonderful. This one has inspired some remixing from me.
Filed in Music
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Also tagged aaron copland, chick corea, django reinhardt, duke ellington, eumir deodato, jazz, john coltrane, oliver nelson, quora, remixes, sibelius, uri caine, wayne shorter
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It’s hard to figure out what key a piece of music is in. There are a lot of conflicting answers from different music theory texts. To make matters worse, it’s not at all unusual for a song to change keys, even within a section or phrase. Even rock songs written by totally naive songwriters can [...]
Filed in Music, Music Theory
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Also tagged blues, hall and oates, harmonic minor, jazz, keys, major scale, melodic minor, Music Theory, pop, rock, scales
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Today is the Fourth of July, and I can’t think of anything more patriotic than a post about our most significant contribution to world musical culture: swing. The title of this post refers to the classic Duke Ellington tune, sung here by Ray Nance. Check out the “yah yah” trombone by Tricky Sam Nanton. The [...]
Filed in Dance, Emotion, Music, Music Teaching
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Also tagged america, charles mingus, count basie, drum machines, duke ellington, ella fitzgerald, funk, hip-hop, janet jackson, jazz, louis armstrong, ray nance, rhythm, soul, swing, syncopation, tchaikovsky, time, tricky sam nanton
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