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 [...]
Filed in hardware, music, software
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Also tagged analog, audio, audio editing, autotune, book, electronica, hip-hop, improvisation, looping, mashups, music, pro tools, recording, remixes, revival revival, sampling, sequencing, synths, tape, tape editing, visualization
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This PBS Independent Lens documentary on sampling culture is a good one, and you can watch the whole thing on Youtube. Their resources and links page includes my Biz Markie blog post. Thanks Beautiful Decay for posting the videos. Part one:
Filed in movies, music, software, tv
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, audio editing, beastie boys, biz markie, book, clyde stubblefield, copyright, dance, dj, eighties, george clinton, hip-hop, improvisation, james brown, jeff chang, looping, mashups, memes, michael jackson, music, pro tools, public enemy, recording, remixes, rock, sampling
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See a followup post about female remixes of “A Milli” Lil Wayne and I have some differences of style and taste: about facial tattoos, about drinking cough syrup recreationally, about jewelry on one’s teeth. But we agree about music. He brags constantly that he’s the best rapper alive. I think he makes a pretty good [...]
Filed in music
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Also tagged america, anxiety, autotune, class, cole porter, comedy, drum machines, evolution, hip-hop, improvisation, irony, kanye west, lil wayne, memes, michael jackson, minimalism, natalie portman, natural selection, recording, recursion, remixes, sampling, snl, social media, t-pain, white people
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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 [...]
Filed in autobio, hardware, math, music, science, software, video games
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Also tagged autobio, book, chiptunes, eighties, electricity, electronica, microchips, nintendo, remixes, super mario bros, video games
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The Gregory Brothers (including a sister-in-law) are musicians here in Brooklyn who have a series of videos called Auto-tune The News. Here are a selection of their better episodes as of this writing.
Filed in music, science, software, web
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Also tagged anxiety, audio editing, autotune, book, evolution, hip-hop, joe biden, katie couric, martin luther king jr, mashups, music, music theory, news, politics, pop, rnb, steven mithen, tv, youtube
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I found this picture of Herbie Hancock on some dude’s blog. There was no caption or any other context. So I posted it on my Flickr with a note asking if anyone could identify the computer Herbie is sitting in front of. A couple of days later my friend Mike responded with this video of [...]
Filed in hardware, math, music, science, software
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Also tagged book, drum machines, eighties, electronica, emotion, funk, herbie hancock, interface, jazz, keybs, music, quincy jones, sequencing, sesame street, synths
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Like this sentence, computer programs and songs can refer to themselves. Many computer programs and songs are made of loops within loops within loops. Self-reference gives computers their extreme versatility and it makes for richer, more layered music. Self-reference may also form the basis for our consciousness.
Filed in music, software
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Also tagged audio editing, book, fugees, hip-hop, looping, music, programming, recursion, remixes, sampling, self-reference
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Writing a song is a lot like writing a computer program. They both require clever management of control flow. The simplest sheet music reads as a straightforward top-to-bottom list of instructions. You start on measure one and read through to the end sequentially. That’s fine unless the music is very repetitive, which most popular music [...]
Filed in math, music, software
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Also tagged book, chameleon, computer evolution, computer science, electronica, fractals, herbie hancock, improvisation, james brown, looping, mandelbrot, math, music, music notation, programming, recursion, visualization
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When you grow up playing video games, like I did, the primitiveness of office software user interface design comes as a shock. The desktop metaphor was a brilliant stroke back in 1970 when they thought it up at Xerox PARC, but I feel like it has outlived its usefulness. User interfaces are the first line [...]
Why do computers crash? What can you do about it? It’s very rare for your computer to physically break. Most of the routine glitches you experience happen at the software level, as different running programs compete for your computer’s finite memory resources. To understand and hopefully avoid crashes, it first helps to know a little [...]
