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Tag Archives: dance

The radial drum machine: background and inspiration

My NYU masters thesis is a drum programming tutorial system for beginner musicians. It uses a novel circular interface for displaying the drum patterns. This presentation explains the project’s goals, motivations and scholarly background. If you prefer, see it on Slideshare.

The backbeat: a literature review

This is part of a research project I’m doing for my Psychology of Music class at NYU, thus the formal tone. The backbeat is a ubiquitous, almost defining feature of American popular and vernacular music. Clapping or snapping on the backbeats is generally considered by musicians to be more correct than doing so on the [...]

My thesis proposal

For those of you curious about what I’m up to in grad school, this is the big thing. Pardon the stilted language, but, you know, academia. See the slideshow! Title The Drum Loop: a Self-Guided Tutorial System for Programming Dance Rhythms Introduction Dance music production software has never been more accessible. However, even “beginner-oriented” programs [...]

User Interface Design for Music Learning Software

Computers have revolutionized the composition, production and recording of music. However, they have not yet revolutionized music education. While a great deal of educational software exists, it mostly follows traditional teaching paradigms, offering ear training, flash cards and the like. Meanwhile, nearly all popular music is produced in part or in whole with software, yet [...]

The Schizophonia of David Byrne, Brian Eno and The Orb

For Paul Geluso’s Advanced Audio Production midterm, we were assigned to choose two tracks from his recommended listening list, and compare and contrast them sonically. I chose “Regiment” by David Byrne and Brian Eno, and “Little Fluffy Clouds” by The Orb. Recorded ten years apart using very different technology, both tracks nevertheless share a similar [...]

Visualizing song structures

There’s no single standard method for notating pop, rock and dance songs. Some musicians write everything out in standard western notation; some don’t write anything down at all; many fall somewhere in between. One such compromise system in widespread use is the lead sheet: Other systems for song documentation include chord charts and the Nashville [...]

Dreaming of a masters thesis

Update: see a more formal draft of my thesis proposal. For my NYU masters thesis in Music Technology, I’m designing a beginner-oriented music learning app for the iPad and similar devices. It will approach music the way I wish I had been taught it, and the way I’ve been teaching it to my private students. [...]

The post-fidelity era

Guberman, Daniel. Post-Fidelity: A New Age of Music Consumption and Technological Innovation. Journal of Popular Music Studies, Volume 23, Issue 4, pp 431–454 Guberman divides the history of recorded music into two distinct sections: the fidelity era, stretching from Thomas Edison through the invention of the compact disk, and the post-fidelity era, beginning with the [...]

That ill tight sound

Chapman, Dale. “That Ill, Tight Sound”: Telepresence and Biopolitics in Post-Timbaland Rap Production. Journal of the Society for American Music (2008) Volume 2, Number 2, pp. 155–175. Chapman examines the impact that Timbaland has had on popular music production, and what his significance is to the broader culture. While Timbaland himself is no longer the [...]

How did Cher’s “Believe” come to be the first pop song to use Auto-Tune?

Auto-tune was already a well-established studio tool by the time “Believe” came out, though it was unknown outside the music industry.