I’ve toyed around with several iPhone and iPad music apps. Many are intriguing and fun, but few have inspired me into making “real” music. In preparation for the next Disquiet Junto project, I downloaded Nodebeat and tried some improvisation. I like the result: The app combines randomness and control in an intriguing way. I [...]
Filed in Composition, Hardware, Improvisation, Interfaces, Music, Software, Video Games
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Also tagged animoog, Composition, electronica, figure, Improvisation, ios, ipad, nodebeat, random, touch
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I’m doing a ton of writing for grad school, and will be posting the highlights here. First off, an abstract and discussion of this article: Katie Wilkie, Simon Holland, and Paul Mulholland. Winter, 2010. What Can The Language Of Musicians Tell Us About Music Interaction Design? Computer Music Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4, Pages 34-48 [...]
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Rather than attempting the impossible task of explaining how everything in jazz works, I’m going to pick a specific, fairly mainstream tune and talk you through it: “Someday My Prince Will Come” by Miles Davis, off the 1961 album by the same name. First of all, here’s the original version from Snow White. Once you’ve [...]
Filed in Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music
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Also tagged disney, hank mobley, Improvisation, jazz, jimmy cobb, john coltrane, linkedin, miles davis, movies, paul chambers, quora, wynton kelly
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Auto-tune was already a well-established studio tool by the time “Believe” came out, though it was unknown outside the music industry.
Filed in Music, Recording, Software
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Also tagged autotune, cher, dance, electronica, pop, posthuman, quora, Recording, Software
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Friday, December 16, 2011
A musical pitch is a blend of many different frequencies beside the fundamental. Here’s a visualization of the different vibrational modes of an ideal string. The string’s movements are the sum of all these different modes simultaneously.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
John: “Instant Karma” I’d put “Oh Yoko” up there too. “Imagine” has a gorgeous melody, but the lyrics are like something an eighth grader would write.
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, classical, condoleeza rice, harry truman, jazz, john ashcroft, mike huckabee, 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, classical, cliches, digging the crates, Evolution, facebook, freddie hubbard, grant green, Improvisation, jazz, john coltrane, memes, miles davis, player, pop, reggae, rock, santana, stravinsky
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
The best remix/mashup tool that I’ve used is Ableton Live. For many years I used a combination of Recycle, Reason and Pro Tools, which was cumbersome and labor-intensive. Ableton handles the same tasks more easily and has a bunch of cool effects the other programs don’t.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
When you do computer-based music production and composition, you’re working as much with your eyes as you are with your ears. It’s only natural to start wondering about other music visualization systems. The representations in audio editors like Pro Tools and Ableton Live are purely informational, waveforms and grids and linear graphs. Some visualization systems [...]
Filed in Composition, Interfaces, Math, Music, Music Theory, Software, Visual art
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Also tagged bjork, euler, funky drummer, interfaces, linkedin, looping, melodyne, music notation, networks, notation, reason, Recording, recycle, roger penrose, topology, visualization
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