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Tag Archives: pro tools

What does live music mean in the laptop era?

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

This weekend my electronica band Revival Revival is doing some shows for the first time in many months. We’ll be doing a lot of what my non-electronic-musician friends consider to be cheating. The lead vocals and guitar will be live, as will some of the synths. Everything else will be canned, recordings played back from [...]

Filed in autobio, hardware, music, software | Also tagged authenticity, electronica, guitar, improvisation, lionel richie, michael jackson, midi, miles davis, pop, reason, remixes, revival revival, songwriting | Comments (0)

Inside the recording process

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 | Also tagged analog, audio, audio editing, autotune, book, computers, electronica, hip-hop, improvisation, looping, mashups, music, recording, remixes, revival revival, sampling, sequencing, synths, tape, tape editing, visualization | Comments (2)

Copyright Criminals

Monday, January 25, 2010

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 | Also tagged a tribe called quest, audio editing, beastie boys, biz markie, book, clyde stubblefield, computers, copyright, dance, dj, eighties, george clinton, hip-hop, improvisation, james brown, jeff chang, looping, mashups, memes, michael jackson, music, public enemy, recording, remixes, rock, sampling | Comments (1)

How we wrote this song

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Boys And Dance Floors [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Revival Revival vs Janet Jackson mp3 download, ipod format download Right-click or option click the links to save the track to your computer. There are as many different ways of writing songs as there are songwriters. Barbara Singer and I have arrived at a [...]

Filed in autobio, music, software | Also tagged autotune, composing, improvisation, janet jackson, looping, production, reason, recording, remixes, revival revival, sampling, songwriting | Comments (0)

Janet (Ms Jackson if you’re nasty)

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Here’s my remix of Janet Jackson’s “Nasty” featuring Barbara Singer, Nicole Bishop and Candida Haynes. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] mp3 download, ipod format download Janet has been on my mind a lot the past few months, what with Michael, and I was driven to go listen to Control again.

Filed in music | Also tagged candida haynes, drum machines, eighties, erykah badu, janet jackson, jimmy jam, joni mitchell, mashups, michael jackson, new jack swing, nicole bishop, prince, production, q-tip, remixes, revival revival, sampling, terry lewis | Comments (2)

Björk thought she could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of her

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Björk knows how to balance the coldness of electronic production with hotly unpredictable vocals and instrument textures. Her approach is eccentric and her sound gets on some people’s nerves. It took me a couple years to be convinced by her. I’m glad I hung in there, because she’s been one of my best teachers in [...]

Filed in music | Also tagged audio editing, bjork, book, depression, electronica, hipster, iceland, interface, lord of the rings, missy elliot, recording, remixes, sampling, sequencing, timbaland, tolkien | Comments (5)

Loop mode: improvisation is composition is recording

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Before digital recording media, recording artists faced a tradeoff between spontaneity and perfection. Recording take after take until the performances are spotless can quickly suck the joy and energy out of the music. But the kind of sloppiness that goes unnoticed in a live performance can get on your nerves after many repeated listens. It’s [...]

Filed in music, software | Also tagged audio editing, beatles, book, composing, gnarls barkley, hip-hop, kind of blue, looping, michael jackson, miles davis, music, psychology, recording, thriller | Comments (2)

Is clock time oppressive or liberating? Yes.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

We take clocks so much for granted that it’s easy to forget how radical and recent a development they are. It wasn’t so long ago that clocks had to be painstakingly assembled by hand one at a time. Accurate timekeeping on the order of fractions of a second is a heroic engineering undertaking if you’re [...]

Filed in music, science | Also tagged audience participation, book, clocks, coltrane, drumming, evolution, music, quantum, rhythm, rubato, steven mithen, time | Comments (0)

Mashups as micro-mixtapes

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Back in 1966, Glenn Gould predicted that recorded music would become an interactive conversation between musician and listener. He described dial twiddling as “an interpretive act.” He was wrong about the dials, but right about the main point, that technology would make listening to music more like making music. Anybody with iTunes instantly becomes a [...]

Filed in music | Also tagged book, dave brubeck, dj, dj earworm, django reinhardt, double dee and steinski, electronica, fan art, fugees, funk, girl talk, glenn gould, grandmaster flash, green lantern, hip-hop, jonathan lethem, kelis, ludacris, mashups, memes, michael jackson, mixtapes, mozart, nas, paul simon, pop, radiohead, recursion, remixes, sample maps, sampling, sasha frere-jones, wayne marshall, youtube | Comments (8)

Learning music theory with Auto-tune

Monday, May 4, 2009

Auto-tune makes producing music easier. It can also make understanding music theory easier. The way you dial up different keys and scales doesn’t just guide your ear, it also guides your eye. Your voice can produce a smooth continuum of pitches. To sing, you eliminate most of those possibilities, vibrating your mouth and throat only [...]

Filed in math, music, software | Also tagged audio, autotune, binary, book, coltrane, electronica, harmony, hip-hop, informationtheory, kanye west, lil wayne, math, music, music theory | Comments (6)

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