Alan Blackwell and Nick Collins. The Programming Language as a Musical Instrument. In P. Romero, J. Good, E. Acosta Chaparro & S. Bryant (Eds). Proc. PPIG 17, pp. 120-130. Any musician who wants to be competent with digital production tools has to take on qualities of a programmer. Music notation is itself a “programming language” [...]
I wrote a general post about what makes a hot beat hot. As a followup, here’s how to program some generic patterns and a few famous breakbeats. The basic unit of dance music is a sequence of sixteen eighth notes, two measures of four-four time. Drum machines like the Roland TR-808 represent the sixteen eighth [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Software
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Also tagged dance, drum machines, drumming, funky drummer, hip-hop, hone, honey drippers, james brown, led zeppelin, looping, rhythm, rock, time
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This is a picture of my electronic funk-soul-R&B band doing a show. From left to right, it’s Nicole Bishop, me and Barbara Singer. We were the whole band for that show. I did all the beats, samples and keyboards from my computer using a video game controller. Here’s a screenshot of the program that the [...]
Filed in Autobio, Hardware, Improvisation, Interfaces, Music, Software, Video Games
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Also tagged composing, electronica, hip-hop, Improvisation, interface, keybs, mapping, max/msp, midi, reason, Sampling, sequencing, synths, Video Games
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Here’s a more specific post on programming various well-known beats. The brain is a pattern recognition machine. We like repetition and symmetry. But we only like it up to a point. Once we’ve recognized and memorized the pattern, we get bored and stop paying attention. If the pattern changes or breaks, it grabs our attention [...]
Filed in Composition, Music, Music Teaching
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Also tagged dance, drum machines, drumming, electronica, hip-hop, looping, meditation, Music, questlove, recursion, repetition, rhythm, time
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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. It also makes for richer, more interesting music.
Filed in Composition, Music, Software
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Also tagged audio editing, computers, fugees, hip-hop, looping, Music, 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 loops and 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 [...]
Filed in Composition, Math, Music, Software
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Also tagged chameleon, computer science, computers, electronica, fractals, herbie hancock, Improvisation, james brown, looping, mandelbrot, Math, Music, music notation, recursion, visualization
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“The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two” by James Brown and the JBs is one of the most-sampled recordings in history. “The Funky Drummer” is a cornerstone of hip-hop and other sample-based electronic music, but for the first decade after its release it was an obscure tune. It’s a nice groove, but as a song, [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Evolution, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged algorithms, audio editing, black thought, copyright, digging the crates, eminem, freestyle, funk, funky drummer, godel, hip-hop, james brown, looping, memes, mos def, Music, recursion, remixes, rnb, Sampling, soul, susan blackmore
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