Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Here’s a graphic I did for my company Spork Media explaining how an ideal social media setup for a restaurant. Click through for a detailed explanation. Who doesn’t love flowcharts?
Following up and expanding on a post about learning music theory with Auto-tune. So maybe you want to write a song or an instrumental in a particular mood or style, and you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the scales. Here’s a handy guide to the commonly used scales in western pop, rock, jazz, blues and so [...]
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, computers, electronica, hip-hop, improvisation, looping, mashups, music, pro tools, recording, remixes, revival revival, sampling, sequencing, synths, tape, tape editing
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The most sampled recording in history is (probably) the Funky Drummer loop from James Brown’s song “The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two.” Here I go deeper into how this sample can be reworked into new music. DJs call this practice chopping a sample. It’s much easier to chop samples with computers than with hardware [...]
Filed in music, software
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Also tagged dna, electronica, evolution, funk, funky drummer, hip-hop, james brown, memes, midi, mutation, recursion, recycle, remixes, sampling, sequencing, songwriting
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Turntablists use record players to play records in ways they weren’t meant to be played. By speeding up, slowing down and reversing the record under the needle, a whole universe of new sounds becomes possible. The record player as musical instrument is still in its early stages of development. DJs already invented the instrumental sound [...]
Filed in music
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, afrika bambaataa, apache, book, dj, dj premier, funky drummer, grand mixer dst, grandmaster flash, herbie hancock, hip-hop, improvisation, looping, mashups, music notation, peter piper, rahzel, remixes, rhythm, rockit, run-dmc, sampling, scratch, turntablism, wu-tang
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Saturday, September 12, 2009
Over the weekend we stayed with Anna’s sister Joanna, her husband Chris and their adorable new baby Lucas. Chris and I spent some of the time talking about electronic music and the internet. He’s a social media professional and a music fan but not a musician, and it was cool to hear his perspective on [...]
Filed in music, software, web
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Also tagged book, daft punk, delicious, design, drum machines, electronica, fun, interface, internet, inudge, minimalism, multitracking, reason, remixes, sequencing, social media, tenori-on, toys, web browser
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Thursday, August 13, 2009
Here’s one of my favorite bits of South Park.
Filed in music, video games
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Also tagged america, beatles, book, dance, electronica, gender, guitar hero, masculinity, recording, remixes, rock, rock band, simulation, south park, video games
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It’s no accident that music and games share the verb “to play.” Both music and games are semi-structured forms of social learning. As far as I’m concerned, the most exciting thing happening in the video game world is the explosion of music-based games like Dance Dance Revolution.
Filed in music, software, video games
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Also tagged book, dance, ddr, guitar hero, improvisation, japan, jazz, king of the hill, miles davis, music, music notation, video games
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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, computers, electronica, fractals, herbie hancock, improvisation, james brown, looping, mandelbrot, math, music, music notation, programming, recursion
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In high school science class, you probably saw a picture of an atom that looked like this: The picture shows a stylized atom, a nucleus with red protons and blue neutrons, surrounded by three grey electrons. It’s an attractive and iconic image, and it would make a great logo. It’s also misleading, and in some [...]
Filed in math, music, science
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Also tagged book, electromagnetism, guitar, harmonics, harmony, math, molecules, music, music theory, overtones, physics, quantum, resonance, science, spin, strings, vibration
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