I just completed a batch of new music, which was improvised freely in the studio and then later shaped into structured tracks. https://soundcloud.com/ethanhein/sets/tabla-breakbeat-science I thought it would be helpful to document the process behind this music, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I expect to be teaching this kind of production a lot …
Continue reading “Composing improvisationally with Ableton Live”
There’s an interview on the Creative Commons blog with Disquiet Junto instigator and Aphex Twin historian Marc Weidenbaum. It’s full of his usual keen insight. Here are some key quotes.
This post was originally written for the Play With Your Music blog. Also be sure to check out our interview with engineer Kevin Killen and drummer Jerry Marotta. Peter Gabriel’s songwriting and recording process in the early 1980s was unusual for its technological sophistication, playfulness and reliance on improvisation. While Peter was considered avant-garde back …
My new studio band has an album nearing completion. It’s called Music Information Retrieval, because our studio time was sponsored by NYU’s Music and Audio Research Lab — we contributed to a database of multitracks that will be used for music informatics research. We made our DJ debut over the weekend at the Rubin Museum, …
Continue reading “Tabla Breakbeat Science is dropping an album”
As we continue to flesh out the video content for Play With Your Music, I put together this series on rhythm.
Maybe, like me, you’re a fan of “Super Rich Kids” by Frank Ocean featuring Earl Sweatshirt. Maybe, like me, you were especially delighted by the part at 1:59, when Frank unexpectedly quotes “Real Love” by Mary J. Blige. A “record label” (really a group of lawyers) called TufAmerica heard that quote too, and now they’re …
Continue reading “TufAmerica suing Frank Ocean is ridiculous”
I was looking at a collection of perfectly looped gifs on Buzzfeed and thinking about how they remind me of sample-based electronic music. In both cases, you’re taking a piece of a linear recording and making it cyclical. Do it wrong and it’s extremely irritating. Do it right and it’s mesmerizing. I’ve given a lot …
This is the fifth in a series of posts documenting the development of Play With Your Music, a music production MOOC jointly presented by P2PU, NYU and MIT. See also the first, second, third and fourth posts. Soundation uses the same basic interface paradigm as other audio recording and editing programs like Pro Tools and …
Continue reading “Teaching audio and MIDI editing in the MOOC”
Update: we’re working on an album. Listen to it here. Last semester I did a project for my psychology of music class that studied the way people clap to funk/dance music. I was testing to see whether my subjects knew to clap on the backbeats or not. I didn’t give them any prompting as to …
Because I’m old and out of touch, most of these are pre-2012 songs that were new to me this year. Nas — “The World Is Yours” In 1994 I was not paying attention to hip-hop at all. My loss. Blackalicious — “Swan Lake” More vintage 1994 hip-hop. Samples three different cover versions of the Stylistics’ …
