For his birthday, Milo got a book called Welcome to the Symphony by Carolyn Sloan. We finally got around to showing it to him recently, and now he’s totally obsessed. The book has buttons along the side which you can press to hear little audio samples. They include each orchestra instrument playing a short Beethoven …
Category Archives: Interfaces
Inside the aQWERTYon
Update: try the Theory aQWERTYon! The MusEDLab and Soundfly just launched Theory For Producers, an interactive music theory course. The centerpiece of the interactive component is a MusEDLab tool called the aQWERTYon. You can try it by clicking the image below. (You need to use Chrome.) In this post, I’ll talk about why and how we developed the …
Here’s what’s cooking with the NYU MusEDLab
I’m a proud member of the NYU Music Experience Design Lab, a research group that crosses the disciplines of music education, technology, and design. Here’s an overview of our many ongoing projects.
User interface case study: Patterning
The folks at Olympia Noise Co recently came out with a new circular drum machine for iOS called Patterning, and it’s pretty fabulous. The app’s futuristic look jumps right out at you: flat-colored geometric shapes with zero adornment, in the spirit of Propellerhead Figure. There’s nothing on the screen that doesn’t function in some way. It’s a …
Prototyping Play With Your Music: Theory
I’m part of a research group at NYU called the Music Experience Design Lab. One of our projects is called Play With Your Music, a series of online interactive music courses. We’re currently developing the latest iteration, called Play With Your Music: Theory. Each module presents a “musical simple,” a short and memorable loop of …
Circular rhythm visualization talk at Spotify
Today I got to talk about rhythm visualization in general and the Groove Pizza in particular at the Spotify Monthly Music Hackathon. Click the image to see my talk, I start at 1:23:47. Here are my slides: Circular rhythm visualizations from Ethan Hein Want me to come to your school, company, meetup or whatever, and …
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The harmonica explains all of Western music
If you want to understand the vast cultural struggle taking place in the study of Western harmony, you could do worse than to start with the harmonica. This unassuming little instrument was designed in central Europe in the 19th century to play the popular music of that time and place: waltzes, oom-pah music, and light …
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Rhythm Necklace
I have a thing for circular rhythm visualizations. So I was naturally pretty excited to learn that Meara O’Reilly and Sam Tarakajian were making an app inspired by the circular drum pattern analyses of Godfried Toussaint, who helped me understand mathematically why son clave is so awesome. The app is called Rhythm Necklace, and I …
Mobile music app recommendations
Phones and tablets have rich potential as musical instruments. Here’s my list of interesting music apps. The iOS apps are ones that I’ve personally used and enjoyed. I haven’t tried most of the Android ones, but they were recommended by people whose opinions I trust.
Booking me for workshops
I want to expand my private teaching and speaking practice. If you were to book me for a workshop or seminar, what would you want it to be about? Music production? Intellectual property and authorship? Music and math? Music and science? Music pedagogy? Improvisation and flow, both in music and in life generally? Something else? …