Update: we have implemented these changes to the aQWERTYon, try them here Try the scale wheel visualization here The MusEDLab will soon be launching a revamped version of the aQWERTYon with some enhancements to its visual design, including a new scale picker. Beyond our desire to make our stuff look cooler, the scale picker represents a …
Continue reading “The aQWERTYon pitch wheels and the future of music theory visualization”
I have started working with a startup called Musicto, which creates playlists curated by humans around particular themes. For example: music to grieve to, music to clean house to, music to fight evil. My first playlist is music to sing your hipster baby to sleep. These are songs I have been singing to my kids, and that …
The good people at Noteflight have started doing weekly challenges. I love constraint-based music prompts, like the ones in the Disquiet Junto, so I thought I would try this one: compose a piece of music using only four notes. The music side of this wasn’t hard. My material tends not to use that many pitches …
Ableton recently launched a delightful web site that teaches the basics of beatmaking, production and music theory using elegant interactives. If you’re interested in music education, creation, or user experience design, you owe it to yourself to try it out.
I’m currently working on a book chapter about the Disquiet Junto, the internet’s most innovative creative music community, run by author and blogging inspiration Marc Weidenbaum. As part of my research, I conducted a survey of the Junto mailing list. Here’s a summary of the first 130 responses.
Final paper for Principles of Empirical Research with Catherine Voulgarides Research questions Jamie Ehrenfeld is a colleague of mine in the NYU Music Experience Design Lab. She graduated from NYU’s music education program, and now teaches music at Eagle Academy in Brownsville. Like many members of the lab, she straddles musical worlds, bringing her training in …
This post documents my final project for User Experience Design with June Ahn Overview of the problem The aQWERTYon is a web-based music performance and theory learning interface designed by the NYU Music Experience Design Lab. The name is a play on “QWERTY accordion.” The aQWERTYon invites novices to improvise and compose using a variety of …
Continue reading “Designing a more welcoming aQWERTYon experience”
Since its launch, you’ve been able to export your Groove Pizza beats as WAV files, or continue working on them in Soundtrap. But now, thanks to MusEDLab developer Jordana Bombi, you can also save your beats as MIDI files as well. You can bring these MIDI files into your music production software tool of choice: Ableton Live, Logic, …
For Jan Plass‘ class on research in games for learning, I’m working on an experiment testing the effects of game soundtracks on cognitive performance. The game in question is All You Can ET, developed by the NYU CREATE Lab. Here’s the music: https://soundcloud.com/ethanhein/all-you-can-et-soundtrack You’re hearing four versions of the basic 32-bar loop: fast major, fast minor, slow …
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There are a lot of audio file formats. Here are the ones you encounter most commonly. Analog formats Recorded sound consists of fluctuations in electrical current coming off of a microphone or mixing desk. Before computers, you translated that current into tiny smooth wiggles in the shape of the groove cut into a vinyl record, or …
