Tabla Breakbeat Science is dropping an album

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, …

Video production is hard but fun

I’ve been producing a bunch of new videos for future iterations of Play With Your Music, with the help of the good people at the NYU Blended Learning Lab. So far, we’ve done two sets. There’s a series of tutorials on producing samples, beats and melodies using the in-browser digital audio workstation Soundation:

The Groove Pizza

Update: this post is out of date. See the current Groove Pizza here. Walking to the subway this morning, I had a bright idea for how to make the Drum Loop more kid-friendly by representing the radial grid as a pizza. Here’s a very quick concept sketch: To really make this work, I wouldn’t just …

Reflections on the MOOC

This week marks the conclusion of the first iteration of Play With Your Music, the music production MOOC I’ve been contributing to this past semester. Creating and running the MOOC has been a learning experience for everybody involved. It certainly has been for me. I do most of my music teaching one on one, and …

Thesis presentation

Here’s the presentation I’ll be giving of my masters thesis next week, enjoy.

My masters thesis is done

You can read it here on the blog or as a PDF.

My collection of transcribed rhythm patterns

For my thesis, I’ve been gathering good drum machine patterns: classic breakbeats, genre templates and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Here they are, enjoy.

Teaching audio and MIDI editing in the MOOC

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 …

Teaching expressive use of audio effects in the MOOC

This is the fourth 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 and third posts. After PWYM participants have tried mixing using just levels and panning, the next step is to include audio effects …

Teaching mixing in a MOOC

This is the third 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 and second posts. So, you’ve learned how to listen closely and analytically. The next step is to get your hands on some multitrack …