I revere Björk above most other musicians. She knows how to balance the coldness of electronic production with hotly unpredictable vocals and instrumental textures. Not everybody loves Björk as much as I do; her approach is eccentric and her sound gets on some people’s nerves. It took me a couple years to be convinced by …
Continue reading “Björk thought she could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of her”
Before digital recording media, recording artists faced a tradeoff between spontaneity and perfection. Recording take after take until the performances are spotless can quickly suck the joy and energy out of the music. But the kind of sloppiness that goes unnoticed in a live performance can get on your nerves after many repeated listens. It’s …
Continue reading “Loop mode: improvisation is composition is recording”
We take clocks so much for granted that it’s easy to forget how radical and recent a development they are. It wasn’t so long ago that clocks had to be painstakingly assembled by hand one at a time. Accurate timekeeping on the order of fractions of a second is a heroic engineering undertaking if you’re …
Continue reading “Is clock time oppressive or liberating? Yes.”
Back in 1966, Glenn Gould predicted that recorded music would become an interactive conversation between musician and listener. He described dial twiddling as “an interpretive act.” He was wrong about the dials, but right about the main point, that technology would make listening to music more like making music. Anybody with iTunes instantly becomes a …
Auto-Tune makes producing music easier. It can also make understanding music theory easier. The way you dial up different keys and scales doesn’t just guide your ear, it also guides your eye. Your voice can produce a smooth continuum of pitches. To sing, you eliminate most of those possibilities, vibrating your mouth and throat only …
How do you get sound in and out of a computer? There are two steps. You have to turn the sound into electricity, and then you have to turn the electricity into numbers. Turning sound into electricity At the physical level, a sound is a rhythmic vibration of air molecules. Your ears can detect subtle …
Continue reading “Digital audio is just long lists of numbers”
My experience with Auto-tune has felt like stepping out the door of a rocket ship to explore a whole new sonic planet. Auto-tune entered my musical life mainly from my work with Barbara Singer, who I met in 2003. She posted in the Craigslist Musicians section about this gig she had at the now-defunct Korova …
