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My NPR debut
On Tuesday, July 17, I appeared on the Colin McEnroe Show on Connecticut Public Radio to talk about my pet topic, remixes and mashups. The great DJ Earworm was on the show too, which I was totally...
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Debating the morals of the mashup
Recently, I was on Connecticut Public Radio’s Colin McEnroe show, talking about the culture and history of the mashup. I gave my usual enthusiastic endorsement of the practice. My friend Jesse...
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The Disquiet Junto
A significant chunk of the music I’ve made in the past year has been prompted by a blogger and journalist named Marc Weidenbaum, proprietor of the fine electronic music web zine Disquiet. This is...
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The Schizophonia of David Byrne, Brian Eno and The Orb
For Paul Geluso’s Advanced Audio Production midterm, we were assigned to choose two tracks from his recommended listening list, and compare and contrast them sonically. I chose “Regiment” by David...
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Teaching the studio as instrument
Matthew D. Thibeault. Wisdom for Music Education From the Recording Studio. General Music Today, 20 October 2011. Stuart Wise, Janinka Greenwood and Niki Davis. Teachers’ Use of Digital Technology in...
View ArticleTop tracks of 2012
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...
View ArticleLive at apexart
This past November, I had the privilege of performing in the fourth Disquiet Junto concert of 2012 in the apexart gallery. We each did two pieces, one connected to the apexart exhibit “As Real As It...
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Remixing “Here Comes The Sun” in 5.1 Surround
For my final project in Advanced Audio Production at NYU, I created a 5.1 surround remix of the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun.” You can download it here. If you don’t have surround playback, you can...
View ArticleUser Interface Design for Music Learning Software
Computers have revolutionized the composition, production and recording of music. However, they have not yet revolutionized music education. While a great deal of educational software exists, it mostly...
View ArticleIs it boring to play repetitive music?
Quora user Andrew Stein asks: Musicians: How do you deal with playing songs that have very monotonous parts? I’m going to use James Brown’s Sex Machine as an example. Don’t get me wrong, I love the...
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The Nirvana effect
I’m currently working on a book chapter about the use of video games in music education. While doing my research, I came across a paper by Kylie Peppler, Michael Downton, Eric Lindsay, and Kenneth Hay,...
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Making it easier to be musical
Alex Ruthmann, in a blog post discussing music-making with the educational multimedia programming environment Scratch, has this to say: What’s NOT easy in Scratch for most kids is making meaningful...
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My process of composing music
Quora user Jennifer Ha asked me: What is your process of composing music? She goes on: For me I have to wait for the right inspiration given to me very irregularly. But it seems others can compose with...
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Minsky on music
Music, Mind and Meaning by Marvin Minsky is a gold mine of inspired speculation about the origins and functions of music. I’ve assembled some choice quotes below. If visual art is our way of playing...
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Drum Loop programming lesson concept images
Nearly getting scooped by Loopseque lit a fire under me to get some more concept images for my thesis app together. So here are some examples of the beat programming lessons that form the intellectual...
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Against music theory
I am mercifully finished with music theory in grad school and couldn’t be happier about it. You may find this surprising. My blog is full of music theory. How could a guy who enjoys thinking about...
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Constructivist learning and Scratch
Brennan, K. (2013). Best of Both Worlds: Issues of Structure and Agency in Computational Creation, In and Out of School. Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had the very...
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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...
View ArticleThesis presentation
Here’s the presentation I’ll be giving of my masters thesis next week, enjoy.
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Fractal music
Continuing my series of posts on the ways that science might explain why we like the music we like. See also my posts on the science of rock harmony, harmony generally, and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Quora...
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