I’m writing a chapter of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Technology and Music Education. Here’s a section of what I wrote, about my own music learning experiences. Most of my music education has happened outside of the classroom. It has come about intentionally, through lessons and disciplined practice, and it has come about unintentionally, through …
Category Archives: Autobio
My NYU course this fall
Starting this week, I’m teaching my very first full course at NYU, the undergraduate Music Education Technology Practicum. Exciting! Here’s the syllabus.
Remix as compositional critique
This month I’ve been teaching music production and composition as part of NYU’s IMPACT program. A participant named Michelle asked me to critique some of her original compositions. I immediately said yes, and then immediately wondered how I was actually going to do it. I always want to evaluate music on its own terms, and …
A DIY video about DIY recording
For the benefit of Play With Your Music participants and anyone else we end up teaching basic audio production to, MusEDLab intern Robin Chakrabarti and I created this video on recording audio in less-than-ideal environments. This video is itself quite a DIY production, shot and edited in less than twenty-four hours, with minimal discussion beforehand …
Internet blues
Recently, WNYC’s great music show Soundcheck held a contest to see who could do the best version of the 100 year old song “Yellow Dog Blues” by WC Handy. Marc Weidenbaum had the members of the Disquiet Junto enter the contest en masse. I did my track, put it on SoundCloud, and promptly forgot all …
Making rhythm tutorial videos
I’m continuing to crank out educational videos for Play With Your Music. Part of the process involves remaking old videos as both my chops and the facilities in NYU’s Blended Learning Lab improve. Here’s my series on the basics of rhythm: We’ve made several improvements, some technical, some creative. The most immediately noticeable one is …
Reflections on teaching Ableton Live, part two
In my first post in this series, I briefly touched on the problem of option paralysis facing all electronic musicians, especially the ones who are just getting started. In this post, I’ll talk more about pedagogical strategies for keeping beginners from being overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities of sampling and synthesis. This is part of …
Continue reading “Reflections on teaching Ableton Live, part two”
Reflections on teaching Ableton Live: part one
My music-making life has revolved heavily around Ableton Live for the past few years, and now the same thing is happening to my music-teaching life. I’m teaching Live at NYU’s IMPACT program this summer, and am going to find ways to work it into my future classes as well. My larger ambition is to develop …
Continue reading “Reflections on teaching Ableton Live: part one”
What’s up with Ethan
Here’s a quick update on what is going on in my life. First, most importantly: Milo is walking but not yet talking; he’s waving, but not yet high-fiving; he’s eating with a spoon, but only getting the food into his mouth two thirds of the time. He’s totally delightful. Since I graduated from the NYU …
Remixing Verdi with Ableton Live
Later this week I’m doing a teaching demo for a music technology professor job. The students are classical music types who don’t have a lot of music tech background, and the task is to blow their minds. I’m told that a lot of them are singers working on Verdi’s Requiem. My plan, then, is to …