Update: we’re working on an album. Listen to it here. Last semester I did a project for my psychology of music class that studied the way people clap to funk/dance music. I was testing to see whether my subjects knew to clap on the backbeats or not. I didn’t give them any prompting as to …
Category Archives: Autobio
Software design as research
Brown, A. (2007). Software Development as Music Education Research. International Journal of Education & the Arts. Volume 8, Number 6. My thesis is supposed to include a quantitative research component. This had been causing me some anxiety. It’s educational and creative software. What exactly could I measure? I had this vague notion of testing people’s …
ComposerQuest podcast with Marc Weidenbaum
Quick note to say that one of my tracks appears in a podcast by Charlie McCarron, “Social Sound Experiments with Marc Weidenbaum.” Marc is the visionary mind behind the Disquiet Junto and is a thoughtful speaker on the nature of sound art, its relationship to music, and how to be a good critic, composer and …
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Another radial drum machine
I’ve been working on my thesis app this whole time in the serene knowledge that there’s very little precedent for what I’m trying to do. However, I just learned that I’m wrong, that there’s an app out there with a lot of broad similarities to mine: Loopseque, made by Casual Underground. At first glance, I …
Radial drum machine update
I’m planning to be done with my thesis by (gulp) December. My collaborator Chris and I got a basic prototype of the radial drum machine together over the summer using Max and Javascript. What we learned is that you don’t want to do an audio app in Max and Javascript, since it will be single-threaded …
Designing music learning experiences with technology
This semester I’m working as a research assistant to Alex Ruthmann at NYU. The job includes helping him with a new joint music education and music technology class, Designing Technologies & Experiences for Music Making, Learning and Engagement. Here’s the bibliography. The central class project is to create a music education technology experience — a lesson …
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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 chords deliberately. How do you compose, and do you feel proud of it all the times (i.e. know …
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 music with a series of “play note”, “rest for”, and “play drum” blocks. These blocks provide access to music at the phoneme rather than morpheme …
Why do suburban white kids like gangsta rap?
A followup post to White People And Hip-Hop First, a little on my background. I’m not from the suburbs, I’m from New York City. My experience growing up was an odd blend of the city and the suburbs. I lived in a posh little corner of an otherwise pretty tough neighborhood. I attended a very …
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Rockism
As a kid, I liked everything: rock, hip-hop, classical, jazz, pop, dance, country, whatever. In my teenage years, however, I succumbed to the pressures of a racist society and turned into a devout rockist. I dutifully renounced pop, disco, techno, even hip-hop, anything that was “inauthentic.” I swallowed the rockist dogma that grants legitimacy to …