Starting this week, I’m teaching my very first full course at NYU, the undergraduate Music Education Technology Practicum. Exciting! Here’s the syllabus.
Category Archives: Music
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 …
The great music interface metaphor shift
I’m working on a long paper right now with my colleague at Montclair State University, Adam Bell. (Update: here’s the paper.) The premise is this: In the past, metaphors came from hardware, which software emulated. In the future, metaphors will come from software, which hardware will emulate. The first generation of digital audio workstations have …
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 …
Killen and Marotta
Participants in Play With Your Music were recently treated to an in-depth interview with two Peter Gabriel collaborators, engineer Kevin Killen and drummer Jerry Marotta. Both are highly accomplished music pros with a staggering breadth of experience between them. You can watch the interview here: Kevin Killen engineered So and several subsequent Peter Gabriel albums. …
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 is groove?
You hear musicians talk all the time about groove. You might wonder what they mean by that. A lot of musicians couldn’t explain exactly, beyond “the thing that makes music sound good.” The etymology of the term comes from vinyl records. Musicians ride the groove the way a phonograph needle physically rides the groove in …