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”
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”
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 …
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 …
I participate in Marc Weidenbaum’s Disquiet Junto whenever I have the time and the brain space. Once a week, he sends out an assignment, and you have a few days to produce a new piece of music to fit. Marc asks that you discuss your process in the track descriptions on SoundCloud, and I’m always …
I just completed a batch of new music, which was improvised freely in the studio and then later shaped into structured tracks. https://soundcloud.com/ethanhein/sets/tabla-breakbeat-science I thought it would be helpful to document the process behind this music, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I expect to be teaching this kind of production a lot …
Continue reading “Composing improvisationally with Ableton Live”
There’s an interview on the Creative Commons blog with Disquiet Junto instigator and Aphex Twin historian Marc Weidenbaum. It’s full of his usual keen insight. Here are some key quotes.
This post was originally written for the Play With Your Music blog. Also be sure to check out our interview with engineer Kevin Killen and drummer Jerry Marotta. Peter Gabriel’s songwriting and recording process in the early 1980s was unusual for its technological sophistication, playfulness and reliance on improvisation. While Peter was considered avant-garde back …
My new studio band has an album nearing completion. It’s called Music Information Retrieval, because our studio time was sponsored by NYU’s Music and Audio Research Lab — we contributed to a database of multitracks that will be used for music informatics research. We made our DJ debut over the weekend at the Rubin Museum, …
Continue reading “Tabla Breakbeat Science is dropping an album”
As we continue to flesh out the video content for Play With Your Music, I put together this series on rhythm.
