For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. Here I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Brandon Bennett that I recorded on September 22, 2020 in Washington Square Park. The remix is made from the twenty most interesting/pertinent/relevant minutes of several hours of …
Continue reading “Brandon Bennett interview remix – What is hip-hop education?”
Since January 2012, I have created over two hundred (!) pieces of music for the Disquiet Junto. That represents thirteen hours of recordings, which is more music than I have produced for every other creative undertaking in my life combined. In honor of this milestone, I’ve compiled my best submissions on Bandcamp. Disquiet Junto Projects …
One of the most significant developments in the past fifty years of popular music is the idea of using existing recordings as raw material for new musical expression. The remix began as a way to make dance versions of pop songs, but it has evolved into an entire new art medium unto itself.
This is my curated collection of online music teaching, learning and creation resources. Use in good health. Big collections: A spreadsheet of online music theory resources and projects, plus my New School syllabus that uses many of these things. A spreadsheet of online music technology resources and projects. The NYSSMA Best Practices Database.
This week I begin another iteration of my NYU class, a music technology crash course for future music teachers. Given the vastness of the subject matter and the constraints of a one-semester course, the challenge is always to figure out what to put in and what to leave out. I continue to take a project-based …
Continue reading “NYU Music Education Technology Practicum syllabus”
A few years ago, the NYU Music Experience Design Lab launched a web application called the aQWERTYon. The name is short for “QWERTY accordion.” The idea is to make it as easy to play music on the computer keyboard as it is with the chord buttons on an accordion. The aQWERTYon maps scales to the …
For his NYU music technology masters thesis, Tyler Bisson created a web app called Groove Pizzeria, a polyrhythmic/polymetric extension of the Groove Pizza. Click the image to try it for yourself. Note that the Groove Pizzeria is still a prototype, and it doesn’t yet have the full feature set that the Groove Pizza does. …
I have come to believe that Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” is the most interesting musical recording of all time. It touches every form of twentieth century American music, from blues to jazz to rock to techno, and it’s one of the founding documents of global hip-hop. Not bad for a last-ditch effort to keep Herbie’s label …
I recently met a gentleman named Samuel Halligan, who, among other things, makes music education utilities using Max For Live. One of them is called Pop-Up Piano. If you use Max or Ableton and you could use some help learning music theory, you should go and download it immediately. It’s a Max For Live Device …
Continue reading “Samuel Halligan’s awesome Pop-Up Piano for Ableton Live”
Ableton just published the video of a panel I was part of at Ableton Loop 2017 with Dennis DeSantis, Jack Schaedler and Mel Uye-Parker. We talk about music tech and education. Very cool stuff. You can also read my detailed accounts of Loop 2017 and Loop 2018.
