Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires

We are talking about Jamaica’s remix culture in Musical Borrowing class and how it challenges Western concepts of authorship and ownership. The class is reading the opening chapters of Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power by Larisa Kingston Mann, which connects Jamaica’s ethos of communal musical creativity to its …

What does the Well-Tempered Clavier sound like in actual well temperament?

The Well-Tempered Clavier is a book of JS Bach compositions for keyboard instruments in each of the twelve major and twelve minor keys. The name refers to Bach’s preferred tuning system, which made it possible to play (sort of) in tune in every key. This was a big deal, because in the usual tuning systems …

The Shinobi Cuts remix chain

I was invited by Jason Richardson to take part in a Shinobi Cuts remix chain, an album where each track is a remix of the previous track. The final remix is done by the creator of the track that started the whole thing off, making for a kind of musical strange loop.  When you listen to the …

Making music with students’ found sounds

Every semester, I have my music technology students do a project using found sound. They record environmental sounds with their phones, and then they create tracks that incorporate those sounds somehow. The only rule is that they have to use at least one found sound–it doesn’t have to be their own. Otherwise, they can use …