When I was younger I was obsessed with authenticity in music. I wouldn’t even play electric guitar because it felt too easy, like cheating somehow. I expended a lot of energy and attention trying to figure out what is and isn’t authentic. Now, at the age of 34, I’ve officially given up. I doubt there’s …
Tag Archives: synths
Imogen Heap and artificial harmony
Here’s a live rendition of Imogen Heap’s song “Hide And Seek.”
Kramer
Kramer is the name my mom’s father’s parents gave at Ellis Island because they thought it they might have an easier time with it assimilation-wise than Garfinkel. In Eastern Europe, if you want a WASP-y sounding name, you usually choose something German rather than British. My mom’s wing of her extended family calls itself the …
Game controllers as musical instruments
This is a picture of my electronic funk-soul-R&B band doing a show. From left to right, it’s Nicole Bishop, me and Barbara Singer. We were the whole band for that show. I did all the beats, samples and keyboards from my computer using a video game controller. Here’s a screenshot of the program that the …
His name is Prince, and he is funky
Hip-hop artists love Prince. Like them, he blends drum machines, live jazz-funk musicians and samples of other songs.
Sampling keyboards
One of the greatest weirdnesses of electronic music is the sampling keyboard. You press a key and any sound recording you want pops out, at whatever pitch. The recent passing of John Hughes made me think of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when Ferris samples his coughing and puking on an E-mu Emulator …
How musical instruments work
There are a lot of different musical instruments out there. Just about all of them share four basic components: a harmonic oscillator, a source of noise, a control surface for modulation, and a resonator.
A synthesizer is like an axe
I found this picture of Herbie Hancock on a stranger’s blog. There was no caption or any other context. So I posted it on my Flickr with a note asking if anyone could identify the computer Herbie is sitting in front of. A couple of days later my friend Mike responded with this video of …
The Doctor Who theme song: analog electronica
When I was in third grade, my mom and stepfather went on academic sabbatical to London for six months, taking my sister and me with them. I guess I’m grateful for the chance to experience another culture and everything, but it was a rough six months. I missed my dad, school, New York, the Muppet …
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Herbie Hancock gets future shock
Herbie Hancock is a musician’s musician. He pushed the boundaries of acoustic piano in the sixties. He found a uniquely personal voice on an array of synthesizers in the seventies. And in the eighties, he helped bring turntablism into the pop mainstream. People have been experimenting with recording playback devices as musical instruments for a …