The folks at Olympia Noise Co recently came out with a new circular drum machine for iOS called Patterning, and it’s pretty fabulous. The app’s futuristic look jumps right out at you: flat-colored geometric shapes with zero adornment, in the spirit of Propellerhead Figure. There’s nothing on the screen that doesn’t function in some way. It’s a …
Tag Archives: visualization
Prototyping Play With Your Music: Theory
I’m part of a research group at NYU called the Music Experience Design Lab. One of our projects is called Play With Your Music, a series of online interactive music courses. We’re currently developing the latest iteration, called Play With Your Music: Theory. Each module presents a “musical simple,” a short and memorable loop of …
Musical Necker cubes
The simplest and most effective optical illusion ever is the Necker cube. Which side is in front? The answer is both and neither. Very Zen. In the process of gathering musical simples, I found a P-Funk loop with a similar effect. It’s a keyboard lick from “Do That Stuff” from The Clones Of Dr Funkenstein.
Compound musical simples
As I’ve been gathering musical simples, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to categorize them. There are melodic simples, otherwise known as riffs, hooks, and licks. There are rhythmic simples, otherwise known as beats, claves, and rhythm necklaces. And then there are the simples that combine a beat with a melody. Alex …
Musical simples
The NYU Music Experience Design Lab is putting together a new online music theory resource, and I’m writing a lot of the materials. We want to keep everything grounded in real-life musical practice. To that end, we’ve been gathering musical simples: phrases, riffs, and earworms that beginners can learn easily. My criteria for a good …
Ch-ch-ch-check out, check out check out my melody
My computer dictionary says that a melody is “a sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying.” There are a lot of people out there who think that rap isn’t music because it lacks melody. My heart broke when I found out that Jerry Garcia was one of these people. If anyone could be trusted …
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Circular rhythm visualization talk at Spotify
Today I got to talk about rhythm visualization in general and the Groove Pizza in particular at the Spotify Monthly Music Hackathon. Click the image to see my talk, I start at 1:23:47. Here are my slides: Circular rhythm visualizations from Ethan Hein Want me to come to your school, company, meetup or whatever, and …
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What even is digital art
The mighty river of social media recently brought an essay to my attention, The Arts Electric by Tom Uglow. His central point is that the computer has not yet fulfilled its potential as an art medium. I started out agreeing with him, and ended thinking he’s missing the point. Let’s dissect!
Scale necklaces and symmetry
While I was doing some examination of rhythm necklaces and scale necklaces, I noticed a symmetry among the major scale modes: Lydian mode and Locrian mode are mirror images of each other. Does this geometric relationship mean anything musically? Turns out that it does. Lydian and Locrian are mirror images in feeling, not just as …
Beats and scales
I don’t know a lot about Afro-Caribbean rhythms, beyond the fact that they cause me intense joy whenever I hear them. My formal music education has focused almost exclusively on harmony, and I’ve had to learn about rhythm mostly on my own. That’s why it was so exciting for me to discover the work of …