Category: Music
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DillaTime
These days I’m having an amazing time reading Dan Charnas’ book Dilla Time, enjoying the blending of historic biography and musical breakdowns. If you read my blog you’ll know I’m a fan of visual representations of music and sound and Dilla Time’s central sentiment is best summarized by this image of J Dilla’s main approach to juxtaposing…
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Start Music Hacking Now
I keep hearing myself say: There has never been a better time to get into music technology than now – Haig Armen These days there is so many choices of software and hardware platforms and resources designed specifically for any level in what was once an extremely specialized field. Not that kind of Hacking… ‘Hacker…
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Introducing PureData
I’ve been posting my experiments exploring sound/musical instrument design and prototyping, and it occurred to me that although my writing had focussed on the creative process and user experience of playing instruments, it would you the reader to have more context and explanations of the technical side to go beyond just embedding links throughout my…
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SI004 – NonInstrument
Most of my research these days is about getting to the heart of how we interact with musical instruments, exploring the essence of a nuanced touch that a piano player has or that subtle vibrato that makes one guitar player different than another. As a departure or brief interlude I’ve been thinking also about how…
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SI02 Experiment 2 – Nukulele
Rather than using RaspberryPi and Pd (PureData) as the sound generator in this experiment I wanted to use another sound source, something that resonates acoustically that I could alter the sound of but retain the playability of the original instrument. Why not a ukulele? Running Headless I know what you’re thinking, you probably have a…
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SI01 Experiment 1 – SenseSynth
I’m going to start documenting each Sonic Interactions experiment for the purpose of marking where I am in the process. Each one of these is merely a rough sketch to build upon and are in no means finished. My first experiment takes data from the accelerometer of a SenseHat and uses it to change parameters…
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Research Note 014: Amateurs & Professionals
These days I’ve been telling people about my recent return to playing music seriously. Quite a few people ask whether I was professional or amateur which usually makes me pause to think. When you’re referred to as an amateur, it’s usually implied that you might be less qualified or even less talented than a professional.…
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Research Note 13: Interplay in Jazz
As you may or may not know, I’m currently enjoying a sabbatical that has given me the time to explore my love of music and musical instruments. My research is about how we interact when we create music, both with instruments, other people and environments. I’m going to begin with what I know best, the interplay…
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Research Note 12: Timeboxing for Music
Creating music can give you so much joy. When you’re in a state of flow and you finish a song and it sounds great. But if you ask most music producers they all agree that there seem to be as many or more moments of agony. Despite our will, there are lots of real reasons…
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Research Note 011: Creating Contraints to Create
Normally I get shit done, but with music composition I tend to take my time. That normally leads to other distractions and songs just don’t get finished. In fact, they barely get started, I have a melody or a rhythm kicking around in my head and I play it into Ableton and save it. That’s…