I’ve become faster navigating around the DAW—finding sounds, recording and adding parts, creating effects chains, and working with automation. But slower to develop is my sense of what a track needs. This sense depends on two skills. The first is discerning how the music—its structure, parts, and textures—might be made more affecting and enchanting. My… Continue reading

“The knowledge in terms of which universities operate is based on observation, systematized into generally applicable principles, documented and archived. It is knowledge laid down for the future, a kind of cognitive capital (hence the term ‘knowledge economy’). It is what performance students are taught under the title of ‘theory’, which suggests you become a… Continue reading

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“The wall in the background green with orange spots, the carpet red with green spots, the piano dark violet. It’s 1 metre high and 50 wide. It’s a figure I enjoyed painting – but it’s difficult. [Dr. Gachet]’s promised to get her to pose for me another time with a little organ. I’ll do one… Continue reading

From around the 1950s to the 1990s, when most music was recorded either in studios or concert halls, its continuous waves of sound were mostly captured by microphones, sent into a mixing console, and printed onto magnetic tape. While the sources being recorded might be acoustic (e.g. an orchestra) or electronic (e.g. a synthesizer), the… Continue reading

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Tempo—or bpm: beats per minute–is music’s invisible engine. As listeners and makers we focus on the music’s rhythms, and if it has one, its beat. We hear the syncopations and steady-pulse timelines. We hear the time (typically) divided up among low and high pitched instruments like kick drums, snares, and hi hats. And specific rhythms—four-on-the-floor… Continue reading