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Keywords: Programming
(Photo: Frederick Stubbs) Programming music is like making marionettes dance by pulling on their strings. Unlike acoustic musicians who pull their own strings, the electronic music producer is one level removed from the action, conducting puppet parts from afar. Programming entails many processes, including playing or drawing MIDI, finagling audio samples, plotting effects trajectories over Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Russell Hartenberger’s “Arlington” (2024)
Russell Hartenberger, who was my music teacher, is a giant of contemporary percussion. For over fifty years he’s performed with the Nexus ensemble and composer Steve Reich, authored definitive books about percussion practice and rhythm, and taught generations of musicians. He’s also a composer of subtle chamber music that synthesizes the shared through lines of Continue reading
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Database: Brian Eno On Splitting Audio Into Different Frequency Bands
“I would split [Harold Budd’s] piano signal into four or five different frequency bands, so everything equivalent to the lower string of a bass guitar would be put onto one track of the tape, then the next frequency band that is equal to the human voice range would be put onto another. I would make Continue reading
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Keywords: Omnimusicality
(Photo: Ivan Jermakov) Omnimusicality describes the competencies, skillsets, fluencies, and workflows of the electronic music producer who engages music from many angles and by many means. The producer is omnimusical in being simultaneously a composer, performer, sound designer, editor, and engineer who writes parts, designs sounds, programs MIDI and automates its parameters, sculpts audio, invents Continue reading
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Database: Prok Fiskal On How Bad Sounds Evoke A Certain Thing
“I didn’t want to do a nostalgic thing but those sorts of sounds, I really love them, I really love a bad accordion synth, it sounds really beautiful in a way, or a really shitty choir preset can sound lovely.” “I wanted to use these sounds in a way that wasn’t nostalgic. But they have Continue reading
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Keywords: Musical System
(Image: Polina Kuzovkova) A musical system is a cybernetic circuit linking the musician with a set of technological tools. The circuit can be instruments and hardware or, as is increasingly the norm, the virtual software components of a studio in the computer. In the DAW, the musical system is the DAW + its sounds, VST Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Steven Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From” (2011)
“The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others Continue reading
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