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Tags > music
Max For Live: Making Musicians Into Programmers
October 27, 2009
Ableton's Live is one of the top music creation and performance platforms out there. It is a complete music suite with instruments, sound management and a performance interface. It is used by DJs, bands, and hobbyists. At a cost of several hundred dollars Live is within reach of most tech-savvy musicians. This fall Ableton is releasing Max For Live, an API of sorts. Max For Live is going to introduce a new generation of musicians to (visual) programming. And I don't think that they'll stop at playing around with the Ableton Live controls.
Using Windows 7 for Music Production
October 1, 2009
Cakewalk has been reprogramming PCs into music studios since the days of DOS. Today, CTO Noel Borthwick explained the deep, technical details of how the architectural changes in Windows 7 will help (and sometimes hinder) audio processing.
Four short links: 27 August 2009 - Copycrime, Die Music Industry Die, Open Government Data, Augmented Reality
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 27, 2009
Second Degree Murder and Six Other Crimes Cheaper Than Pirating Music -- I'm outraged that the Obama administration is supporting the RIAA on the case against Jammie Thomas, a single mother of four who has to pay them $1.92 million for downloading songs. That's more expensive than murder and six other crimes... (via Br3nda) Bill Drummond Talk (MP3) -- cofounder of the KLF gives 130 years of music industry history and explains why music's future might depend on not recording it. (via Br3nda)
Old Media, New Media and Where the Rubber Meets the Road
July 29, 2009
My once-beloved San Francisco Chronicle has been "hollowed out," reduced to a thin pamphlet, thereby accelerating their subscriber attrition. Do you even know anyone who actually uses the Yellow Pages? Remember record stores? Whither Blockbuster? When analog media collides with digital media, "creative destruction" occurs with brutal efficiency -- unless you can truly differentiate your offering, a tall task, but not an insurmountable one.
New Tricks for the Zoom H2
July 27, 2009
Zoom packs a staggering number of features into its audio gear. Here are a few that were surprisingly useful when I had to record some magazine and radio demos.
Content is a Service Business
By Andrew SavikasJuly 13, 2009
What you're selling as an artist (or an author, or a publisher for that matter) is not content. What you sell is providing something that the customer/reader/fan wants. That may be entertainment, it may be information, it may be a souvenir of an event or of who they were at a particular moment in their life (Kelly describes something similar as his eight "qualities that can't be copied": Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage, and Findability). Note that that list doesn't include "content." The thing that most publishers (and authors) spend most of their time fretting about (making it, selling it, distributing it, "protecting" it) isn't the thing that their customers are actually buying. Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business.
NiN's Rob Sheridan on iPhone Application Rejection
May 5, 2009
In this interview with Rob Sheridan (@rob_sheridan), Nine Inch Nails' Artistic Director, Rob discusses the experience of getting the rejection letter from Apple, and what effect it has on the band's plans to build community applications on the iPhone platform. You'll hear Sheridan express an uneasiness that Apple can act as judge and jury without providing any transparency into the approval process.
20 Sounds that Must Live
March 31, 2009
Ted writes, "Enough with the Martian space-chime echoes! I just want five good bass sounds, five good keyboard sounds, five leads, and five pads that would sound good almost anywhere. If you could only have 20 synth sounds, what would they be?"
From Open Source Software to Open Culture: Three Misunderstandings
By Andy OramMarch 23, 2009
The original practice and promise of open source software is unique. The software experience cannot be ported whole-hog into other areas such as sharing songs or organizing public forums. It's worth looking at what goes into creating open source software, and what unique traits of software make the open source process work well there.
More Creativity in a Can: When Thomas Dolby Met the Rhinestone Cowboy
By Spencer CritchleyMarch 6, 2009
Microsoft Songsmith has been stuck in my mind lately like, well, a bad song (follow that link at your own risk). It's got me reflecting about the long trend towards using music technology to increase productivity, but not creativity. And...
The Sizzling Sound of Music
By Dale DoughertyMarch 2, 2009
Are iPods changing our perception of music? Are the sounds of MP3s the music we like to hear most? Jonathan Berger, professor of music at Stanford, was on a panel with me at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Mountain View, CA on Saturday. Berger's presentation had a slide titled: "Live, Memorex or MP3." He...
iTunes Get Liberated
By Brian RedfernJanuary 6, 2009
It's a great day for musicians!
The Beatles of Programming Languages
By Eric LarsonDecember 18, 2008
It really is interesting to look at the parallels within software and music. The classical vs. pop debate is very similar to functional vs. object oriented programming. Signing to a major label feels very familiar to taking millions in venture capital. A developer in the zone is very similar to when a song just comes together.
Creative Commons needs your donations
December 15, 2008
Creative Commons is more dependent than ever before on the funds of individuals. More and more people these days are grabbing pictures, text, and other random goods they find online and using them in their own presentations or creative efforts; some of us even build businesses on open contributions. All of us should be promoting the Creative Commons, which has provided licenses to support such sharing in 50 countries and is working with people in many more.
A New Science of Music: Digital Cantometrics and the Evolution of Music
By Timothy M. O'BrienOctober 10, 2008
Armand Leroi is an Evolutionary Biologist with the Imperial College in London. Leroi is leveraging the ability of computers to analyze sound to create a Cantometric description of traditional music from various cultures. Leroi discusses his research and his new initiative to create a digital Cantometric survey of traditional music.
Numbers for Digital's Rise
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 6, 2008
I talk a lot to people who don't quite understand the scale of the media shift from bits to atoms, so I always have my eyes open for numbers and anecdotes that illustrate the point. The latest I found are from an article on Apple's threat to shut the iTunes store if it has to pay more to songwriters: Digital...
Regarding "Offending Maggie"
By Piers HollottAugust 5, 2008
On June 3rd, 2008, "Fresh Born", the first single from San Francisco's Deerhoof's upcoming album, Offend Maggie, was posted as sheet music, under a Creative Commons license. In a few months, a full twenty versions of "Fresh Born", recorded by all and sundry, have been recorded and contributed back to the CASH Music website.
Radiohead Remix: Tim Sinnott, GIS, ArcMAP, and Google Earth
July 30, 2008
Radiohead shot an entire video using LIDAR and released the dataset for people to remix and render as they see fit. In this first article of a four-part series, we profile Tim Sinnott. Tim used ArcMAP and Google Earth to create a fly-by of Thom Yorke's face over Kansas. Read the article to listen to a short audio interview and watch Tim's rendering of the data.
Support The FutureHere and Now of Music!
By M. David PetersonJuly 23, 2008
As much as I love Radiohead, there is only one man and one band who has/have proven he/they understand the way the music industry now works. Please support him/them. (AKA "The Slip will remain free for download indefinitely." (AKA, AKA:...
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