RHYTHM 03: Ultimate Rhythmic Freedom
1. Beats or no beats. You can decide if your music has a beat or is “free time”. Music without a beat can still have structure, even a rhythmic structure, but it won’t be based on regularly spaced beats or patterns. It might be more natural sounding or more “conversational” or perhaps more soulful and […]
Read more...RHYTHM 02: The Essence of Rhythm
In the most general terms, rhythm just refers to the placement of musical events in time. Our brains and experience dwell eternally in the present moment. Contained in this present moment is a well-calibrated sense of what has happened in the “recent” past- and a sensation of “flow”. That flow could be described as us […]
Read more...RHYTHM 01: Current Music Tech’s (ab)use of Time-Signatures
In western notation, there is a complicated relationship between note & rest values, time-signatures, and the felt beats. Beginners are shown a note/rest value-tree in ‘common time’ (4/4) where a whole-note fills a 4-beat measure (thus giving the 4-beat unit unearned, universal significance). The note names are thus tied to a 4-beat unit, which adds […]
Read more...PROJECTS: 2019 Feb
MIDI CONTROL BOX I’m working on a custom MIDI control surface with knobs, sliders and switches. What makes this device unique– compared to commercially available ones– is that it will allow me to connect external controls and switches, and it will have eight high-resolution controls. A really nice man named Jerry Patrasso who runs a […]
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