Best Tracks on Born This Way, which I of course haven’t heard yet.

Just hunches…

(and I’m not really counting the singles here.  She gave away the obvious songs first – these are the deep cuts and they’re awesome.)

1. Schieße – dirty dirty beats, german talking.  This thing owns anything on BPM.

2. Americano – super different dance beat mariachi.  Lots of Spanish melodic ideas and harmony in 3rds.  LOVE THIS TRACK

3. Bad Kids – not as much the song as the words to this one.  Not sure why – maybe I have a soft spot for the people she describes.

4. Born This Way (Jost et. al remix) – props for remixing this song with different chords.  I would have trouble doing that without doing a Schenkerian analysis.

5. Bloody Mary – weird “medium” tempo groove, and possibly more blasphemous than Judas.  A+ for pushing the boundaries here.

6. Schieße (DJ white shadow remix)  9 minutes of pure euro trance anthem, with a SICK halftime section.  A little light on the wubs however.

7. Marry the Night – this track makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a training montage in an 80′s movie.  It also sounds like a musical’s opener.

8. Judas (DJ White Shadow remix).  WUBWUBWUB FINALLY

Overall, this album is like an uber-pop version of Imogen Heap’s Ellipse.  

Once you look past the thick and exquisite production layer, you get this very personal and conceptual comparison of the Lady’s love life with the tragedies commonly presented in Christian mythology.  I use the word mythology here because these images are used in the songs for comparative purposes, not to sing about the religion itself.

Overall score: A- for the basic disc, A with the remixes.

I can’t wait to hear this album…

Melodyne announces Capstan

SCIENCE!

http://futuremusic.com/blog/2011/05/13/celemony-announces-capstan-wow-flutter-removal-tool/

Chiptune Example Project for Ableton Live and Max for Live

Something I cooked up for my Level 2 class today. Tutorial may or may not follow soon, but here’s the low down:

Chips Ahoy by willkuhn

Software/Plugins:

• Ableton Live 8
• YMCK Magic8bitplugin
• Operator
• Redux
• Arpeggiator
• etc.

Max4Live:

• Schwarzenator (auto-chords)
• Pitch Drop (Turntable off sound)

Protip: The redux plugin is (somewhat) set to the specifications of a Nintendo Game Boy to emulate the drum sounds correctly.

UDSROTW: Nyan Cat Edition

Someday these will get old. TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY.

Nyan Cat (WiiD Remix) by WiiD

Noteflight Responds

Joe Berkovitz of Noteflight responds (his comment is attached to the previous post.)

Oh dear, the misunderstandings abound! I am in love with audio, electronic music and MIDI (and I agreed with many posters on the Synthtopia thread). I’m only making the case for a balanced diet in our musical culture, not trying to reject anything.

By the way, we are currently beta testing MIDI support on Noteflight and expect to release it shortly, towards further perpetuation of an antiquated trade — the trade in MIDI-enabled instruments, that is. OSC over Bluetooth, please!

I think the whole thing could probably be cleared up in a “part two”. It seems that most people who read the original post felt it was an expression of traditional notation’s superiority to recorded audio. At the same time, the original post seemed to ignore MIDI (or an equivalent technology like OSC) altogether, which is really the key to opening up music composition to the masses. Allowing someone to write without having to read perfectly is an extremely vital tool in my line of work for teaching the non-traditional music student.

But the new info that Noteflight is working on…let’s call it “keyboard controller support” – now that is truly interesting.

So Noteflight stirred up the mob, and at the moment we were lighting our torches they hint at a great new feature that will make their product extremely threatening to the “big two” competitors in traditional notation software. Well played, Noteflight. Well played.

Filed away for future snark

Noteflight’s luddite manifesto, in which they creatively forget about MIDI composition.

By comparison, audio is a frozen, static record of something that was played once. You can remix it, resample it and apply effects to it, but its musical DNA is a done deal. An audio recording contains the same ideas that could be written down in notation, but the recording is already telling you, “this is how it sounds.” In contrast, a score asks a question: “how could this sound?”

Synthopia has a nice rebuttal.

Also of note, from the Noteflight FAQ:

Can I enter music into Noteflight using a MIDI keyboard, or play Noteflight scores back using my own MIDI instruments?

The Adobe Flash Player Plugin, which is used to run Noteflight’s Score Editor, does not have access to your system’s MIDI devices. We are working on various technical approaches that would allow MIDI devices to be used with Noteflight.

Instead of writing manifesto’s defending an antiquated trade, maybe they should be looking a little more seriously into MIDI keyboard support.

For Barb Freedman

A thread in which a bunch of people go at it regarding which DAW is better: Live or Logic 

Spoiler: Pro Tools is not mentioned.

Max Matthews, R.I.P.

For those who don’t know, he was the “Max” in Max/MSP.

via Synthtopia

“I photographed the image with my cell phone for texture.”

The lady is pretty hands on for a diva.

P.S. Someone get RedOne a shower…those beats are dirrrrrrrrty.

“I don’t really write notated music anymore”

As usual, Charlie Olvera nails it.  

From his excellent Tumblr.