Something new is always cooking… but what is it this time?
Several months ago I took an online course at Coursera called Survey of Music Technology. The course provided a hands-on introduction to the field of music technology as both a creative musical practice and as interdisciplinary technical research.
It’s so much fun playing with all the cool buttons and dials!
This month we’re taking a look at Strobe 2, a virtual instrument inspired by the early 1980’s monophonic synthesizers such as the Roland SH-101 or Juno-6. Due to the popularity of vintage synthesizers in pop and dance music, the company FXPansion has created a number of fairly basic sound modules for use in digital audio workstations that emulate the early synthesizers and drum machines quite nicely.
Steve Tidebeck, Funky White Boy
Steve Tidebeck has been very busy, for a person who doesn’t exist. As part of an experiment, he decided to see what would happen if he grabbed some vocals and then wrote songs around them. The usual way most musicians compose songs is to create a chord progression, then add bass, drums, and additional parts to get the sound and mood established. The vocals are usually added after.
An interesting and trendy game.
Siebert Tenseven (a nom de plume) was a recent winner on Blend for the IMBAS Music One Hour Challenge. The idea was to use samples supplied by IMBAS and, in one hour or less, create an interesting composition between 1 minute and 1:30 in length. There were five winners chosen and they were used in a mash-up later on.
May the best unknown entry win!
The benefits of entering a competition, let alone winning, are myriad. In December of last year, I was invited to submit a soundtrack for a rather strange animated short film with no title. It was a good way to develop additional scoring techniques, so I went ahead and gave it a try.
