Music

There are 42 posts filed in Music (this is page 2 of 5).

After finding out about it on Scripting News, I have started listening to the podcast “The History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs”. Episode 2 had some neat history on labor disputes during World War 2 that greatly affected the music industry – I really enjoyed it! 2 down, 153 to go (the podcast is planned to take 5 years to get to 500 songs).

My wife and I watched Annie Live on NBC this week, we both thought it was excellent. The child actors from the orphanage scenes were amazing in their singing and their dancing. NBC has come a long way since their initial start in live drama with “The Sound of Music” several years ago. Several reviews: Deadline, People Magazine, and Yahoo News.

Cool article about digitized tapes of Grateful Dead concerts on Archive.org!

I love that recording music has become easy enough that even beginners can express themselves. Furthermore, I applaud the fearlessness of newbies who grapple with technology, try to make sense out of today’s complex tools, and persevere to record and mix their music.

Yet, it’s still not that easy to obtain a “professional” sound when you’re starting out. Having taught classes, presented workshops, and worked with beginners, I’ve heard some truly original and refreshing music — however, there are often easy-to-avoid mistakes that drag down those bedroom productions. Like uninvited guests at a dinner party, here are 10 common mistakes that keep surfacing and are easy to correct.

Sounds of the 2019 Christmas season

On Christmas Eve, I read a post by Brad Enslen referring to a post from his archive. It was an excerpt from Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. I then found the home page of the Kings College Lessons and Carols site. This year’s performance was broadcast by BBC Radio 4, and can be heard here. A local copy is also here.

Brad also had a  link to several Christmas albums created by users of the Garritan Personal Orchestra software, Here are links to the 10th and 11th editions:

Finally, the Christmas Eve service at our church had prelude music in a jazz style by members of the Resurrection Catholic Parish Music Ministry. The group included Marcus Reynolds on piano, Steve Cook on trumpet, Jeff Akin on drums, and Matt Holmes on bass.  The set included “The Christmas Song” by Mel Torme, O Christmas Tree, Silent Night, and What Child is This.

Their performance appears above (live and uncut). Enjoy these sounds of this year’s Christmas season – and Brad, thanks for getting this post started!

 

 

How can we work together on the open web and on software development

I have been in several conversations in the last week (voice and email) where the concept of “working together” in software development came up, and several threads emerged:

  • how the original developer doesn’t/shouldn’t have to do everything – others can contribute (to me, a key concept in open source)
  • how interested/engaged users can be an important force in the direction in which a software application or tool goes forward

Dave Winer has written about this many times:

I have tried to follow that second point in several ways:

I am getting ready to start working in the computer music area again after a long absence, and I am reviewing available tools to see if they fit the areas I am interested in. In that way, I am trying to practice the concepts of working together as I have outlined above.

Anyone want to work together with me? Let me know!

The music matters

The music matters…

When a church choir works to make sure that everyone is singing the same rhythms and notes, it’s because… the music matters…

When vocalists and instrumentalists work on phrasing, dynamics, cutoffs, entrances, it’s because the music matters…

When you feel moved by a song, a symphony, live or recorded, the music matters….

When music makes you cry or evokes happy memories, the music matters…

When the silence of the end of a musical piece affects you, it’s because the music matters…

To musicians everywhere, in every performance that you give, never forget that the music matters….and to give that performance everything you have..because the music matters….

The music matters….

 

Reaper programming resources

Here are some resources for creating scripts/programs for the Reaper digital audio workstation:

AdmiralBumbleBee.com – ReaScript Tutorial – From total beginner to GUI-based script

ExtremeRaym – Raymond Radet’s website, author of ReaScript tutorial series, package of ReaScripts, and has a Github repo of scripts (also this one)

ReaPack.com – Package manager for Reaper

Cockos Forum – Building a GUI in Lua

Adam T. Croft – Introduction to ReaScript (I did the “Hello World” section, and it worked!)

ReaperBlog – ChordGun tool

SWS Extension – another Reaper tool

Reaper – ReaScript page (also ReaScript API page)

This ought to be enough to get me started! I want to create some functions to do computer-assisted composition…