Archive for November, 2009
Motion is Everything
Posted by Dan in Arts Administration, Education, Music, Non Profit on November 22, 2009
The title of this post are from a sign hung from the wall of my teacher, Dennis AsKew. It states unequivocally the purpose of music and musicians. Move yourself, move your audience. I suppose I could go on for a long while about how deceptively simple those words are, and how hard they are to live up to. But after years of living as a musician, I don’t feel I have to.
Instead, I think I’ll muse on those words in other aspects of life. Read the rest of this entry »
GarageBand
Posted by Dan in Technology on November 14, 2009
I’m teaching music technology at UNCG, so I decided to have a little fun with my class for this next unit.
GarageBand is a MIDI sequencing program and audio editor. Basically, it allows you to “compose” music by layering and arranging recorded and digital sounds. For class, I performed a demonstration of the software by inviting everyone in class up over my shoulder as I constructed this, my magnum opus:
I created this live in front of my class. I set up a loop with some bass and drums, talked about various aspects of the software and and recorded chunks of my monologue. I also grabbed a MIDI file off the desktop (Thank you Mozart!) and dropped it in real-time to show how flexible the software is. I applied some effects, built a groovy background and did some splicing, and BOOM. There we are.
It’s not art, but it’s a sign of how powerful music technology has become. It used to take a room full of very expensive equipment and many hours to do anything like this. Now the threshold has been lowered. Some people do this for a living. I do it so my students think I’m a nerd.