There are any number of ways to talk about breaks, so I’ll just list a few ideas here. In Part 2 of Breakbeats in the Classroom, I listed seven possible ways to use breaks, starting with looping the break and ending with extracting the groove and applying it to another beat. A common dismissal of the use of breakbeats—and by extension, of the people who use them—is the claim that by relying on pre-existing material, you’re not making original music and therefore aren’t a musician, or a musician of serious art, etc.
Read Moresleeper walkthrough
On December 1st, I released sleeper, a minimal techno quasi concept album/EP. As of today (12/22/20), I’m still really psyched by it and proud of it, which generally isn't the case for a lot of the electronic music I make. As a nod to that and in a fairly shameless attempt to get you interested enough to check it out for yourself, I’m going to give a brief overview of how sleeper came to be and a quick track-by-track run-down. Like what you hear? Pick it up here!
Read MoreOn Teaching and Research in Higher Education
At the start of day one of my orientation as a full time professor, we all sat in a large room and listened to multiple administrators tell us that “Georgetown is special because we value teaching and research equally.” After this and a few more institutional platitudes, the administrators concluded the welcoming ceremony, turned the proceedings over to three professors, and left the room.
Read More#YouWereMineFlipChallenge
Hopped into Micro-Chop’s #YouWereMineFlipChallenge and came up with the following beat. I didn't want to spend too much time on the challenge, which was convenient because I didn’t have much time to spend on it. Instead of a lot of planning the type of beat I wanted to make, I just jumped in and started looking for instrumental sections. I figured (rightly) that the sample would guide the flip. I settled on the following three bars:
Read MoreKnowing when something's done
I’m often asked how I know when a piece is done.
The flippant answer of course is that the deadline dictates when the piece is done.
In practice though, it’s a hard question to answer, in part because it’s so personal and in part, for me at least, because the answer keeps changing.
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