vocalman2004 odds & ends

From Liszt to Lutosłaski, composers have so often turned to Paganini’s Caprice No 24 for inspiration – with satisfying and scintillating results On a theme … Stephen Hough   If sonata form is about the process of reaching a destination, variation form is more about taking pleasure in the journey itself. While sonata form explores […]

You can have a lot of fun making music, but getting a good recording and arrangement of your song requires some work and knowledge. Last week we learned how to use virtual instruments. This week we’re going to learn about mixing. Note: This is primarily a video lesson and you’ll get a lot more information […]

It sounds like something straight out of a science-fiction movie: “Eyeborg.” Neil Harbisson, a 30-year-old artist and musician, was born with a condition called achromatopsia, meaning the cone cells in his eyes don’t pick up color — so the world to him is, literally, black and white. Since 2004, though, he’s experienced color through sound […]

You can have a lot of fun making music, but getting a good recording and arrangement of your song requires some work and knowledge. Last week we learned to record audio. This week we’re going to start using virtual instruments. Note: This is primarily a video lesson and you’ll get a lot more information from […]

Fans booed when Bob Dylan went electric in 1965, but in 2013 in the Czech Republic no one seemed to bat an eye when the Czech National Symphony Orchestra one-upped Dylan by also going mobile. As part of a stunt to promote a new “all-digital” bank in Europe called Hello Bank!, BNP Paribas and ad […]

You can have a lot of fun making music, but getting a good recording and arrangement of your song requires some work and knowledge. Last week we set up a home recording studio. This week we’re going to start recording. Note: This is primarily a video lesson and you’ll get a lot more information from […]

The Basics of Music Production, Lesson 1: Set Up Your Home Studio You can have a lot of fun making music, but getting a good recording and arrangement of your song requires some work and knowledge. For the next few weeks, we’ll help you set up a small recording studio in your home and learn […]

Have you ever wondered how music has evolved over the years? One YouTube video tries to answer that question by distilling 10 centuries of song into four-and-a-half minutes. A quintet of singers, collectively called Pentatonix, start off with a haunting chant from the 11th century. They then move on to Pachelbel’s Canon from the 1600s, […]

Listening to new music can be good for the brain a new study has claimed. A group of Canadian scientists found via MRI scans that parts of the reward centre of the brain become more active when exposed to new sounds. The findings, which were reported in the Science journal, showed that activity in the […]