In Part One of this series about Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, I looked at the economic and political situation that led to the disintegration of the quality of life in NYC - which turned out to actually help the city’s creative scene and the artists who created the new genres of music that emerged [...]
A friend recently asked me to put together a playlist of the best NYC disco/house tracks. As I thought about it, I was actually overwhelmed by the amount of tracks I could put on. Would I go obvious or go deep? I've been in NYC for almost 20 years and have been lucky enough to [...]
We're happy to announce an exciting series of workshops in 2017. The Brooklyn Digital Conservatory will be doing workshops throughout Latin America including: Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba. Our first courses will run in Costa Rica beginning with a unique course by bassist Matthew Garrison at DJLAB on [...]
The Brooklyn Digital Conservatory and ShapeShifter Lab will continue the Digital and Acoustic Sessions open workshop series in Brooklyn on July 24, 2016 at 6:30 PM. This month’s Digital + Acoustic Sessions will feature artist, music technologist and associate professor at Berklee, Erin Barra showing techniques for using Ableton Live as a songwriting tool. Erin Barra’s [...]
The Brooklyn Digital Conservatory and ShapeShifter Lab will continue the Digital and Acoustic Sessions open workshop series in Brooklyn on July 24, 2016 at 6:30 PM. This session will highlight different ways of incorporating lights and visuals within Ableton Live. Presenters will include David Lublin, VJ and creator of the VDMX software, Matthew Wang and [...]
The Brooklyn Digital Conservatory and ShapeShifter Lab will continue the Digital and Acoustic Sessions open workshop series in Brooklyn on June 19th at 6:30 PM. This session will feature Daniel Mintseris who is the programmer and keyboardist for St Vincent discussing his live set-up and touring with St. Vincent. Following the workshop will be live [...]
On June 4, 2016, the Brooklyn Digital Conservatory, Studio Arki and the International Museum and Library of Music will host an open Ableton workshop in Bologna, Italy how to slim down fast. See the event page here for more details.
Clyph X Part II: 3 Useful Live Performance Functions: In the last post I explained some basics about ClyphX and how to set it up. I just want to point out 3 more interesting ways to use it. Tempo Ramps: Tempo ramps, meaning shifting the tempo over a certain number of bars are easy to [...]
Of all the DAWs currently on the market, Ableton Live is arguably the best suited for live performance. This makes sense considering the ability to use it live is built into the DNA of the program (hence the “Live”) and it is also the only of the widely used programs created by performing musicians [...]
One of the dullest parts of production, but one of the most important for properly finishing a track is preparing to mix it. If and when people think of music production as a sexy and glamorous job, they are certainly not thinking of the time spent getting a track set up for a mix. In [...]