A canon (or round) is a single melody line that provides a counterpoint to itself. Canons can, at times, feel lighthearted and happy go lucky (“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Frere Jacques” for example), but even the simplest sounding pieces require careful attention and are difficult to craft well, especially where more than two voices are…
Learning to play music should be more of just that — playing! Why not make everything fun? With that in mind, here’s a new miniseries exploring how to make your synthesizer of choice do whatever you want: from burping and farting to shooting out lasers (sonically, of course)! Why? Because laser sounds are actually pretty ubiquitous in music today.…
In 2015, Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art presented David Lynch: Between Two Worlds, a major retrospective of filmmaker David Lynch’s works across painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. To celebrate the landmark retrospective, curator José Da Silva, along with Lynch and his studio, developed a number of commissions for the exhibition. One of these commissions was HEXA’s…
Welcome to the latest edition of Song Kitchen! Well aren’t you in for a treat, because today we’re gonna be heading down to the City of Angels, the Big Orange, Tinseltown, that’s right — Los Angeles! This city is Americana through and through, home to some of the greatest music ever recorded. We’re here visiting the resident…
Throughout my examination of the wide world of musical electronics, I’ve gazed longingly at the spider-web patches of modular and done an in-depth analyses of notable synths and their inner workings. One area we haven’t investigated deeply is the intersection of acoustic instruments with the electronic world — specifically, the burgeoning intersection of “classical,” or solo concert instrumentalists,…
+ Learning about synthesis? Soundfly’s got a definitive new online course called Advanced Synths and Patch Design For Producers! Preview for free and subscribe for access. My love of synthesis is well documented here on Flypaper. There’s just so much to explore, from digital to analog, computer-based to modular. Today, we’re going to take a look at modular synthesis as…
So, you think you know EDM. You’ve been listening to all the latest players in the electronic music world, and you think you know what they’re all about — the unique, infinitesimal nuances of sub-genre that distinguish one from another. What you may not know is that all of these artists in almost all forms of…
This holiday season, there’s probably a handful of Golden Ticket gift items on our wish lists, like the incredible Nord Electro 5 Keyboard, or Native Instruments’ new Komplete 10 pack, or Artiphon’s recently introduced Instrument 1, which unless we’ve been very, very good boys and girls, we might not get. So here are a few more great…
Happy Friday! This week’s Off Notes is a festive one. We’ve got a series of musical celebrations lined up — from a subterranean hullabaloo over Bach the elder’s 330th birthday, to the upcoming global observance of music’s newest holiday, Piano Day, to an awards show for a digital age — we have a lot to…
