When I was a graduate student at Manhattan School of Music, I studied music technology every semester. I was genuinely interested in recording techniques and production. What I was not expecting was that our professor took us back - way back! The first semester was to learn how to combine raw sound waves in order to 'synthesize' sounds from common instruments. The final exam that first semes-
ter included walking into the studio and combining sound waves (sine, saw etc) on a synthesizer to produce the sounds of a piano, clarinet and violin.
We progressed from those foundations to create scores for commercials and film using the digital audio workstation (DAW) in the studio. It was a blast!
I remember this class with fondness because our professor, Richard Sussman, combined his incredible musicianship with technology. Our discussions on the particular envelopes of musical instruments inform my music making to this day.
Graduate school was a while ago - yikes! And now, we find ourselves in the Covid-19 pandemic. For the past few months, I have seriously dusted off the old brain as it relates to music technology and have applied it in some fun ways. A few examples: I record our band at Riverstone Church remotely every week and create a mix, both video and sound, for our online worship services; I am being asked to record accompaniments for folks so that they can present their music online; and, we are releasing videos on our School of Music page at Cairn University to connect and encourage our community.
Applying music technology in your particular situation can be a daunting prospect. I want to help!
And so, this is what I hope to do over the next few weeks:
1. Create video tutorials that are easy to understand and that can be applied in any situation with limited resources. Stay tuned!
2. Recommend resources that are essential to making quality content for your own music or organization. You will be surprised at the resources that are easily accessible to you.
Please subsribe to this blog for updates. I will be releasing this content on my YouTube channel here: https://bit.ly/355WefH
And be in touch! If you wish to have some questions answered related to music technology, I will do my best to point you in the right direction.