Music 'similarity'

I recently discovered that, as an artist, I am 100% similar to the following:

• Humair, Ducret, Chevillon + Eskelin
• Muhal Richard Abrams & Roscoe Mitchell 
• The Fonda / Stevens Group
• Jean-François Bovard Et La Compagnie d'Eustache 

And that the genres I'm working in are Juma, Gammarec, and freepurp1e. Now I have to find out what those are...

The conductor's work

Electronic Music - not so very new

120years.net provides a wealth of information on developments in electronic music. 

"The focus of this project is in exploring the main themes of electronic instrument design and development previous to 1970 (and therefore isn’t intended as an exhaustive list of recent commercial synthesisers or software packages.) As well as creating a free, encyclopaedic, pedagogical resource on the History of Electronic Music"

Simple Metric Modulation

A drum tutorial explaining metric modulation (with notated illustrations as a bonus):

Correlation =/= causation

A useful illustration that if you search wide enough you can easily find 2 highly correlated variables:

 But that does not mean there is causal relations between them

Harmony

An approach to learning  harmony and developing harmonic language that extends beyond traditional tertiary-chords. 

Pitch shifting

G09.pitchshift.pd in the help patches is an implementation of pitch shift with 2 overlapping delays. Miller explains the techniques in his online book. Here is a more detailed explanation, followed (click on next>>) by an implementation of pitchshifting library. You can download this tool and try it for yourself. This is one of the great things about Pd and open source -  it allows anyone to contribute from their own expertise. 

Pd patches

• A repository for Pd with an interactive website, examples patches, and documentation of a variety of project.
•  Pd website includes a section of patches shared by users
• A modular synth build with Pd with some examples. 

film music - learning from the masters

It pays to study the music of the past (only ca. 40 years but that counts as distant past in this era):

Hearing explained

A good resource covering the basics acoustics and psychoacoustics, as well as the ear, the auditory brain, and to hearing loss and current research.

Physclips

This wonderful multimedia presentations about the physics of sound and hearing. These were created for physics students so some parts have scary equations. Nevertheless these have excellent illustrations and explain the basics of sound from acoustic vibrations to perception very well. 

Learning Pd

• The examples that come with Pd itself (under Help menu) are the first source. Starting with the simplest constructs and methodically introducing topics with very good explanations.
• ctrl-click on an object to open the associated helpfile which is a working illustrations with good explanations.
• ctrl-click on the canvas and you get a list of Pd objects arranged by topics (e.g. scroll down to see how you handle MIDI etc.)
• The Floss Manual for Pd starts with how to install and goes on to explain basic synthesis ideas with Pd.
• Johannes Kriedler's tutorials are an excellent source as is his book Loadbang.
• Andy Farnell's  book on sound design. 
• An excellent set of examples patches from Alexandre Torres Porres (which will eventually result in a book)
• This video tutorial is the first in a good series from Dr. Rafael Hernandez.

But the most important thing to remember: you have to actually do. Open patches, change parameters, add objects, change the sounds. Reading about or watching others create patches isn't enough. 

Better Writing

Some useful resources about good writing including topics such as planning and organisations, researching, defining topics, and constructing arguments:

• Roediger's Twelve Tips for Authors
• What is academic writing from Dartmouth 
• Advice about writing essays from UToronto.

One of the important skills to develop is the difference between description and analysis.