Nathan Bowen's Blog

How Digital Audio Works (Please read this by Wednesday 1/13.  Well worth reading in its entirety.)

Dan Hosken, Computer Hardware

Dan Hosken, Computer Software

Joel Chadabe, The Electronic Century: Part I Early Instruments

Joel Chadabe, The Electronic Century: Part II Tales of the Tape

Joel Chadabe, The Electronic Century: Part III Computer and Synthesizers

Joel Chadabe, The Electronic Century: Part IV Seeds of the Future

Hi Class.  Grab this file for practice editing audio (specifically speech).  You’ll need to insert a username and password to get it off my ftp, so to go onto Blackboard for that information.  There you’ll also find details about the assignment, including instructions and suggestions for proceeding.

Here’s the link:

ftp://shock.dreamhost.com/Obama_School.mp3

UPDATE: My performance time and location has changed.  I’m now performing Saturday night at 10pm at The Tank.  Please note that the venue is no longer in Tribeca – they’ve moved to 354 W 45th St. in Hell’s Kitchen. $10 admission. If you can be at the right place at the right time, you deserve a cookie.

It’s time to tell you about an upcoming premier of my piece Gotham Swift at the first annual New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival.  This festival is being put on by a former professor of mine, Hubert Howe, along with my friends Paul Riker and Zachary Seldess.  I’m also involved as the Art Director, while my brother Jeremy is doing design for us.  Note the most excellent poster above.

I’m slated to be performing at the Friday morning concert at 10:30am on April 3 at the Elebash Recital Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center (see the full schedule here).

Here’s a map. Trains: B D F V 1 2 3 6 N R Q W

My program notes for Gotham Swift:

The recent economic downturn has created an almost palpable sense of worry here in New York City that I have not ever experienced.  Perhaps because of this backdrop of fear and uncertainty, I have taken unusual interest in the remarkable safe landing of US Airways flight 1526 in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009.  As source material I use the audio from air traffic control communications with the pilot, Captain C.B. Sullenburger, as well as recordings of traffic outside my apartment and sounds from my daughter.  The piece is intended to be a salute to the preparation of the pilot and a personal reflection on how to cope with stress in short term intervals.

Hope you can make it if you’re around and have the time!

This next week I’m going to do a premier of 4Quarters, my cell phone project, with my good friends Zachary Seldess, Paul Riker, and Rob Collins.  We are the Intermedia Arts Group, and we’re going to perform a beta version (no cell phones this time–just laptops) of what will ultimately be an audience-driven, collaborative music composition.

Since this is meant to be an improvisatory piece, I am hoping for the performance to have a little structure so we don’t sound like musical mush.  In an effort to establish some sort of compositional unity, I’m giving each of us one rhythmic cell to be used as a point of departure for composition.  Each of us will prepare our own musical content (i.e. sound files) using this basic instruction, making the piece a collaborative composition from the outset.

Our performance will be the manipulation and real-time reordering of our prepared content.  We’ll do this by pushing buttons on our laptop keyboards.  Soon that will change to pushing buttons on cell phones.

[ADDENDUM: 4QUARTERS WILL NOT BE PRESENTED.  I AM PERFORMING when spoken to in dreams INSTEAD.]

If you’d like to see/hear the fun, drop in to the concert.  Here’s the info:

CUNY/Brandeis Exchange Concert
Elebash Hall, 7:30pm
CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Ave
Trains: B D F V 1 2 3 6 N R Q W
View Larger Map

I first taught Computer Music at Hunter College in Spring, 2008.  It was a great class, and I’ve decided to post some of the content from the course online.  Here’s the syllabus.

The basic purpose of this class is to do two things: learn how to make music on computers, and learn the history of those who have made and continue to make computer music.  To learn how to make music, students become acquainted with and use digital audio workstations (DAWs), and also get exposure to object-oriented programming applications (we use Max/MSP/Jitter) with an eye toward real-time performance.  To explore important works of the past, we use an Ohm anthology of electronic music as a text book to spawn online discussions about aesthetic issues, stylistic decisions, and compositional problems brought about by evolving technologies.

This course assumes no prior experience with computer music or synthesis.  The student will develop a working knowledge of synthesis and digital signal processing through the composition of individual projects and through weekly exercises.