Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - May 8, 2011, 10:28 am
This casual music-making tool from the blog littleover. is a great introduction to composition. The premise couldn’t be simpler: click on boxes to add notes to the looping, sonar-like “strum.” As you add notes you start to get a feel for what the low (“bass”) notes bring to the piece, how ...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - May 1, 2011, 6:28 pm

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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Apr 29, 2011, 9:02 am
A new iPad app called Planetary, which drops on May 2, visualizes your entire music collection as a solar system: artists are stars, albums are planets, and tracks are moons. (a big thanks to FlowingData for the heads up here!) I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea came from Kepler’s idea of a mus...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Apr 7, 2011, 4:05 pm
“Music like you’ve never seen before.” SoundPrism is a brand new app that completely reimagines musical notation and how sound is visualized. The imagination required to do this is impressive, but it’s the nuanced execution and beautiful design that make it noteworthy. At its core, SoundPr...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Dec 19, 2010, 3:15 pm
Big thanks to the Behance Network for turning me on to the amazing work of Tatiana Plakhova, whose series “Music Is Math” is a meditation on the mathematical nature of sound, expressed in exciting and complex visualizations. Her work is grounded in exploring patterns and repeated forms, but she ...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Nov 15, 2010, 9:55 am
Tristan Perich, a New York composer of experimental music, wanted to see how small he could make big philharmonic pieces. This Wired piece details 1-Bit Symphony, a 40-minute symphonic work on a single, tiny microchip. While technically not 1-bit in size (the work is actually 8 KB), it is an impres...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Oct 27, 2010, 11:15 am
A recent Gizmodo post titled “This Clip Is Proof That Birds Are Secretly Composers” features a transcription of a beautiful perched melody. The seemingly random configuration of birds on a line is, apparently, a complete pleasure to listen to.
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Oct 18, 2010, 10:53 am
Cruise Elroy is a self-proclaimed “blog about video games and, especially, video game music.” It combines a spartan page design, solid insights, and embedded musical examples to give the reader a stronger appreciation of the artistic merit of video games. Of all the blogs I subscribe to, this o...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Oct 10, 2010, 7:41 am
Further muddying the waters between sound and music:
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Sep 8, 2010, 5:32 pm
While neither philosophical nor particularly musical, the designer Mico has applied his graphic design prowess to music quotes. Enjoy. “Music Philosophy“ (You can also snag poster versions of your favorite quotes over at Etsy) Related post: “Music philosophy,” combining music and graphics...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Aug 20, 2010, 2:25 pm
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius. - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Aug 4, 2010, 2:21 pm
The TED Conferences (self-described as “riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world”) are a highly acclaimed series of presentations from the world’s most influential thinkers, innovators, and artists. Brilliant minds speaking about important topics in an approachable way. I wanted...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Jul 26, 2010, 8:15 am

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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Jul 9, 2010, 9:38 am
Courtesy Jay Kennedy “Looking at Plato’s works in their original scroll form, he noticed that every 12 lines there was a passage that discussed music.” – excerpt from NPR.org:  ”A Musical Message Discovered In Plato’s Works“ This article is fascinating to me, not because of the DaVi...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Jun 18, 2010, 11:02 pm
This is brilliant. Paul Simon sits down with Dick Cavett to discuss music, and he uses his then-unfinished song, “Still Crazy After All These Years,” to demonstrate his take on songwriting and music theory. His bridge begins with a D9 chord, which he introduces for the sole purpose of introducin...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Jun 13, 2010, 6:52 pm
The Hands Symphony is an interactive website sponsored by the American Heart Association. Choose from one of three styles of music, then click your way through various “hand instruments” as you introduce them to the piece. If nothing else, this is a great example of using the barest of ...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Jun 3, 2010, 1:57 pm
I just learned of this 2007 experiment by the Washington Post (post courtesy of The Bold Life), which can be summarized as follows: The Post arranged to have a man play the violin for 45 minutes in the middle of a busy DC-Metro station. The material consisted of six different works by J.S. Bach. Re...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Jun 1, 2010, 3:19 pm
Here is a link to a great New York Times conversation with Aniruddh D. Patel, author of “Music, Language, and the Brain,” fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, and self-proclaimed Neuroscientist of Music. One insight, following the discovery of a parrot named Snowball who dances to...
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Apr 26, 2010, 8:43 pm
… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want? - Kandinsky, 1910
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Dec 26, 2009, 9:43 am
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Dec 21, 2009, 9:34 am
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Dec 17, 2009, 9:58 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Dec 15, 2009, 7:04 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Dec 4, 2009, 8:43 am
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Nov 27, 2009, 4:31 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Nov 15, 2009, 6:01 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Nov 11, 2009, 10:10 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Nov 8, 2009, 11:30 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Oct 4, 2009, 7:05 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Sep 24, 2009, 12:31 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Sep 20, 2009, 10:33 pm
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Mark M. posted an article on BlogSounds - Aug 29, 2009, 9:41 am
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