This weekend was Music Hack Day Stockholm (you may recall posts about the Music Hack Day in Boston a few months ago), and I spent far too much of my weekend following the events via their live feed – a little glimpse into the future of how we interact with music. I think my takeaway […]
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Music Hack Day Boston: the art of noise
November 25, 2009I promised myself that I would actually make something at Music Hack Day Boston, not just hang out while other people made stuff. So I signed up for circuit bender Jimmie Rodgers‘s newbie workshop on making an Atari Punk Console, a simple synthesizer that Jimmie designed and has made available as a kit. It uses […]
Music Hack Day Boston: roundup
November 23, 2009Right. So. The lights went out on my laptop this weekend. Literally, as it happened: the backlight on my screen died, and my plans to liveblog the Boston Music Hack Day died with it. So here’s a roundup instead. Laptop or no, it was a great weekend, with three excellent panels and lots of hacking, […]
Music Hack Day Boston, Nov 21
November 21, 200910 am: Saturday, November 21st: I am a nerd imposter. Paul Lamere just announced that the primary activity for this weekend is hacking, and that everything else is optional. As someone who spends way more time doing experimentation and analysis than coding and soldering, I’m suddenly realizing that I’m the wrong kind of nerd. I’m […]
Best of 2010: debcha’s tops in [Boston music] tech
December 23, 2010Cross-posted from Boston’s best local music blog, Boston Band Crush. Boston is a music town. And Boston is a tech town. So it’s hardly surprising that Boston and Camberville produce an enormous amount of interesting stuff at the intersection of music and technology. Here are five of my favorite examples from this year: 1. Mashup Breakdown […]
Music hacks and research questions
October 16, 2010I’m spending part of this weekend at the Boston Music Hack Day in Cambridge, MA. Like lots of people, my ideas far outstrip my abilities and (especially!) the amount of time I have, so I thought I’d put some of them up here, in the hope that they may spark some ideas in other people. […]
SXSWi 2011 panel proposals in music and tech
August 16, 2010Thinking about heading to South by Southwest Interactive next March? There’s a host of intriguing panel proposals in the music, technology and culture space. Below is a round-up of the zed equals zee faves. Click on the titles for more info and to vote. Love, Music & APIs (Dave Haynes, SoundCloud and Paul Lamere, The […]
Off-topic: Ada Lovelace Day post (kind of)
March 24, 2010Cambridge-based Science Club for Girls asked a number of women who work in science and technology, including me, to write a letter to our younger selves as part of their celebration of Women’s History Month. Inspired by picking up a soldering iron for the first time in years and making an Atari Punk Console at […]
Live music and risk
December 17, 2009Live music, especially in small venues, is about taking risks. And not everyone is comfortable with that. A couple of months ago, I went with a friend to see The Killers play at the TD Garden in Boston. It was the first arena show I’d been to in many years, and what I was most […]
Thinking about playlists
September 5, 2010I love playlists. I live and die by them, and make new ones almost daily. My car doesn’t have an MP3 input and I have a daily commute, so a good chunk of my music listening is in the form of burned CDs—de facto sub-75-min playlists. And I realize it’s antediluvian, but I still trade […]
The remix nation needs legislation
May 28, 2010If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of something called “The Swinger.” It’s a piece of Python code that debuted at the San Francisco Music Hack Day a few weeks ago, which uses The Echo Nest‘s remix software to automagically stretch and shorten beats in a song to give it that […]
Mobile collaborative playlisting (a prototype)
March 19, 2010One of my colleagues at Olin College, Mark Chang, teaches a course on Mobile Applications Development. Instead of a midterm exam, he runs a design contest. We invited Paul Lamere of Echo Nest to campus to talk about their APIs, and Mark’s students had ten days to build an app for the Android that used […]
zed equals zee happy hour returns!
December 20, 2009Live in the Boston area and interested in music, culture, and technology? Couldn’t get enough of the conversations at Music Hack Day? Come to the second zed equals zee happy hour on Monday, January 4th, 2010 (!) at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge, from 6 to 8 pm. Join me, Chris Dahlen (a writer for […]
The zed equals zee gift guide
December 13, 2009We like music, geeking out, and indie manufacturers. Two gorgeous prints by Cat and Girl. The one on the left is a timeline of hits by genre, and the one on the right is a list of first names in hit singles by here (click images for larger images and purchase links). Indie rock snark […]
Coverage: Nightmare Revisited
February 6, 2009[extended trailer for Coraline on YouTube; if you can’t watch it, click here] Guest blogger Scott writes: Coraline opens today and, while debcha might be most excited about the production of a favored author’s work, I have multiple reasons to be excited. I like gothic spooky, but can’t stomach horror (at least until a Hollywood […]
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