Psychology courses typically use lectures and tutorials to focus on key concepts, the history of psychology and the scientific methods used in psychological research. This course takes a different approach. It harnesses the creative and collaborative power of project-based learning using a series of digital projects which are scaffolded to create a coherent understanding of this important field of study. As a result, this course demonstrates a creative approach to teaching a traditional subject online.

A radical feature of this approach is Digital-Intro

Lisa Dierker, Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University, curated the online course Introduction to Psychology for the Kadenze platform. The course is delivered through a series of projects using, what Professor Dierker calls, Digital-Intro, to explain and frame the work students undertake alone or in small groups. By actively making and reflecting throughout the course, students find the learning engaging and develop transferable digital skills. Professor Dierker is driving the development of and promoting the use of Digital-Intro as a distinctive pedagogical strategy.

Why are digital skills relevant for contemporary education and critical to diversity, equity and inclusion? 

Most of the top 25 highest paying, in-demand jobs (e.g., database administrator, project marketing manager, UX designer, business development manager, solutions architect, etc.) require diverse digital skills. This enduring trend threatens to further increase current social and economic disparities given the continued under-representation of both women and individuals from racial minority groups across all technology-oriented industries. At the same time, students, particularly women and those from under-represented groups, continue to overwhelmingly pursue undergraduate degrees in social science and related fields (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017) with their first two years of college largely consumed by general education courses that rarely introduce students to technology. General education currently represents an untapped opportunity to achieve greater equality and inclusion in the U.S. workforce. 

Enter, Digital-Intro where Professor Dierker and her team are working to transform general education courses into active, project-based experiences. Projects are aimed at exposing students to a wide range of digital skills as they learn traditional disciplinary content. 

How does Digital-Intro enhance the Introduction to Psychology online course?

Within our digital Introduction to Psychology course now available on kadenze.com, students explore concepts and content in the field of psychology through video storytelling, programming, data visualization, experimentation, design and more. This novel curriculum solidifies new content knowledge, exposes students to modern digital tools and provides the opportunity to create tangible learning artifacts. The goal is learning through the creation of “stunning acts of communication”, an idea that is both aspirational and we believe, wholly achievable. Even more than introducing students to a discipline, Digital-Intro creates opportunities to learn leading digital tools and software platforms that empower students to enter the expanding digital workforce.

Within our newly launched Introduction to Psychology courses (Introduction to Psychology Part 1 and Introduction to Psychology Part 2) students can learn about the foundations of human behavior including contributions of the brain, sensation and perception, emotions, development, learning, mental health, memory, our social world and more. Lessons are delivered through a series of video presentations aimed at teaching about the field of psychology and preparing students conceptually for approaching a series of digital projects. These projects allow students to engage with the course concepts by investigating for insight, designing for change, advocating for influence, teaching to learn, and making learning stick.

The following diagram illustrates the knowledge flows and transfers which are enabled by the Digital-Intro approach to this course.

Distinctive contribution to creative education 

The underpinning pedagogy of these courses marks a distinctive and significant contribution to the field of creative education. Kadenze is proud to bring this course to students and creative educators across the globe. The course embeds digital literacy studies and practice within the study of Psychology, ensuring that the two areas of knowledge enrich each other and the students who undertake the course. Educators can learn from this innovative pedagogy and see how they too might apply Digital-Intro to their discipline and transform their classes into highly interactive, creative, and engaging sites with real-world impact in digital literacy. This vision aligns with Kadenze’s aims to offer high-quality courses in creative fields from top universities, such as Wesleyan University; to support and celebrate creative and innovative pedagogy; and to take action in areas of social justice, diversity and inclusion.

Digital-Intro for all students’ general education

The Digital-Intro initiative is 100% committed to Open Educational Resources both in the content created and in the contributions that Digital-Intro classrooms and communities will make in expanding this resource. Open Educational Resources are open to everyone and can be used, revised, re-mixed, improved and redistributed freely to create expanded access, equity, and inclusion. Open Educational Resources made by new learners serve as an empowering resource for newer learners!

Right now, Digital-Intro is in its infancy. Lisa Dierker and her colleagues at Wesleyan are excited about the vast possibilities and warmly welcome everyone to get involved. For more information, see their website at https://digitalintro.wescreates.wesleyan.edu/ and feel free to reach out. Lisa Dierker: ldierker@wesleyan.edu

Credit for Image: University of Michigan Health Lab published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

We’re excited to announce the launch of three new Micro-courses in Music:

• Computer-Assisted Music in Python, presented by Marc Evanstein, USA
• Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 1 Acquaintance, presented by RagaSphere, India
• Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 2 Appreciation, presented by RagaSphere, India

Marc Evanstein is a composer and pianist whose music takes inspiration from mathematics, physics and the natural world. His new Micro-course, Computer-Assisted Music in Python introduces students to the exciting world of algorithmic and computer-assisted composition using Python.

Marc’s course introduces you to SCAMP (Suite for Computer-Assisted Music in Python), Marc’s newly developed invention which makes it possible to create music with an ensemble of virtual instruments. Ultimately, SCAMP can be used both to create acoustic, notated music and to produce electronic music by communicating with external applications or sound synthesis languages like SuperCollider and Max/MSP. Future Micro-courses will explore this endless array of possibilities!

In this micro-course, once you become acquainted with SCAMP and with the fundamentals of Python programming (eg. variables, loops, functions), the emphasis shifts to exploring the potential of these concepts for musical creation. So, if you’re brand new to coding or to Python, you will have an opportunity to learn the basics. On the other hand, if you have a background in programming, this course will be an opportunity to focus on the musical potential of Python, and on getting to know the SCAMP framework.

Marc’s work has been featured in festivals and conferences throughout the USA and internationally. He studied Music and Music Technology at Stanford University and recently completed a Master’s in Media Arts and Technology and a PhD in Composition at UC Santa Barbara.

Our two new Micro-courses Exploring North Indian Classical Music are presented by RagaSphere, India; a team of musicians and music lovers with professional backgrounds in Engineering, Information Technology, and Media. RagaSphere uses technology and multimedia to help the curious and serious listener understand the basic concepts and finer nuances of Indian Classical Music. The author of these courses is Nitin Amin, a passionate music educator and co-founder of RagaSphere. First trained as an engineer, Nitin has a Master’s degree in Music and is a performing flautist in Hindustani Classical Music.

Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 1 Acquaintance introduces students to the scale and inter-relationship of musical notes as well as the concepts of the Raga which deals with the melodic element of music and the Tala which represents the rhythm. Understanding these abstract concepts is embodied for students through the experience of singing or playing an instrument along with a series of practice exercises.

Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 2 Appreciation shares with students what happens in a performance, revealing how the element of improvisation imbues North Indian Classical Music with mystical surprise. The Micro-course demonstrates how the Raga and Tala form the composition, which is then used as a tool to improvise and expand in performance. Examples of vocal and instrumental performances are explored.

While these Micro-courses will help listeners everywhere experience North Indian Classical Music better, they are designed also to help musicians of other genres of music enhance their performance skills. Together these two Micro-courses open up a rich world of music tradition and you will join RagaSphere’s worldwide community dedicated to the appreciation and enjoyment of a classical Indian music performance.

These new Micro-courses are the latest instances of Kadenze’s commitment to delivering exceptional online courses and Micro-courses across a range of music disciplines and technologies. So whether you are a student, a performer, or a listener curious to learn, come to Kadenze.com, your go-to partner for Music Courses, Programs and bite-sized Micro-courses.

To celebrate the launch, the Micro-course Computer-Assisted Music in Python is on sale for $USD30.00 – that’s $10 off the original price of $USD40.00. But only until October 1, 2021. Discover the Micro-course now and enrol to start learning!
LEARN MORE

To celebrate the launch, the Micro-course Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 1 Acquaintance is on sale for $USD25.00 – that’s $50 off the original price of $USD75.00. But only until October 1, 2021. Discover the Micro-course now and enrol to start learning!
LEARN MORE

By Brad Haseman, Executive Vice President of Kadenze, Inc. and Amanda Morris, Director, Higher Education Engagement, Kadenze, Inc.

Image by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash

Previously, on the blog…

Kadenze, Inc. (“Kadenze”)  had been anticipating disruption to higher education but, like the world, was stunned to find it came as a pandemic. Overnight in March 2020 higher education went online. A violent and ugly disruption, especially for those disciplines Kadenze cares about – the creative arts, design and creative technologies – and their studio pedagogies. 

Since then, arts and design staff have been laid off, furloughed, or contracts not renewed. Arts majors are being cut, degrees discontinued and research centres closed, illustrating how vulnerable the arts are at present and around the globe. Do these cuts allow universities and colleges to hold onto their deep “consensual hallucination” that some stiff belt tightening will see them right? Or will they make the harder systemic and cultural changes needed to deliver greater “cross institutional sharing and collaboration,” as called for by Nancy Uscher, Dean of the College of Fine Arts, University of Nevada, in our last blog post?

At the moment it could go either way.

The first key obstacle to sharing resources and to prioritizing partnerships sits at the heart of the corporate university. Universities and colleges compete with each other for revenue by promoting their exclusivity and elite quality of their teaching and research. As a result, we see the top universities in the world behaving with the exclusivity of “luxury brands” according to marketing professor Scott Galloway. This means that the lesser known ‘brands’ or universities play catch-up, anxious to protect the prestige they have.

The second impediment lies in the expectations of students, now customers.  Education is increasingly transactional, relying on students being prepared (and able) to pay higher and higher fees for their elite education. Students then carry increased debt as they pursue the best staff, best networks, best career prospects, best facilities, best athletics programs and so on.

The third impediment is the sense shared by many academics and artists that online creative education can’t replace the real thing, as articulated in Siham Ali’s article ‘Online art school is not art school.’ Is a virtual arts studio, one with global connectivity that is supported by experts in their field, a sub-standard version of the arts school? Perhaps online and on-campus learning can live alongside each other, each doing the work the other cannot? Yong Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas, for instance, sees online learning as better able to create “authentic learning experiences through collaborative learning with peer learners around the globe than traditional academic learning.”

For Kadenze, these are not insurmountable impediments. However, some radical re-thinking of many established practices will be required, including opening up the current competitive model to value partnerships which offer mutual benefits. We are currently testing the status quo by setting up four sharing mechanisms for educational partners on kadenze.com. 

Firstly, Kadenze partners with institutions to produce online courses to interface with existing programs on campus. The University of Texas at Austin developed the kadenze.com course Gender, Race and Technology, and is currently leveraging this online content to support on-campus delivery. With ‘Black lives Matter’ in the streets, this could hardly be a more potent and timely study. Now teachers can curate a combination of digital delivery (from digital libraries holding materials from international experts) and in-person delivery.  Teachers can save what’s unique to their expertise in the field and requires practical or group interaction, for the in-person delivery time. 

The second sharing mechanism is that Kadenze’s educational partners offer to share their online courses for credit with other universities. This is an opportunity for an institution to take third party content and make it their own, without having to invest resources to develop the content. For instance, California College of the Arts has made Introduction to 3D Modelling and Animation with Maya credit-eligible for students from other institutions for a modest fee. Many academics see sharing credit as an efficient use of resources, an opportunity for student choice and an effective way to connect students to global networks. Professor George Tzanetakis from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, observed from his experience in developing the kadenze.com course on Machine Learning for Music Information Retrieval that “cross-institutional sharing can be useful, especially for specialized courses.” Professor Tzanetakis hopes that with time, “credit transfer becomes more common, as well as student exchanges, as experiencing different academic institutions is a great way to broaden your perspective and education.”

Thirdly, Kadenze’s Open Educational Resources (OER) opens up access to the digital learning resources produced by our consortium of university partners for teachers, students and libraries. These resources are able to be used, shared, combined, adapted and expanded for teaching, learning and research. The content covers a wide variety of educational materials in the creative arts, design and creative technologies and is structured as complete courses ready to use. Kadenze has offered free access to OER content for its educational partners to support their teaching during 2020 due to COVID-19 disruptions.

Finally, Kadenze enables universities and colleges to incorporate kadenze.com catalogue units and kadenze.com courses into their own undergraduate degree program. This, the boldest Kadenze offering, is a direct response to the contractions and cuts which are forcibly removing units from programs. What would it take to replace some of these deleted units with relevant offerings from the kadenze.com catalogue? They clearly pass the quality test, (the quality of the content, teachers and learning design is of world standing) and if the kadenze.com course was complemented with a local teaching assistant to ‘host’ the learning journey, then the best of online and on-campus learning can blend. The teaching assistant will monitor online and on campus engagement, mark assessment, and customize the online pathway for local content and contexts. The Australian Guild of Music Education (AGME), for example, is incorporating the content of six kadenze.com courses into its Bachelor of Music, internationalizing its curriculum (drawing on courses from Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, Berklee College of Music, Columbus College of Art and Design and Princeton University) and addressing the learning needs of its widely dispersed student cohorts.  As well as enriching student learning with these educational assets, AGME is finding the benefits of cost savings and value creation. By accessing a world leading catalogue of creative course content on demand, it is unlocking the advantage of scale; leveraging scalable learning tools to free up time (and budgets) to address completely unforeseen COVID-19-led challenges.  

These four sharing mechanisms developed by Kadenze can have a major impact on the circulation of high-quality content in the arts and design. While much basic core content is accessible for free right now, floating in the ether as fragmented packages of skills and knowledge, the real value for colleges and universities lies in the careful curation of learning pathways. As budgets, staff and subject choices shrink in today’s COVID-19 spin-cycle, the sustainable institutions of the future will have to learn to open up, to embrace Open Educational Resources, to share and transfer credit, and to draw on content from high-quality partners. Sustainable institutions that do this can continue to expand their ability to set themselves apart by bringing their own deep and unique culture as an organisation (brilliant professors, industry connections etc.) for their students’ benefit. 

Enabling this is kadenze.com, an innovation intermediary in the cloud for creative disciplines in higher education. 

About the Authors:
Brad Haseman is Executive Vice President of Kadenze, Inc. overseeing arts-led pedagogies for their global online catalogue in the creative arts, design and creative education. He is Professor Emeritus with the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. Over his 40-year career as a teacher, speaker, teaching artist and researcher Brad has pursued his fascination with the aesthetics, forms and affordability of arts-based learning.

Amanda Morris is an arts educator, known for innovative programs and creative collaboration. Her career spans leadership roles in higher education, as Executive Director Conservatoire at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) in Australia, as Dean Performing Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore and as Director, Centre for Fine Arts, Music and Theatre at
the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Amanda is Director of Higher Education Engagement of Kadenze, Inc.

By Brad Haseman, Executive Vice President of Kadenze, Inc. and Amanda Morris, Director, Higher Education Engagement, Kadenze, Inc.

Image by John Fowler on Unsplash

The founders of Kadenze, Inc. (“Kadenze”) sensed there was a big disruption coming. “When we founded the company in 2013 we were convinced that a major disruption was coming in the education sector,” says Ashok Ahuja, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Kadenze. Something would have to give. Then on January 21, 2020, a forewarning of that disruption chirped on Twitter – the term ‘coronavirus’ was used for the first time. 

Within weeks the effects were seen everywhere, and especially in higher education. Amanda Morris, Director of Higher Education Engagement of Kadenze, shares her experience of the disruptions in mid-March, when working at an Australian arts college:

“The word went around the studios – even before the official communication – the decision had been made to send students home and close the school at least until the Easter holidays. At lunchtime students gathered in the open-air atrium – maintaining social distance they danced, music exploding from portable speakers, bodies leaping, voices singing with excitement, tinged with fear. In the face of a global pandemic, the improvised gathering brought much-needed communal support without physical proximity. Senior teachers and administrators drew courage from the energy and hope of the young. I had more meetings, more issues to address. How many Zoom licenses did we have? How many might we need? Throughout the afternoon, groups of students farewelled their teachers and each other as they went their separate directions into lockdown. By early evening I surfaced from the office, hearing laughter from two students who were wheeling their mannequins along the corridor. I said goodbye and wished them well as they headed home with materials to continue their practical studies in costume making. From conversations with colleagues, I knew that similar scenes of farewell, school closures and swift and urgent pivoting from in-person to online teaching were happening in other institutions across the world. We were all scrambling to move our teaching fully online with only a few days turnaround.”

The disruption caused personal stories of turmoil, stress and loss for teachers and administrators, students and their families. For some, the pandemic has had an immediate and devastating impact through illness and death of family or friends. For others, the impact has meant isolation, poor mental health, financial loss, job redundancy and the derailment of career or study progression. Students were stressed as they moved home – often interstate or overseas – or returned from international placements; and negotiated lack of private space, internet access, and technical equipment to study online. Teaching staff and administrators were stressed as they poured over their curricula to see what could be delivered online and what could be postponed in the hopes of in-person teaching later on. Academic calendars were revised; live group presentations were re-imagined. 

For Kadenze, this distress has been painful to watch, but in one sense inevitable, for we believed that the dynamics of higher education could not continue as they were, and we had prepared for coming change. Whatever the disruption would be (and who could have predicted it would be wrought by a pandemic), we knew online learning would be an essential part of the future for our priority disciplines in the arts, design and creative technologies. We challenged ourselves and our partners to develop a new model for delivery of expert content; a model that is accessible, affordable, scalable, and maintains the high standards set by universities.  

Kadenze’s model is based on three foundational priorities. Firstly, we innovated by securing the best content, partnering with over 35 leading universities, colleges and industry organizations from around the world to develop courses for the kadenze.com platform. Importantly for the Kadenze ethos, education should be accessible to all. kadenze.com courses are not only high quality, they are affordable. Secondly, we enhanced our platform for arts and interactivity in Kannu, our learning management system. Kadenze has pioneered a number of field-defining features for our online platform to meet the complex interactions aesthetic learning demands. Students learn through course galleries and forums which are directly linked to student assignments and engagement, with a built-in portfolio to showcase learning. Finally, we developed an online learning design framework which embraces the principles of arts and design learning. Kadenze’s Technology Enabled Creative Learning^SM (TECL^TM) framework fuses the longstanding principles of creative and aesthetic learning with technological innovations to amplify the reach and scale of the creative disciplines like never before. We understand learning needs to be creative, complex, telling and playful.

In order to survive, the higher education sector needs to re-think systems and models for delivery of teaching. Universities, colleges, and schools need to adapt, without crippling their students with the financial burden of even higher tuition fees. Through the current crisis, teachers of practice-based design, creative and performing arts have particularly struggled to re-conceive how they might teach in an online environment. We have heard from a number of our educational partners and understand that staff have thrown themselves into intensive professional development to get up-to-speed with online technologies. Some faculties have been fortunate to have a dedicated learning technologist allocated to support teachers, while many of our partners have drawn on Kadenze’s offer of support for the Fall semester by accessing kadenze.com course content to enhance student learning at no charge.

Some great learning has come from this year’s disruptions, as Kadenze colleagues have shared with us.

George Tzanetakis, Professor in Computer Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada told us, “In terms of teaching, everyone has switched to online. Some older faculty have found it hard to adjust but younger faculty were already utilizing various technologies, so they have managed the transition. Student engagement has been a challenge.”

Lonce Wyse, Associate Professor in Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore said, “Over the summer we planned for a 100% online Fall term. Hey, we are the Department of Communication and New Media – ‘we got this!’ And we did ‘get this,’ in fact. Lectures were the easiest to move online, and students even appreciated having more classes with flexible lecture-viewing times (since more were recorded). As we became more adept with the tools… online seminars of up to 15 participants also seemed to work well. Some students really stepped up, probably feeling more comfortable speaking up in class than they did in person. It is thus interesting to think about how different formats bring out or stifle different populations of students.”  

Philippe Pasquier, Associate Dean Academic at the Faculty of Communication, Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Canada noted that: “Asynchronous teaching has been increased and online delivery means that our students are actually taking more credits than usual… As a result of this move online, a ton of innovations in terms of assignments and student projects … has been needed.”

It seems that our educational partners are ready for innovations in teaching and learning models, as well as new practices and methods for delivery, that are developed in response to the recent disruptions in order to ensure sustainability and accessibility in the higher education sector.

Nancy Uscher, Dean of the College of Fine Arts, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has neatly summarized the forward-looking and constructive response to 2020 disruptions that Kadenze and its educational partners have taken as “a time of rich learning and productive experimentation.” Nancy noted that, “Faculty have learned new skills, the university has shored up technological tools and infrastructure and new events such as UNLV Arts Worldwide, a YouTube program about the college, was launched. Cross-institutional sharing and collaboration will be increasingly important in all higher education institutions – it has never been more important to embrace this paradigm for the future of the global higher education sector.”

Online learning has enabled students, teachers and administrators to survive the disruptions of 2020 and has become an accepted and essential method of delivering learning. Kadenze’s preparations in developing infrastructure such as kadenze.com, Kannu, TECL^TM – and more recently introducing the Kadenze Virtual Studio^SM (KVS^TM) to support the online teaching of freelance arts educators – have found their time to shine. The inevitable disruption has occurred, and higher education will not be the same next year or in years to come. At Kadenze, we predict that there is a bright future for our community of arts educators and practitioners who are willing to share their expertise and resources globally. Our next blog post will pick up this thread to predict as Nancy Uscher articulated – that ‘cross-institutional sharing and collaboration will be increasingly important in all higher education.’

The question remains whether universities will be able to embrace a future of shared course content and credit, collaborations and partnerships, or will they continue to cling to what marketing professor Scott Galloway calls their “consensual hallucination,” holding on unconvincingly to the notion that the COVID-19 pandemic will pass and they can return to business as usual?

About the Authors:
Brad Haseman is Executive Vice President of Kadenze, Inc. overseeing arts-led pedagogies for their global online catalogue in the creative arts, design and creative education. He is Professor Emeritus with the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. Over his 40-year career as a teacher, speaker, teaching artist and researcher Brad has pursued his fascination with the aesthetics, forms and affordability of arts-based learning.

Amanda Morris is an arts educator, known for innovative programs and creative collaboration. Her career spans leadership roles in higher education, as Executive Director Conservatoire at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) in Australia, as Dean Performing Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore and as Director, Centre for Fine Arts, Music and Theatre at
the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Amanda is Director of Higher Education Engagement of Kadenze, Inc.

By Brad Haseman, Executive Vice President of Kadenze, Inc.

Many artists from our Kadenze community would have been packing their bags and heading to Seoul, Korea this week. I am referring to our socially-engaged-colleagues who address the everyday lives of people and confront the challenging issues of our society. They are artists with a passion and practice for arts and activism, the participatory arts and the arts for social change; they are teaching artists and they work around the world. The magnet drawing them to Seoul was to be the fifth International Teaching Artist Conference (ITAC5), set up to explore ways to turn ‘boundaries into new pathways,’ which is the central theme. Plans were put in place, calls for papers were made, travel plans confirmed.

Then COVID-19 arrived…and stayed. Consequently the hosts of ITAC5, the Korea Arts and Culture Education Services(KACES) decided to pivot, and they did, with the elegance of a pirouette. They redesigned the live event into a fully digital one. Yes, like every other arts organisation, COVID has accelerated the move to online conference collaboration and learning.

The new virtual ITAC5 opens on Monday 14^th September and it is already possible to see how COVID has affected the form and content of what promises to be a landmark event for the International Teaching Artists movement and for online arts conferences generally.

The conference organizers have had to meet three chief design challenges which have disrupted the form of the face-to-face event. The first has been to seek out conference activities which increase interactivity and engagement. How to ensure that the energy of the live event is not replaced by a series of broadcast-style, bullet-point, talking-heads? Many presenters are now adept with video conferencing tools to communicate across time and space, but how to do it creatively and poetically?  Not surprisingly teaching artists have risen to this challenge, taking their lead from digital artists and new media colleagues. 

The 24-hour world clock presented the second challenge in the form of scheduling concerns. While much has been programmed into a ‘13-hour Seoul day,’ there are always teaching artists awake in other parts of the world. So innovative elements have been introduced. The conference organisers also had to consider how to archive and retrieve presentations. How will people use the Collective Rooms which will be open 24 hours each day?

While conferences are valued for their intellectual and artistic stimulation, we also know the informal conference matters too. The ITAC5 hosts have triumphed in this third challenge, offering imaginative, bespoke opportunities to meet and gather as individuals. An extended Art Project: Drawing Dictation, in the form of imaginary digital soundscapes and lounges, has been enhanced by offering delegates opportunities to join MUCKJA, to meet and eat, HAJA, to play and perform, GACHIHAJA, to call and collaborate, NOLJA, to chill and chat, MOOTJA, to ask and advise and MALHAJA, to discuss and share sessions and workshops. Some truly creative ways to become perfectly remote. 

These changes to the traditional form of the conference have all been made to strengthen and enhance the intellectual, creative and contextual work of the conference. Two years ago the conference planners set the themes which, as events would have it, uncannily prefigured our COVID context.

The first theme, Unlearning, asks, “What do we as teaching artists (and participants) need to unlearn, and what are the most powerful tools for new learning?” In response, the conference abstracts propose new ways to question, examine and analyze creativity for the arts, culture and change. Traditional modes of arts learning are challenged to maximise their impact and to embed enquiry and dialogic conversation in all aspects of cultural life and practice.

The second theme, Local and Nomadic Practices, asks, “What is universal in the practices that we offer to other specific communities and even to other parts of the world—our nomadic potential”? and “What is the dynamic balance between local and universal?” The presentations on offer pick up on issues of sustainability for artists and communities, the conditions and circumstances whereby power and change come about, and what being a nomad means for the life, practice and experience of becoming and being a teaching artist.

The final theme, Peace and Reconciliation, challenges delegates to wrestle with ways they “can facilitate citizens to become the agents of change in their own communities and beyond, by embracing difference and diversity.” In response many instances detailing how arts activism can shape better futures will be shared. Consideration will also be given to what is involved in making better choices for better outcomes for both teaching artists and their communities. Other papers will explore what are the deep embodied understandings and practices which take tolerance from one’s own body to the body politic, or organized groups of citizens.

The three days of the conference next week will be of course strange for everyone who attends. Certainly the artists, arts educators, administrators, funders and researchers from all around the world will be present and together, but also alone and apart. While some will miss the intimacy of the live, others will be comforted by the enabled distance of this virtual conference and relish that they have not had to pack for Korea this September. 

To find out more about ITAC5 click here. 

To find out more about The Basics of Teaching Artistry click here.

About the Author:
Brad Haseman is a teaching artist from Australia who for over a decade worked in Papua New Guinea developing programs for HIV and AIDS education. In 2014 he co-convened the second International Teaching Artist Conference (ITAC2) in Brisbane, Australia and serves on the ITAC5 Programming Committee.  Kadenze, Inc has strong links with Teaching Artists globally. The Kadenze program The Basics of Teaching Artistry features courses by Lincoln Centre Education (NYC), the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (Brisbane) and Sydney Opera House (Sydney, Australia). Brad is Executive Vice President of Kadenze, Inc.

But how do you know which course is right for you and if it’s any good?

A great course is structured to emulate the natural learning progression of audio plugin development. By starting with the foundations and basic principles, students can quickly move on to writing the code that underpins the plugins, before developing their own plugin with a sleek and intuitive UI design. With guidance from respected software engineers, students can be assured that the course content is relevant and reflects current industry standards.

Benefits of a great course at-a-glance:

• Content by recognized industry experts
• Access to a relevant and exclusive curriculum
• Opportunities to join in forum discussions
• Verified certificate endorsed by the provider
• A portfolio of work that can easily be shared.

Output Teaches Creating Audio Plugins with C++ and JUCE

Developed in partnership with Output, Creating Audio Plugins with C++ and JUCE will teach students how to create their own industry-grade audio plugins (VST/AudioUnit/AAX), ready for the studio and stage. This entire course is taught in C++ and JUCE – the industry standards in the field. 

Output is recognized as one of the leading audio development companies in the music industry, and this in-depth Program offers an inside look at their process for developing innovative plugins. Students are guided through lesson content and hands on assignments by expert software engineers and sound designers, sharing their tried and tested knowledge. 

Program Schedule

Students will complete 8 sessions, with 6 hours of work per session. Divided into two courses, students will explore the fundamentals of audio plugin development before progressing to more advanced development aspects. Throughout the many elements covered, learners will leave knowing how to:

• Architect modular industrial-grade plugins from scratch
• Implement DSP and effects like delays, choruses, and more
• Creating your own finished audio plugin complete with sleek, reusable, and automatable user interfaces and controls.

Why learn audio plugin development with Output and Kadenze?

Kadenze is the global leader in online learning in creative technology, providing courses in a wide array of subjects like software programming/coding, machine learning, and more, in music and the visual arts.

This Program is ideal for artists, producers, and music technologists interested in sharpening their creative exploration of audio plugin development. It is suitable for those starting out and for those seeking to fine tune their skills to an expert level. Plus learning tricks and tips from the recognized software leaders at Output will put you a step ahead of the rest!

Key takeaways from the Program include developing fluency in JUCE and knowledge of audio plugin architecture. Students will also develop a strong understanding of DSP and GUI programming through C++.

Developing your own audio plugin and understanding the software involved couldn’t get easier than through a Program like this! 

Special Offer!
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For a limited time only.

*Premium Membership is required to access Programs. 

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When it comes to digital fabrication methods like 3D printing or CNC, there’s an endless amount of printing materials to choose from, and with all those different materials, there’s even more opportunities to create amazing and original projects.

If you’re just getting started in the world of digital fabrication, this post will guide you through some of the essential materials used in digital fabrication.  Whether you’re new to using wood, paper, plastic, or metal, you’ll see what materials best fit your own creative designs.

1. Wood

First off, we’ll take a look at wood: wood is a really versatile and accessible material for anyone starting out in digital fabrication. It comes in a long list of variations, and each type of wood is going to react differently with digifab machinery. Since there are so many variations, we’re going to organize wood into 3 sub-categories:

• Hard wood (ie: balsa wood, oak, maple, cherry, walnut)
• Soft wood (ie: cedar, fir, hemlock, pine, spruce)
• Engineered wood products (wood composites) 

Hard and soft wood is differentiated by the leaf structure of the tree it came from. Hard woods have broad leaves, while soft woods have needles. 

As a beginner in digital fabrication, engineered wood can be a solid material to work with for your initial projects. Engineered wood is extremely stable and easy to find. Plywood is also one of the most common types of engineered wood, you can find an extensive guide to it here.

Not sure about what kind you’ll need? Take at look at what specific types are used for what. For example, hard maple is used to make cutting boards to bowling alley floors, while cherry wood is often used for furniture and cabinetry.

Outside of more functional reasons, you can also consider your own aesthetic and financial decisions too. You might personally like the green hue of poplar wood, or you might want to work with birch since it’s less expensive compared to other hardwoods.

Pros:

• Hard woods have a beautiful, natural texture to them so you can have a polished end product by just applying some clear finish

• Hard woods are perfect for long-lasting, high-quality furniture pieces

• Engineered wood is a budget-friendly material to work with 

Cons:

• Hard wood varieties may not be able to push through the router bit at the same speeds as others and may need more than one pass to get desired end product

• Soft woods can easily get dents and scratches as you’re working on a piece

• You may need access to a wood shop to be able to customize your materials

2. Paper

Paper and paper products are materials you’ll most likely have instant access to. This material is great if you want to create mock ups for bigger projects, and you also don’t need access to heavy-duty printing machines to get started on your own projects.

We’ll go over a handful of paper materials you can try out now.

Card stock is mainly used for greeting cards, business cards, etc. It comes in varying bond weights, from 40 lbs – 110 lbs, the higher the weight, the thicker the paper. 

Chipboard is commonly used to make architectural models and is basically thicker card stock. This material is strong and inexpensive and runs smoothly in a laser cutting machine. 

Cardboard is one the best materials to use to create mock-ups for laser and CNC printing with some specialized tools. Using cardboard in a laser cutter gives you really precise details and prints in no time.

Pros:

• Don’t need access to expensive, complicated machinery to work with paper
• Can work with a variety of colors and bond weights

• Repurpose paper into a variety of mediums, ie: material for mock up work, create your own stencils, paper models

Cons: 

• Depending on what kind of paper you use and how you structure your printed objects, your end product may not be as long-lasting and durable compared to other materials

4. Plastic

When you first start working with plastics, you might run into a problem where there’ll be multiple labels for the same thing. Here are some common variations of plastic you’ll come across:

Acrylic (also known as acrylite or plexiglass) comes in a range of colors and thicknesses, surface treatments (mirrored, opaque, clear, milky, metallics), and can even come in pre-made designs. 

It’s also important to know that acrylic comes in two varieties, cast and extruded. They may look identical, but they have completely different reactions when using the same printing machines. To differentiate the two, take a look at the chart above.

Pros:

• Can work with a wide range of plastic variations to fit project needs
• Generally easy to cut 
• Plastic parts can be used for both functional, final pieces or general design tests

Cons: 

• Using the wrong kind of plastics can severely damage printing equipment and become a lab hazard 

Need to work with closed chamber 3D printer for certain plastics (ABS, ASA) due to harmful emissions when printing

Like plastics, there are a large number of variations for metal materials, so we’ll go over some of the essential generalizations about metals. All the different kinds of metals will be broken down by different alloys (combination of metals). These alloys will each have their own properties for workability based on the metal’s intended use. 

5. Metal

Metals can be broken into two groups: ferrous and non-ferrous 

If you want to find out more about working with metals, take a look at these resources:

All3DP’s Metal 3D Printer Guide

Protolab’s Balancing CNC Machining and 3D Printing for Metal Parts 

3DHubs’ Selecting the right CNC material

Pros:

• Most non-ferrous metals can be used with the same machines and tools used for wood-cutting with
• Steel materials typically last longer than plastic ones

Cons:

• Some machines and tools may not work on all metals, verify what metals you’re working with
• May need to find separate, specialized printing services, services cutting wood and plastic rarely cut metal 
• Need larger equipment to cut metals

Now that we’ve gone over some of the key materials in digital fabrication, what kind of materials are you excited to work on for your next printing project?

This content is from Session 3 of the course Introduction to Digital Fabrication and Technical Design. Sign up below:

Introduction to Digital Fabrication and Technical Design

Kadenze Academy

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If you ever wanted to amp up your sound design or craft the music you want to hear, using Ableton Live’s Audio Effects are a great place to start. You can add Audio Effects to MIDI instruments, audio inputs, and imported samples in Ableton Live, equipping you with endless sound-sculpting possibilities.

Essential Audio Effects for Mixing

1. Reverb

We’ll start off with the Reverb Effect. Reverb relates to how sound bounces and reflects off room surfaces and objects. If you want to prolong the duration of a sound or create the impression of space, adding reverb helps to ease your sounds into a mix while adding depth and atmosphere.

You can also think about reverb in the context of specific locations. Imagine how music in a bathroom would sound compared to music in a cathedral. Since those spaces have completely different layouts and architectural structures, the same sounds played in those environments would result in different reverberations.

The origins of reverb can also be traced back to early recording techniques from the 1920s. Recording artists would experiment with microphone placement to recording in different locations or rooms. Later on, inventions like the spring and plate reverb replicated those recording techniques in the form of actual devices.

Ableton’s Reverb Effect is similar to the spring and plate reverbs in the sense that you can filter sounds through a particular module in order to achieve a manufactured reverb effect.

How to Use the Reverb Effect:

• To get started, we can take a look at some important parameters in Ableton’s Reverb Audio Effect. On the right-hand side, you have the output section with the Reflect, Diffuse and Dry/Wet parameters. The easiest way to immediately add some reverb effects would be with the Dry/Wet knob. At 0%, you’ll hear the unaffected signal, then as you mix in the reverb process signal, the amount of reverb in your track increases.

• The Reflect knob, also known as early reflections, helps give you a sense of the size of a space. Reflection can also be described as an instance where sound is emitted from a source, then bounces off of the surfaces of a contained space. You can hear early reflections after an initial sound is made that sounds similar to an echo.

• The Diffuse knob, or late reflections, refers to how those reflected sounds spread and linger into a space.

• You can also use the Size parameter to manipulate the size of a digital space (lower Size = smaller room, higher Size = bigger room).

• Decay Time controls how quickly the reverb starts to decay or until the reflection of a sound fades away.

When you’re trying to figure out how much reverb you need, a simple trick is starting off with the Dry/Wet knob at 100%, then gradually decreasing the amount to your liking. By starting off at 100%, you can immediately hear the reverb applied to a track and can adjust it to flow in with the rest of your mix from there.

Reverb can also be categorized by room types (ie: Room Reverb). You can also check out these different types of reverb to hear the distinctions.

2. Compressor

The Compressor Effect in Ableton Live boosts your sounds without losing its intensity and consistency. You can control how prominent you want your track to be without creating distortion, which also helps with adjusting its placement in the mix overall.

How To Use the Compressor Effect:

There are three modes to view the Compressor tool in Ableton: Collapse, Transfer Curve, and Activity Display. We’ll be focusing on the first two:

• In the Collapse View, you can get an overview of the Compressor’s primary controls.
• The Ratio parameter adjusts the ratio between the input and output signals.
• The Threshold parameter signals when the compressor will engage. As you lower the threshold, this causes a higher level of gain reduction and increases compression.
• If you increase the Attack, you may not hear the compressor engaging, where as a low Attack can cause sounds to fall flat. The same goes for the Release parameter. Adjusting the Release will affect when the Compressor will engage with an incoming signal.

• In the Transfer Curve view, you can see the ratio between the input and output levels of the Compressor.
• The Knee function (adjustable curve in Transfer Curve view) controls the impact of compression. Moving the Knee will cause compression to happen more subtly or harshly as it increases the Threshold.
• The Dry/Wet parameter in both of these views controls how present the compression is when it’s applied. A lower percentage would mean the compressor is barely heard, when at 100%, the compressor is in full effect.

3. EQ

The way a sound unique from other sounds mostly comes from the relationships between the frequencies a sound is made up of. An EQ enables you to adjust those frequencies by turning them up or down. Certain sounds in a mix can get lost or buried, so an EQ can help balance muddy sounds in a shared frequency space. Before music production, EQ’s came about from telecommunication used to correct tonal changes caused by the transmission of audio signals across telephone lines.

With EQ, you can control where the sound is located in a mix, what the timbre (tone, quality of a sound) will be and cut out any unwanted frequencies.

We’ll dive into some commonly-used EQs in Ableton Live:

EQ Three

• The EQ Three has 3 filters that split the audio signal into 3 adjustable frequency bands: low, mid and high. This type of EQ is effective in controlling a broader range of tone control in a track.
• In the EQ Three window, pressing the “L,” “M,” or “H” buttons would completely cut out those individual frequencies, while adjusting the individual knobs would create more gradual cuts or boosts to those 3 frequencies. You can cut out entire bands at a time to create tension and release to a track.

• You can also adjust the frequency range of each band with the FreqLo and FreqHi knobs. Depending on what Hz you use, that would be the cut off point for the various frequencies. Let’s say the FreqLo is at 600 Hz, then the low band would be limited to 0 Hz to 600 Hz. So you would be able to control what amount of highs and lows will come through in the mix.
• The section in between the FreqLo and FreqHi knobs are the 24 and 48 decibels. 24 decibels per octave will have a gradual cut on frequencies and the 48 decibels will have a harsher one.

EQ Eight

• The EQ Eight (or Ableton’s parametric EQ) on the other hand, provides a lot more adjustable parameters to shape your frequencies. Here’s an extensive, in-depth article on how to use the EQ Eight.

Creative Effects for Sound Modulation

Now we’ll shift gears and explore an overview of the more creative audio effects to add texture and style into your sounds and tracks!

4. Auto-Pan

One effect for creating a stereo panning or synth-like sounds is the Auto-Pan Effect.

Here’s a great video from ELPHNT on how to create sidechain pump effect (sounds similar to a pulsing bass you’d hear in an EDM track) with the Auto-Pan.

Panning itself is used to clean up a mix by shifting your sounds to left or right speaker. The Auto-Pan Effect manipulates sounds by automatically adjusting the volume of the left and right channels depending on phase amount. If the phase is set at 180 degrees, the sounds from the left and right speakers will perfectly offset each other. Meaning, while the volume of one speaker is on, the other will be turned off. This gives the illusion that the sound is bouncing back and forth from one ear to the other.

5. Beat Repeat

The Beat Repeat Effect is amazing for building glitchy, stuttering sounds, especially for drum beats. You can highlight a section of a drum beat or any recording and manipulate it to repeat multiple times. Those repeated sections can even be changed in pitch and randomized as to when they’ll repeat. Here’s video from Dubspot that explains how to use Beat Repeat and see how you can create your own experimental sounds just from a drum loop.

6. Vocoder

The Vocoder Effect is a really versatile tool for sonic manipulation. By combining two signals together (carrier + modulator) into a joined sound, you can manipulate vocals, drum beats, to other instruments into new sounds entirely.

If you’ve ever wanted to create robot vocals, this article provides a great guide on how to just that.

7. Overdrive

If you like producing distortion-heavy tracks, then the Overdrive Effect is exactly what you want. This effect was inspired by distortion guitar pedals and you can amp up the drive without losing any dynamic range (ratio of the softest to loudest sound in an instrument).

You can also view Ableton’s complete list of Audio Effects and how to use them here.

Now that you’ve learned some of the essential audio effects in Ableton, try applying them to your own workflow to see what creative sounds you’ll create!

This content is from the course Sound Production in Ableton Live for Musicians and Artists by California Institute of the Arts. Get started in learning new music techniques by enrolling below:

Sound Production in Ableton Live for Musicians and Artists

California Institute of the Arts

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Experimental Foundations for Sound Design

Columbia University of the City of New York

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UI Design, or user interface design, runs in the same vein as UX Design. UI Design focuses on how users interact with a product in a visual context through websites, mobile apps, or other electronic devices. UI and UX Design often get interchanged for one another, but when it comes to UI Design, it’s all about creating the look and usability of a product.

What You’ll Do:

• Have strong skills in composition, color schemes, typography, and graphic design (including grid principles.)
• Use visual cues to guide viewers through digital interfaces.
• Have working knowledge of tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, InDesign to Balsamiq.
• Design apps and websites from the ground up (ideation, prototyping, to testing.)

Additional Resources

• Essential Tools for UI Designers
• Blog with UI Design Resources
• Day in the Life of a UI Designer

UX Design, or user experience design refers to design focused on creating products that are easily accessible and intuitively engaging. It’s predicted that the number of UX Design jobs available will increase by 18% in the next ten years.

As a UX Designer, your responsibilities often change depending on who you work for. Each company or employer would expect different things from a UX Designer based on their own goals. We’ll list some general descriptions of what you would be doing in UX Design. For an in-depth look at the unique applications of UX design, check out this interview.

What You’ll Do:

• Overlook design process from start to finish, including initial user research to later stages of testing.
• Think in the perspective of and develop content with users’ expectations and desires.
• Create visual mockups for the final stages of a project.
• Jack-of-All-Trades: Work with various elements like Visual Design, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, User Research to Psychology

Additional Resources:

• The History of UX Design
• Top UX Design Programs

Virtual reality is a fast-growing field and had become a prominent figure in the entertainment industry, expanding to an array of fields like product design, art, to science-related fields. The virtual reality market alone is expected to increase from 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2017 to more than 19 billion U.S. dollars by 2020. Similar to a UX Designer, your skills and responsibilities as a VR Designer may vary depending on a client’s needs. At its core, virtual reality is about creating immersive, exploratory worlds or simulations to supplement training or product testing.

What You’ll Do:

• Create and develop projects for a range of displayable mediums (ie: mobile apps, video games, or multimedia art.)
• Creative collaboration: Work with architects, visual designers, game developers, to product designers to create immersive experiences.
• Have skills in various fields like Software Programming, Game Development, Mobile Application Design, Product Interaction, 3D Design, to film production.
• Have extensive knowledge of up-to-date hardware and programs related to VR.

Additional Resources:

• Common Tools VR Developers Use
• Tilt Brush Artist in Residence
• Advice from VR Designers

Digital Marketing is essentially marketing in the context of digital platforms like social media, websites, email, search engines, to mobile apps. So, digital marketers put their focus on satisfying customers working or buying products online. Luckily, there is a low entry barrier for digital marketing and is expected to have a 9% job growth rate by 2024. Digital Marketers drive to promote striking brand awareness for a world-wide audience.

What You’ll Do:

• Have extensive knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) strategies.
• Create engaging content that connects with a target audience.
• Monitor and track consumer data.
• Able to create visual assets with Photoshop, CSS, or HTML.

Additional Resources:

• Digital Marketing Strategies
• Career Tips for a Digital Marketer

What career in creative tech do you want to pursue? Pick up new skills to boost your portfolio with these courses below:

Exploring the Mixed Reality Landscape

Pacific Northwest College of Art

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Careers in Media Technology

Stanford University

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History always has a way of informing the present. Especially in the context of art and music, historical events are often key moments of discovery and exploration for modern day artists. In the case of music technology, the history of instruments have influenced how musicians can create both analog and digital sounds. As the development of instruments grew more and more complex over time, there has been an overarching shift towards the artificial and digital synthesis of sound.

That’s not to say we’ve completely forgotten about our analog past, but that those previous musical artifacts have become blueprints and skeletons for the creative, electronic tools we use today.

1. Pipe Organ (3rd Century)

It can be argued that the start of hardware-based music technology history begins with the pipe organ. The origins of the pipe organ can be traced back to the 3rd century BCE with the creation of the Hydralius or “water organ.” Initially powered by a natural resource, like water, the pipe organ was manually operated with air provided by foot bellows.

The addition of pistons and stops enabled an organist to engage and layer hundreds of timbres at a time. Even the construction of the organ itself was a mechanical marvel and still is. Mozart called the pipe organ the “King of Instruments,” a title that is well-deserved when viewed from musical and technological perspectives.

This concept of the manually assigning different sets of sounds with the organ has now become the backbone for how today’s MIDI-based virtual instruments function for DAWs.

Here’s the pipe organ in action:

2. Player Piano (1895)

Moving into the 19th and 20th century, this next instrument can play on its own with no human required.

The player piano, also known as the pianola, worked by punching notes into rotating rolls of paper which could be played back on any model player piano. Piano enthusiasts could buy a piano roll of any famous pianist of that time, and listen to performances played by those artists in their own homes.

In a way, the player piano brought the first instance of distributing recorded music. Specific performances could be transported and heard across the world, in different acoustical environments and timbres. The player piano itself was a very popular instrument in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and in high production.

In connection to today’s MIDIs, the player piano’s use of miniature indentations of varying lengths can be translated as the modern, graphic representation of MIDI events. To make the analog and digital connection even more clear, some DAWs call the MIDI window the piano roll, in reference to rolls of paper used in the player pianos.

3. Telharmonium (1897)

Digital streaming may seem like the most current and new trend for music listening, although the concept of streaming music was actually invented over a century ago.

In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill took inspiration from telephone wires that could reach across the nation to invent the Telharmonium. The Telharmonium, a streaming synthesizer weighing in at 200 tons, could generate electronic tones and transmit them over an electronic signal to a receiving device. Similar to the pipe organ, the Telharmonium was built to include a number of stops that created different pitches and timbres. This allowed players to create diverse, musical experiences every time.

Like today’s streaming services, the Telharmonium let customers buy a premium streaming service that provided live music for high end businesses to public places. This kind of service wasn’t widely popular at the time of its release. Actually owning a Telharmonium was a costly investment and the instrument itself needed large amounts of power to function properly. The mammoth synthesizer wasn’t commercially successful, but it now serves as a pioneering example of how technological innovations impact how and where we can listen to music.

4. Theremin (1928)

If you’re a sci-fi horror fan, you might’ve already heard of this instrument:

The theremin, invented by Russian immigrant Leon Theremin, can be considered as the first, truly synthesized electronic instrument. Controlled by hand movements between two antennas, one for pitch and one for volume, the theremin emits a vibrato effect as players rapidly change the distance of their hands from either antenna. Pitches are not clearly defined, and there isn’t a concrete relationship between a player’s hand position to the note it’s producing. It’s certainly not the easiest instrument to play, but musicians and music lovers now can build their own theremins.

You can hear the instrument being used in popular films like The Lost Weekend (1945), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and even in The Beach Boys’ song “Good Vibrations.”

5. Ondes Martenot (1928)

The ondes Martenot, introduced by Muarice Martenot, provided an easier way to create theremin-like sounds, without a theremin.

The pitches are correlated to an 88-key keyboard, exactly like a piano. A sliding ring, controlled by the player’s right hand, determined the pitch the instrument produced based on what note was being held down. Utilizing a sine wave oscillator, the design of the ondes Martenot grew closer to how modern day synthesizers operate and was able to mimic the eerie sounds of the theremin.

6. Mellotron (1963)

In the early 1960s, Robert Chamberlin developed the world’s first sampler keyboard: the mellotron. The mellotron could sample audio from other sources by storing tape-recorded audio inside the instrument. With a three octave keyboard, you could record up to 8 seconds of sound then manually attach the tape into the instrument. Ideally, the mellotron was made to recreate the sounds of an orchestra in a home setting, although it took a great amount of effort to set up the instrument. Aside from it’s technical complications, the mellotron became an immensely popular instrument used by many influential bands at the time.

The process of sampling through the mellotron made a lasting impact for musicians to incorporate sampling in their own creative process.

From looking back at moments in music technology history, now you can see the overlaps and roots of digital tools and ideas commonly used today. The past always finds a way to inform our present.

This content comes from the Session 2 of the course Foundations of Arts and Entertainment Technologies by University of Texas, Austin. Enroll in the course below:

Foundations of Arts and Entertainment Technologies

University of Texas at Austin

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Since its launch in 2010, Technovation has helped provide over 23,000 young girls the chance to build practical experience in technology and leadership. Over the course of several weeks, students who enter the program work on app development projects and develop myriad skills seldom taught in traditional courses. Girls ages 10-18 from various countries are invited to collaborate and come up with an idea for an app that presents possible solutions to problems in their local community. In teams of 1 to 5, the girls design, develop, and market their app to a panel of judges.

The program provides the space for girls to explore tech careers through a hands-on, project-based environment. A recent study from the US Department of Labor revealed that women only make up 30% of the workforce at major tech companies. This further underlines the value of the kind of program model that Technovation offers.

Technovation Student Ambassador Natasha Arya says her experience helped her to learn critical skills that led her to consider technology careers. She describes how she never really thought of tech as an industry she was interested in, until joining the program.

Natasha shares how she wishes she had the courage to explore tech at a younger age, saying, “I wish I could advise myself that I shouldn’t wait for things to somehow automatically become less intimidating, and at least give them a try.”

As part of their success, Technovation is working to improve the visibility of girls in STEAM and dispel common misconceptions surrounding it. After completing their time in the program, 70% of girls expressed a greater interest in computer science, business leadership, and entrepreneurship.

Aside from technical skills, what draws students to Technovation is the chance to be part of a community of innovators working together to produce a strong social impact. “I enjoyed learning about technology, business & entrepreneurship, and design a lot. But in the end, it’s all about the community”, says Arla. The girls work together to propose real solutions that can be directly implemented, yielding measurable results. As agents of this process, they feel immediately empowered to become more active in their community and build their understanding of the unique social applications of tech.

Student Arla Hoxha-Tirana was part of a team that developed an app called Redbug, which helps people, particularly younger generations, learn about significant cultural heritage sites in Albania. In search of the “perfect app idea”, they found the inspiration for the solution was right in their community.

“It has made me more aware of what I’m capable of and has given me confidence to try more things that are new without fear of failure,” says Arla.

Encouraging girls to take part in proactive roles is the kind of initiative the tech industry needs to go back to its inclusive roots. One of the obstacles that makes it difficult for girls to enter tech is the lack of visible role models. The success spurred by the “Technovation Challenge” offers girls a glimpse at their capabilities in commanding the next big leaps in tech and entrepreneurship.

Natasha explains how Technovation is accessible for different types of learners: “Something great about Technovation is that it’s an excellent program for beginners and experienced people alike; it provides a low-barrier entry to those who want to start learning, and once you know the basics and start developing your app, the sky’s the limit!”

From food insecurity to street safety, apps created through the Technovation program have produced creative solutions for everyday life. Working on app development projects to solve community issues on a local scale help the girls understand the complexities of a problem.

Student Leanne Bui says her team worked with the Leftovers Foundation to create an app that sources leftover food from businesses to those in need. Leanne talked about how her mentors introduced her to other female-led organizations that were making large-scale impacts. “Whether it was for app development or software, it was very inspirational seeing these women take center stage to create tech that helps our generation move forward,” said Leanne.

Through projects that tackle real-world issues, Technovation allows opportunities for girls to become active makers instead of consumers of products. They foster skills and an attitude that goes beyond participation, prompting girls to view themselves in positions of leadership within the tech world. Girls not only bear witness to the creative possibilities of tech, they also get a glimpse of the burgeoning potential within themselves.

We’re excited to partner with Technovation and support their alumni’s goals to transform communities through the implementation of life-changing apps.

Below are some of the creative technology courses we have in our catalog:

Machine Learning for Musicians and Artists

Goldsmiths University of London

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The Nature of Code

Processing Foundation

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Generative Art and Computational Creativity

Simon Fraser University

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This course builds on foundational theory and techniques covered in the first course, Intro to Audio Plugin Development. Topics covered include advanced project setup, creating audio effects using digital signal processing (DSP) techniques, custom user interface design for plugins, and preset management to get plugins ready to be sold professionally.

The instructor for the course is Output, Inc. software engineer and musician Bruce Dawson. His work is concentrated on music technology applications, such as his recently completed music project “Synchrononometry”, which is oriented around the application of Computer-Aided Algorithmic Composition techniques.

As part of our commitment to providing opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds, Output and Kadenze Academy are joining to offer women and gender non-binary persons an exclusive scholarship for the Creating Audio Plugins With C++ and JUCE Program. Recipients will be awarded with 3 months of free kadenze.com Premium Membership features, including access to graded coursework and the ability to receive verified Certificates of Accomplishment. To learn more about the full requirements and apply, click here.

Advanced Audio Plugin Development is only available to students enrolled in the Program. The course is live now, sign up below and start learning today!

Advanced Audio Plugin Development

Output x Kadenze Academy

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It’s fairly easy to capture memories because we carry cameras with us at all times with our smartphones. These days, smartphone cameras are powerful enough to capture quality photographs. Social media plays an important role in the way we interact with our surroundings by revolutionizing how we interact with content and media. It’s amazing that many photos on social media are taken on just a smartphone camera.

Want to learn how you can make your photos pop? Here are some simple, but effective ways you can improve your smartphone photography skills.

1. Find a Primary Lighting Source

Although smartphone cameras are becoming more advanced, they still lack the ability to capture light as well as a professional camera. Make sure your shots are well lit, whether that’s with artificial or natural light. You want to ensure that the light hits your subject from the front rather than behind them in order to avoid shadows.

When taking portraits, should a primary light not be enough, add light to the background to brighten the subject and reduce harsh shadows. This is essential whether you are trying to capture a shot of your surroundings or trying to get that perfect #selfie.

2. Adjust Your Focus and Exposure

In case your photo’s composition isn’t perfect, you can use the settings on your phone’s camera to adjust it. Fixing your focus and exposure settings in particular will heighten the quality of your image.

On your smartphone camera, you can tap on your screen to focus on your subject in the frame. Also, you can adjust the brightness in the photo before you take it by tapping on the screen and dragging your finger up or down to fix the exposure. This will brighten or dim your photo which is useful for when you have too much or too little light to work with.

3. Utilize Photo Editing Apps

If you don’t have access to premium editing software such as Photoshop and Lightroom, fear not, because there are many mobile apps you can download, many of them free.

There are apps that can add a portrait effect to your photo and can give a professional feel such as Snapseed and VSCO. You can find filters to layer onto your images to change the vibe and also adjust the temperature of your images. Utilizing editing apps can be used to create a cohesiveness to your photos in your social media feeds.

If you want to learn more about developing your photography skills, whether it’s with a smartphone or DSLR, enroll in the course below:

Camera Essentials

School of Visual Arts

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Have you ever been interested in making your own virtual reality, augmented reality, or mixed reality experiences? Or maybe you need a new workflow to liven up your VR practice. Whatever stage you’re at as a VR designer, this step-by-step guide will provide you a general rundown of how to create breath-taking projects from start to finish.

Concepting

The first step in any immersive project is concepting. Concepting is simply the process of coming up with a concept or idea of what you want your audience to experience. You’ll be creating a conceptual framework that guides the rest of your creative process.

At this point, you want to figure out if you want to work with augmented reality, virtual reality, or something in between. Try sketching out a storyboard to show some different scenes and actions your audience will go through. Collecting relevant visual references like physical objects or photos can also help to guide the look and feel of the project experience.

Concepting at its core is figuring out what you want to achieve with your ideas and brainstorming how to put those ideas into action. You want to start your projects with clear themes so you and your potential collaborators execute a clear creative direction.

Modeling

After concepting comes modeling. Branching off from concepting, you want to prototype some of your storyboard scenes to scale in 3D.

Modeling involves defining the geometric structure of a 3D object, virtually painting it with a texture, then showing how light interacts with the object. Think of it as creating a sculpture made out of clay. You’re pushing and pulling parts of the clay to form it into an object, which is essentially what you’re doing when creating a 3D object. You have to figure out what you want your object to look like and what the internal structure and material of the object is.

Some common tools for modeling include Maya, Blender, 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D, Substance Painter, and ZBrush. All these tools have steep learning curves, but once you get the hang of them, you can make impressive, high-caliber modeling and animation projects using the same software as the pros.

Animation

Once you’ve created make-shift models for your project, you’ll want to incorporate animation. The animation process is all about bringing your 3D objects to life. 3D animations differ from 2D animations since we’re not capturing motion through individual frames. Rather, we’re making a stream of data that commands how an object or character needs to move over time.

One key concept that is used to create 3D animations is rigging. Rigging refers to the process of creating a skeleton for your object so it requires less data to animate that said object from scratch. So if an object has an underlying rig, you can attach the mesh, or skin around the rig to contain the object within its own shape. You can look into some other 3D animation techniques here.

Visual Effects (VFX)

In film and theater, we can see how a scene feels through how it’s lit. Especially evident in theater, atmospheric effects come into play to create surface areas for light to interact with.

Visual effects are typically calculated in runtime. The runtime engine you use would determine what you can do, and how to do that action efficiently. Engines make extensive use of shaders to create effects. Shaders can be compared to the gels (tinted filters) placed in front of lights when lighting a film set or stage. Animation software like Unity have built-in plugins for shaders, one example being Shader Forge. Applying shaders then help to create unique, visual aesthetics to the environments and objects within your piece.

Coding

Coding within the context of the mixed reality creative process is about describing the dynamic behaviors and overall flow of your project’s experience.

Let’s say you want to spin something programmatically, you would need to write a piece of code that tells the engine to spin for a specific amount of time. Coding implies defining logic and using language to store that logic. Each animation engine has a different language and approach to coding. Since most animations are now created completely digitally, coding helps to streamline production behind 3D visuals.

Sound Design

Sound is a subtle and critical ingredient to mixed reality projects. Sound design is based on figuring out how sound helps audiences locate themselves in a scene. Because sound itself is a major component of our perceptive system, you want to pay careful attention to how sound can affect your viewers.

People often think of sound design in terms of musical soundtracks. However, it’s the ambient noises, the everyday sounds and the foley (reproduction of everyday sounds) that elevate a scene.

In mixed reality, sound design is spatialized, so the output of an engine is dynamically created by the engine in runtime. That means the sound adapts to where the virtual camera is located. The closer an object is to the camera, the louder the sound will be. Audio cues are great ways to help an audience know where to look.

One of the challenges of sound design in a 3D context is designing sound to be all-encompassing. If a sound cue is placed in one point in a virtual space, then audience members will react by paying attention to that cue.

Testing & Deploying

Testing and Deploying are the final stages of the project. The testing component is concerned with getting feedback from your audience and making sure your experience successfully executes your intentions. Deploying is about sharing your work with a larger audience.

It can be a good idea to bring people unfamiliar with your project to go through your experience. With mixed reality, it’s critical you are testing and verifying how your project will be experienced and displayed. If you’re creating something with virtual reality, then you should test it with a VR headset and not on a 2D display like a TV screen.

Consider these factors as you test your project:

• What kind of space is required?
• How long is the minimum and maximum duration of the experience?
• Is it clear how the user will engage in the environment once they enter it? Do they have a clear objective of what actions they should take?

You can also publish your project as an app so audiences can easily have access to your creations. For example, one way mixed reality apps are integrated in a public space is through performance art pieces or various museum settings. If you decide to pursue the app route, take careful consideration of the interactive design of your app. How will the app provide the necessary instructions for users to experience your project in the way it was intended? Help your audience explore and figure out what they should be doing.

Now that you know the fundamental components of what goes into making VR/AR/MR experiences, you can start creating your own projects today!

This content comes from the course Exploring the Mixed Reality Landscape by Pacific Northwest College of Art. Sign up for the course below to learn more about concepts and techniques in mixed reality:

Exploring the Mixed Reality Landscape

Pacific Northwest College of Art

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As we know, stories don’t always follow a chronological structure. They can jump from one point to another, going back and forth in time. There’s a name for these randomized narratives and they’re called non-linear narratives. A non-linear narrative is essentially a story that doesn’t follow a set pattern and events become disjointed and unpredictable. This kind of narrative is often implemented as a form of art, like in film or novels, and even coding.

We’ll take a look at two projects that kicked off the popularization of non-linear narratives through coding and technological inventions.

Zork Introduces a New Mode of Gaming

One early example of a coding-based non-linear narrative, is the text-based game, Zork. Released in 1980, Zork was influenced by another game called Adventurer, also known as Colossal Cave Adventure, and runs in the same adventure-themed vein as Dungeons & Dragons.

As a text game, Zork is played by reading and typing. A text-pressing engine tries to make sense of typed commands. Zork has a limited syntax to enable exploring and engaging with the fictional world. So, the premise of the game involves a player typing in specific actions which trigger responses in return.

Around the same time Zork was released, reader-driven narratives were popularized on paper through a series of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books marketed towards young adults. Titles like The Cave of Time (1979) and Journey Under the Sea (1977) ignited the popular imagination along with their desire to participate in non-linear stories. This desire has persisted through the present with role-playing games, narrative-heavy video games, and recently film, with Netflix’s interactive movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) being a modern iteration.

Through the Eyes of LORNA

Another example of exploratory software is LORNA by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Created from 1979 to 1983, her work existed in the form of a laser disc (large analog video disc.) It’s the size of vinyl record, looks like a CD, and can store high resolution video. Although, unlike a record, a laser disc can skip to any position on the disc to play the video back in a non-linear order.

The LORNA software is an interactive fiction that’s a vehicle for people to virtually adopt the persona of the lead character “LORNA”, a woman who lives in fear of the outside world. LORNA’s fear stems from the media on her television. Leeson intended to use the software to become a space of contemplation and various interpretations outside the context of film and photography. She wanted viewers to become the character and to make decisions that would lead to different outcomes.

A Web of Possibilities

The technologies that made projects like LORNA possible started to become wide-spread in the 1980s. The idea of making non-linear software experiences was further promoted by HyperCard Software, created by Bill Atkinson and released in 1987 for Apple Computers. HyperCard itself can be explained as a “…flat-file database with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface.”

The software is modeled around paper index cards that users can organize and edit to their liking. Users could even hyperlink from one card to another and embed interactive features like sound and visuals into the cards. Like the web, HyperCard was built around the idea of hypertext and linking from one document to another. Those features then came into fruition with the release of the Mosaic web browser in 1993.

From the Myst Software (stored over 60 minutes if low-resolution video on a CD) to the CD companion to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, HyperCard and compact discs were breakthroughs that allowed new kinds of software to be imagined and created.

The appeal of non-linear narratives reflect a curiosity in the unfamiliar and unexpected. As technology widens digital experiences and makes them more nuanced, the breadth of possibilities expand with it, fueling the desire for the chance to be able to control one’s own narratives down to the smallest details.

This content comes from the course Introduction to Programming for the Visual Arts Using p5.js by The School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA (UCLA Arts). To explore other topics in creative programming, enroll below:

Introduction to Programming for the Visual Arts Using p5.js

UCLA Arts

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]]> https://blog.kadenze.com/creative-technology/choosing-the-right-midi-controller/ Mon, 18 Mar 2019 19:11:31 +0000 http://blog.kadenze.com/?p=51325 This post was originally published on the official Output blog.

MIDI controllers are one of the first purchases in any home studio. Whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned vet, shopping for the right MIDI controller can be a daunting task with so many options available.

For beginners, there can often-times be confusion around what a MIDI controller even is and what it isn’t. To help you make the right choice, let’s touch on what a MIDI controller is and what to consider before you pull the trigger.

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and MIDI controllers come in all different shapes and sizes. If a device’s main (or secondary) function is to send MIDI performance values to another piece of hardware or software, then that device can be considered a MIDI controller.

The most common type of MIDI controller is the keyboard controller. This is because MIDI was designed with the keyboard in mind. Other types of MIDI controllers include electronic pads, keyboards, guitars, and synthesizers – but even traditional pianos, drum sets, guitars, or even fruit can be wired up with computer processors to become a MIDI controller.

Regardless of the type however, they all have one thing in common: they are used to send information about notes or collections of notes via electronic messages called “MIDI Messages.” Computers, Digital Audio Workstations (DAW), and Virtual Instruments (VST) all use MIDI messages to communicate sound to each other.

Obviously your budget is going to have a lot of weight when it comes to your purchase and luckily there’s a diverse range of affordability when it comes to keyboard controllers.

A digital audio workstation or DAW, is a fancy way of saying “music production software”, including programs like AVID Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Apple Logic, Propellerhead Reason, FL Studio, and more.

Lucky for us, most controllers aren’t built with a specific DAW in mind – unless purposely designed for a single DAW and specialized out-of-the-box functionality like in the case of Ableton’s Push controller modeled for LIVE.

Many modern keyboard controllers come with knobs, faders, and buttons. But here’s some key questions to keep in mind: Are they laid out in a way that is going to be comfortable for you? Are you going to be able to map them to the software that you are using? The more is not necessarily the merrier in the case of controllers. Ultimately, you want your controls to make your life easier, not harder.

This is an often overlooked, but crucial detail when first starting out. The action can either be synth, semi-weighted, or a weighted hammer action – and the width of the keys is also something to keep your eyes peeled for. Weighted keys can feel a lot better to some, but it really boils down to your personal preference on a keyboard that can keep up with you.

Aftertouch sends MIDI messages when you hold and press harder on the keys to generate more expression in your sounds. It is usually found on the pricier and more advanced keyboard controllers. Even seasoned vets need time to dive deep into these contemporary approaches and formats. But for beginners, this is more than likely not going to be a deal breaker for you!

The two types of aftertouch include monophonic (channel aftertouch) and polyphonic. Polyphonic is the rarer of the two and keyboards like the ROLI Seaboard take it to another level of multi-dimensional expression. This is something that you might not need when starting out, but once you get a taste of it, it’s usually hard to go back to controllers that don’t have it.

What’s the connectivity of your device like? CV and Gate outputs will allow you to modulate synth, and 5-pin MIDI DIN jacks allow you to control external MIDI instruments. All MIDI controllers of the 21st century use MIDI to USB, so be sure to check what your prospects allow for. Controllers are getting more and more sophisticated using wireless and bluetooth capabilities.

Innovation is an endless well of inspiration when it comes to connectivity. Scientist Dr. Kate Stone invented an ingenious Songwriter’s Notebook using conductive gold ink linked via a free iOS app Novalia.

Here’s some recommendations based on your needs. There’s a lot to take into consideration when picking the right mix of features for your MIDI Keyboard Controller.

For Beginners:

The Akai MPK mini has all the basic necessities you need and compact for music-making on the go. Beginners should also consider finding a device that has a built in speaker if you want to be able to travel with it and hear it without additional hardware. For more on the best controllers for beginners, click here.

Whether you are a wiz on the keys or a producer looking to polish your piano chops, it’s worth exploring an 88-key MIDI keyboard controller. It opens your world to creative possibilities such as the M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 or Native Instruments KOMPLETE KONTROL keyboards that integrate seamlessly with Output software. For more on the best 88-key controllers, click here.

You’re making moves as a producer and now looking for more advanced configurations. If you need both the portability and access to a few octaves, you may be in the market for a 32 or 37 key controller like the IK Multimedia – iRig Keys Pro or 49-key controllers like the Alesis VI49.And sometimes, you want just want more. The 61-key controllers have great options available such as the Novation Impulse or AKAI MPK2. For more on the best 61-key controllers, click here.

For Travel:

A flexible, versatile recording rig is a must when recording on the go or while on tour. Some of the world’s greatest hits have been made by musicians on a tour bus. As the world keeps moving faster, technology is keeping up with this growing need to be portable. Fortunately, controllers like the Novation LaunchKey Mini MK2 or Keith McMillen QuNexus (great with Arcade) are solid choices. For more on the compact controller options, click here.

Modern music makers are all about breaking the rules. Technologists understand this and are building instruments with game-changing versatility and capabilities like the Artiphon INSTRUMENT 1 or Sensel Morph. The Sensel is great for both beginners and advanced musicians with a jack-of-all-trades controller with custom overlays and their Innovator’s Overlay empowering creators with the power to transform an interface on the fly.

The early foundations of MIDI were established in 1983. The dawn of MIDI forever changed music as we know it today, and the future has never looked so bright.

Times are changing with more technological innovations surfacing each passing day. Improvements in areas from controls to features such as wireless connectivity, portability, and functionality are revolutionizing how musicians are expressing themselves. However, surprisingly enough – the actual protocol for MIDI hasn’t changed a bit. What’s changing is how we interact and interface with controllers.

In the future, we will see more innovative designs from wearable tech like gloves to mind-blowing, futuristic takes on the keyboard like the ROLI Seaboard. To stay in step with the times is important, but the key is to find a solution that works with you!

About the Author

Philip Rudy is musician and the owner & founder of Audio Assemble, a resource for musicians and producers to gain an edge for their careers. He works with a team of creatives to rate and review the best gear with a heavy focus on home recording studio equipment.

Output is one of the leading companies in software audio development in the music industry, developing quality products used by artists, producers, and composers across all genres.

For more in-depth tips and techniques on audio development, check out the Program Creating Audio Plugins With C++ and JUCE. Produced by Kadenze Academy and developed in partnership with Output, the Program is taught by Jacob Penn and Bruce Dawson. Want to develop your sound production skills on a deeper level? Enroll in our audio courses below:

Sound Synthesis Using Reaktor

California Institute of the Arts

LEARN MORE

Creating Audio Plugins with C++ and JUCE

Output x Kadenze Academy

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A Brief History

Modular music-making is coming back in a big way since its first rise to popularity in the 1960-70s. When modular synthesizers were first being designed, two stems of research and development were happening simultaneously led by the pioneer Bob Moog from the East & the more abstract modular genius Don Buchla from the West coast of the U.S.

A modular system is made up of individual modules with each part having a specific & finite number of functions that make up the whole. The beauty is in how no system is one-in-the-same.

There’s always been a fascination to these eccentric devices since the early days of experimenting. Modular synthesis is still largely known as a fluid and experimental form of music-making. From the very first album composed by Morton Subotnick using the first BUCHLA 100 series on ‘Silver Apples On The Moon’ to more contemporary productions, even making a scene on FACT’s Against The Clock series.

The technology & methodology has since developed over the years, but certain specifications have been standardized from power supplies to the form factors that you need to brush up on.

A Modular Sensibility To Sound Design

A new wave of fascination and development is happening today and we’re only scratching the surface here. To start developing your own perspective to modular sound design, we highly encourage you to learn the history of how it all started and the foundation of signal flow theory and control voltage manipulation.

By knowing the rules, you can then learn how to find your unique approach like Output creator & award-winning composer Mark Isham. Watch how technology drives Mark’s creative process combining his classical mode of creating film scores on ‘Once Upon A Time’ and Electric Dreams with his obsession with analog synths and the entire Output suite.

Getting Started

We already did some of the homework for you and hand-picked our favorite tools in a Modular Synth Starter Guide. Now, let’s take a closer look into types of modular synths and resources that can help you along the way.

Moog Unit (MU) Format:

When you imagine a modular synth, you are probably thinking about a Moog. The Moog Unit was originated by Bob Moog with it’s classic look with a slightly larger format of big knobs and rich wood encasing for 8.75″ tall and more commonly noted as ‘5U’. This format became more widely-spread as the integration with the keyboard helped early adopters to relate to this new technology than its more abstract counterparts.

Buchla Format:

If Bob Moog was your uncle with caramel candies in his pocket every Christmas, then Don Buchla is the uncle who had acid tabs in his mint box. Buchla designed his systems approximately around the same time frame as Moog in the early 60s, but with a radically alternative approach favoring experimentation and multi-functional possibilities. Recognized for using banana jacks with color-coded sockets – CV inputs are black & grey, outputs are blue, violet, and green hues, pulse inputs as orange and pulse outputs as red.

Eurorack Format:

Euroracks are increasingly popular and a big part of the renaissance of modular synthesis today. Dieter Doepfer is regarded as the father of Eurorack with his A-100 Line, which has inspired many new styles and functions in the Eurorack field. As a smaller form factor, modules are 128.55 mm high and grow width-wise based on ‘horizontal pitch’ (1hp = 0.1″ or 5.08mm) and use 3.5mm cables.

Serge Format:

Serge Tcherepnin was a French composer and designer in the 1970s that developed his own format at the California Institute of The Arts. His vision for a Serge system (3U) was to create a ‘synthesizer for the people’ using banana jacks and 4U modules adopting Buchla’s flare for color-coding – trigger signals are red, sync signals are purple, DC coupled signals are blue, and AC coupled signals are black. Stylized on a uniform panel, these modules and systems are available via Random Source and independent builders making prints and kits available for DIY users.

New Frontiers

We’re mad about modular synthesis – that’s no surprise! As modular synths are becoming a new standard, there’s a wealth of resources to devour before taking the plunge yourself. With many of the masters carrying the torch and exploring new frontiers of sound design like Richard Devine and composer Suzanne Cianni.

Nowadays, there’s so many ways to make modular music and software developers are pushing the envelope & making modular music more accessible to the masses with innovative hybrid instruments and plug-ins. Musicians can even virtually build their own systems with open-sourced platforms like VCV Rack or ModularGrid.

Want to develop your sound production skills on a deeper level? Enroll in our audio courses below:

Sound Synthesis Using Reaktor

California Institute of the Arts

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Creating Audio Plugins with C++ and JUCE

Output x Kadenze Academy

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This post was originally published on the official Output blog.

Composer & percussionist James McAlister (Sufjan Stevens, The Album Leaf) constructs a polyrhythmic track using effects on a lush pad with a myriad of analog gear.

James evolves two loops inside AURA Kits ‘Ultraviolet’ & ‘Incandescence’ within Arcade and his outboard gear by rinsing and repeating musical moments to generate new ideas.

Output is one of the leading companies in software audio development in the music industry, developing quality products used by artists, producers, and composers across all genres.

For more in-depth tips and techniques on audio development, check out the Program Creating Audio Plugins With C++ and JUCE. Produced by Kadenze Academy and developed in partnership with Output, the Program is taught by Jacob Penn and Bruce Dawson. Sign up below:

Creating Audio Plugins with C++ and JUCE

Output x Kadenze Academy

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That being said, we’re going to break down some key design elements and how they can improve your creative projects as a whole.

The Basics: Points, Lines, and Planes

Points, lines, and planes are what make up the structure of design theory. From these elements, you can create a number of projects ranging from icons, layouts, patterns, animations, to text.

Point

A point is a single position in space. Graphically, a point takes form as a dot or circle in both digital and physical spaces. Points can grab a viewer’s attention based on their size and placement. In motion design, all shapes can be formed from a group of points, and also serve as a focal point to guide the viewer’s eye.

Line

A line is the simplest and most versatile elements of design. It can be defined as a point in motion, a series of adjacent points, a connection between points, or an implied connection between points. Lines visually exist in many weights and styles: they can be straight or curved, continuous or broken. Adding a line into a composition will help to guide the viewer’s attention to different parts of a piece. A series or collection lines can also indicate movement and speed when placed near an object.

The width and orientation of a line can also influence how a design is interpreted. A thicker line signifies weight and structure, while a thinner line is fragile and delicate. Also, horizontal lines can suggest stability, and diagonal or vertical lines suggest action and unbalance.

Plane

A plane is a flat surface, extending in height and width. Shapes are essentially planes with edges. In a vector-based software, every shape consists of a line and a fill. In a physical space, it can be referenced to architectural structures like walls, floors, or windows. Incorporating planes in a piece can create depth and the illusion of three-dimensional spaces in a two-dimensional presentation.

Principles of Graphic Design

Graphic design principles, when used purposefully, help to create aesthetically-pleasing designs.

In the case of motion design, think of graphic principles in the context of films and animations. How do certain elements create harmony and structure within a frame? How can one object be more pronounced than another? Overall, understanding these basic principles helps you to create projects with intentional themes.

Alignment

Alignment can be expressed when objects fall under the same axis, and the negative space between those objects is consistently the same. This creates a strong sense of balance and order within a composition. If a composition lacks alignment, it can cause a design to appear random and chaotic.

Proximity

Proximity is the grouping of similar or related elements. You can have similar shapes appear one by one in close proximity to another which helps to create visual organization. The more closely the elements are placed together, the more connected they appear. A careful use of proximity can reduce clutter, increase clarity, and can allow for an interesting use of negative space in your design.

Shape

Using a variety of shapes help to emphasize one object over another.

Scale

Scale is a common principle used by many designers. It can be used to create contrast, depth, and movement. Incorporating similar objects with varying sizes produce active compositions.

Scale in a motion design can be applied in various ways from interacting with surrounding objects to integrating with a soundtrack.

Color

Use color, tint or opacity to create emphasis in your composition.

No matter what approach you choose to work on your motion design projects, implementing these design principles will elevate the quality of your work. Applying even just a handful of these principles can make a big difference to the overall presentation of your animation and its appeal to your audience.

This content comes from the course Motion Design: Time and Technology, part of the Program Introduction to Motion Design, offered by Ringling College of Art and Design. Enroll in the Program below:

Introduction to Motion Design

Ringling College of Art and Design

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This post was originally published on the official Output blog.

For more in-depth tips and techniques on audio development, check out the Program Creating Audio Plugins With C++ and JUCE. Produced by Kadenze Academy and developed in partnership with Output, the Program is taught by Jacob Penn and Bruce Dawson. Sign up below:

Creating Audio Plugins with C++ and JUCE

Output x Kadenze Academy

LEARN MORE