Tantacrul

The Last Jedi soundtrack was pretty underwhelming. Why is this? In this video, I introduce the concept of reification and use it to assess the entire Star Wars canon (as of early 2018). Why is the music of The Last Jedi so less impactful than the music of the original Star Wars Movies? What is being lost?

A brief introduction to the music of Cardiacs and the history of their frontman, Tim Smith.

One of my favourite systems for writing complex harmony. I first look at Stravinsky's famous Petrushka chord along with examples of Polytonality and use them to propose a two-key method that can afford the user a lot of harmonic variation. This does not necessarily only apply to modern classical music but also to general song writing. Although this is an advanced harmony lesson, I'm hoping non-musicians can enjoy the video too.

In this video, I discuss interface design and music software by focusing on Propellerhead's flagship DAW: Reason 10. I look at how they adjusted to the ever-changing audio production landscape over the last 18 years and the painful choices they needed to make in order to succeed. I conclude with a few software design principles.

This is a response video to 'Why is Modern Music so Awful' by Thoughty2. It's the most viewed video on the topic of popular musical decline. It's a complete rehash of the study: 'Measuring the Evolution of Contemporary Western Popular Music' which came out a few years ago. My response calls into question the importance of the musical properties being discussed: harmonic complexity, timbral diversity and loudness and I also point out some basic logical flaws too. All in all, Thoughty2 has done a terrible job of informing the public and I'm attempting to do my part in order to set things right. So if you're a music fan or a person interested in alternative music who thinks the world is moving on without them, you may find some solace in this video.

In this video, I take a detailed look at the design of Avid's Sibelius - a popular music notation application. Sibelius is the embodiment of what not to do as a user experience designer and this video covers a range of examples of inappropriate design patterns and bad user interface choices. Then I go insane. This really is one of the great examples of breaking all UI design principles and every UX design principle too. It's like a design bull in a musical china shop.

I reveal my picks for the top ten worst Christmas songs ever to haunt the human ear. This ain’t no generic top ten playlist though: some of this Christmas music is pretty obscure. It's 2020 baby! Why did I just say that? Anyway, what’s this about? I’m a composer and music theorist? Why am I lowering myself to this? Why indeed! Because I wanted to make something small for you to enjoy while I finish a much larger video. And also, because I enjoy garbage. And also because I like you. Are you seriously STILL reading this? Give me £20.

In this video, I discuss aleatoric music, specifically the combination of looping and chance. To begin, I look at how the technique has evolved – including developments in modern composition as well as the use looping software and hardware. Later it then goes on to look at the use of aleatoric technique in video games too. To illustrate this, I look at games such as Lumines (most consoles), Flower and Flow (Playstation 3).