Author: Jack Knowlson

In this blog I will be discussing Space 6 by Nala Sinephro, a composer and multi-instrumentalist from London, with the analytical focus on her extreme use of tension in the track. This track is around four and a half minutes long and I’d argue the first three minutes purely build tension for one moment. What…

I’ve enjoyed my time so far and do feel like this unit has pushed me to learn new skills, both as a musician and an academic. On the academic side, learning new skills such as Harvard referencing, where to find academic sources and how to cite them has really helped me to write higher quality…

In this chapter, David Byrne (frontman of Talking Heads) introduces the reader to an insight that he’s had over the years as an artist and challenges them to question how they think about creation. His insight is that “context largely determines what is written, painted, sculpted, sung or performed”. He suggests this idea in opposition…

In this session, we were introduced to VCV Rack which is a virtual way to explore modular synthesis. I’d always been very interested in modular synthesis as its very prevalent in a lot of the music I listen to at the minute, so naturally I really enjoyed working in VCV Rack. I ended up creating…

Themes VI by Rashad Becker is a composition created by using modular synthesis. The track is a texturally rich amalgamation of synthesisers, forming an arrangement that feels like it’s only held together by a string. The track is largely comprised of sawtooth waves that sweep and glide in pitch and a boomy sub that emerges…

To start off, I loaded all of the vocal samples into Ableton and began writing a musical base to go below them. I had recently been experimenting with microtonality prior to this, and decided to apply some of my takeaways from those experiments into this track. I’m not incredibly well-versed in music theory or microtonal…

The track from Moor Mother that I’ve chosen to analyse is Liverpool Wins (Movement 3), one of the tracks from the deluxe edition of The Great Bailout. This track is 18 minutes long and focuses on unearthing the truth of why Liverpool became prosperous, due to it being England’s main port for slave ships. This…

Having discussed and researched RZA’s production techniques, I was very interested to start exploring his style practically; largely because of how different it is to my own process. Due to technological limitations in the equipment (comparative to now), RZA’s way of constructing music requires a selective mindset when sampling. An AKAI S2000, a sampler from…

The RZA-produced track I will be discussing today is New Day from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s collaborative album, Watch the Throne. After listening to Enter the Wu-Tang, I decided it would be interesting to discuss a track that was made a little later in RZA’s career – to see if I could still discern elements…

I primarily make electronic music, mostly instrumental but occasionally doing vocals as well. The majority of my production is done in the box on Ableton, which I think is definitely key to my sound but I do want to expand outside of that. I make a lot of different styles of music for fun but…