New YouTube video. Links to all apps below.
#20 - Electronic Music School, with Will Kuhn
Will Kuhn joins the show to talk about Apple's new Macs, teaching electronic music, home automation, and his forthcoming book, Electronic Music School.
Show Notes:
We recorded this episode right after last weeks Apple event! People have now used and reviewed these machines! I recommend this one, this one, and this one.
Other topics include:
- Apple in education
- M1 chip implications for audio software
- Other Apple Fall announcements and products
- Ableton Live 11
Do you have a product or service you would like to promote to music educators? Sponsor Music Ed Tech Talk!
Stuff mentioned:
- Neural Mix Pro
- METT Season 2, Episode 8 - Will's Last appearance on Music Ed Tech Talk (previously, Robby Burns and Friends)
- My Book: Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers
- My Scale Play Along Tracks
- METT Season 4, Episode 2 - Hop-Hop in Music Education, Music Education in Hip-Hop, with Ethan Hein
- The Ethan Hein Blog
- Will's book - Interactive Composition: Strategies Using Ableton Live and Max for Live
- Apple Silicon, Macs in Education, and App-Centric Learning | Music Ed Tech Talk -- Robby Burns
- Making the Grade: What will Apple Silicon mean for Apple's education strategy? | 9to5Mac -- Bradley Chambers
- ClassKit | Apple Classroom API
- Ikea Smart Lighting
- Philips Hue Smart Lights
- Nest Hello Doorbell
- Netatmo HomeKit Doorbell
- Starling Home Hub - connect Nest to Apple HomeKit
- Homebridge
- Dyson hot+cool Air Purifier
- homebridge-dyson-link | Homebridge Plugin for Dyson hot+cool
- Hue Sync Lights for TV
- BT - The Lost Art of Longing
- Poolside.fm
- FOR SALE: TRACK 10 ON VULFPECK’S NEW RECORD
App of the Week:
Robby - Neural Mix Pro
Will - Ableton Live 11
Album of the Week:
Robby - Vulfpeck | The Joy of Music The Job of Real Estate
Will - Machinedrum - A View of U | beabadoobee
Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Will - Twitter | Website
Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!
Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:
Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS
App of the Week: Neural Mix Pro
I have been testing out a Mac App called Neural Mix Pro, made by the people who make the popular DJay App for macOS and iOS.
It promises to take songs in your music library and hard drive and independently isolate vocals, drums, and other accompaniment so that they can be separated and mixed independently.
It works. I haven't played with it enough to know the breadth of its capability, but I tested the following songs, and they worked enough that I think I would use this tool for future music projects and teaching resources.
- Blues for Time: a fusion song in a drum set method book I assign often. I already had a drum-less version of the track, but the one I could make in Neural Mix Pro was satisfactory. There are some artifacts when you filter out instruments, but that was to be expected. No vocals on this track, but drums and other accompaniment separated correctly.
- Material Girl, Madonna: The vocals and electronic drums are so heavy in this track that isolating just the accompaniment instruments resulted in the correct instruments but not with an EQ that I would use for anything professionally. The vocals and drums sounded ok when separated.
- Jesus Walks, Kanye West: very satisfactory separation of drums, accompaniment, vocals. The backup vocals in the intro are tied to the vocal track, however. No way to separate that. With Neural Mix, you can export just one of the three tracks and apply a target key or tempo to change to it. I exported this tune to an even 80 bpm (it was around 78.x bpm, to begin with) into Logic Pro and has some fun toying around with adding my own improvisations using software instruments. I can see how this could be a useful tool for DJs, music producers, and music educators alike.
Here is a video of my quick demo. I made this on a computer with limited access to my music library and no real goal in mind other than to play around. Let me know if there is something you think I should test in the app.
I can see this app being useful in the music classroom for a few reasons. In my general music class, where we use Soundtrap to produce music, I could giving students a vocal track for a pop song and having them remix it. The results in Neural Mix are, by far, good enough for student use, and I imagine my students having a blast with this.
I could also use this in private lessons by taking songs my students drum along to and making "Minus One" recordings out of them that don't any longer have the drums. Alternatively, I could make them a drum-only version of a song to study the details more closely.
This would be more useful you could separate other instruments than just drums. Taking an instrumentalist out of a jazz record to create a track to improvise over is one of a handful of possibilities that immediately popped into my head. Perhaps these features are in store for a future update. Or maybe this app will remain geared towards pop music, DJs, and music producers. Either way, I can see myself using it on my never-ending quest to make fun play-along tracks for the band to play along to.