Music Technology in Education

For those of you who have spent any time with me in the past three months, you know that I am a HUGE fan of the new Kaossilator from Korg. You can listen to some of the compositions that I have made with it as well as a recording of ten middle school students in what I call the Kaossilator Orkestra on my podcasting site.

Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to a fantastic album created by Gary Kibler from London called “The Yellow Album”. It is perhaps the best illustration of the music making capability of the KO1. What Gary has done is nothing short of miraculous. The KO1 is a dynamic phrase synthesizer that uses a touch pad to create music. There are no keys at all and it is not that easy to create a melody without any mistakes. Here is the description of the Yellow Album from Gary’s site:

“The Yellow Album” is the first full-length album produced and performed entirely on the Korg Kaossilator device. No other effects, EQ or sounds were added. The audio was digitally recorded directly off the unit and the only external editing performed involved simple volume balancing. The musical challenge was to attempt to make the two-bar loop limitation of the on-board phrase recorder sound less repetitious by playing the touchpad live, solo-style, over the loops during the recording.

I strongly recommend visiting his site and downloading the album today. It’s completely free, and it is really good!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.