If you’ve ever listened to Radiolab, one of the most popular and enduring podcasts out there, you know how much music (and sound more generally) plays a special role in the show’s production. And that’s all largely the creation of Radiolab’s co-host, Jad Abumrad. You know those “jaggedy sounds, little plurps and things, strange staccato, percussive things” that make the show so distinctive? That’s all Abumrad, who majored in experimental music composition and production at Oberlin College.
To get inside Abumrad’s thinking about music (what is sound? what is music? why do we organize sound into music?) watch the video above. Mac Premo interviewed Jad, then turned the conversation into a short creative film. Note: If you don’t react well to seeing fast-moving images, you might want to skip this one.
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