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The envelope, please

Here’s a track I’m working on, based around a couple of envelope filtered samples of Beethoven’s string quartet in A minor, opus 132, 3rd movement.

Filtered Beethoven

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Me vs Guarneri Quartet vs Babsy Singer vs Don Henley vs DJ Trace

mp3 download, ipod format download

Envelope filter is one of my favorite electronica tricks. It makes everything sound cool, or at least weird.

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Ashley’s Roachclip

I’m continuing my tour through hip-hop’s most classic breakbeats with “Ashley’s Roachclip” by the Soul Searchers. The drum break at 3:30 is one of those hip-hop workhorses, like “Impeach The President” and “The Funky Drummer” and “Apache.” It seems like it’s always been there.


The Soul Searchers were led by guitarist Chuck Brown, known in Washington DC music circles as “The Godfather of Go-go.”

Go-go is a regional flavor of  funk using a heavy swing feel and a lot of happening syncopation in the kick drum pattern. Early in my funk connoisseurship, I would have used the go-go beat as the definition of funk. The beat in “Ashley’s Roachclip” isn’t actually very typical of go-go since it uses straight eighth notes. You can hear a more typical one on Chuck Brown’s official web site.

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Nas Is Like

If I had to pick a single track to explain to an alien or time traveler what hip-hop is and why it’s so awesome, I think I’d pick “Nas Is Like.”

Nas has a great flow full of powerful imagery, but what makes this track for me is DJ Premier’s production. It’s a complex web of samples and scratches that tie together seamlessly, greater than the sum of their parts. A lot of the samples are from other songs by Nas himself. Here’s a diagram of all the samples, click to see it bigger:

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Another social media flowchart

Here’s a graphic I did for my company Spork Media explaining how an ideal social media setup for a restaurant. Click through for a detailed explanation. Who doesn’t love flowcharts?

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Doctorin’ The Top Forty

In 1988, a pair of British acid house DJs named Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, variously known as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs), The Timelords and The KLF, had an improbable number one hit with “Doctorin’ The Tardis.”

The track isn’t so much a song as it is an early mashup. Aside from the chorus, just about everything in it is a sample or quote. Here are the sources:

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May the weak force be with you

I follow science news the way normal dudes follow sports. If you’re geekily inclined like me, you may have heard that the particle physics people are getting closer to producing the Higgs boson. You may have wondered what that is exactly, and why you should care. The science press has nicknamed the Higgs “the God particle,” which is poetic but doesn’t move me any closer to understanding. Here’s my best effort to wrap my head around the idea — maybe you’ll find it helpful, or at least entertaining. If you’re a real scientist and want to clarify or correct anything I’m saying here, please jump in on the comments.

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The Choice Is Yours

There’s a commercial on TV right now featuring a bunch of CGI hamsters that reacquainted me with this Black Sheep classic. I knew the song better as the one that goes, “You can get with this or you can get with that.” Thank god for Google, otherwise I wouldn’t know anything about anything.

This is exactly the kind of golden age hip-hop song I love, a party-friendly beat and lyrics delivered with enough pissed off attitude to give it some bite. Dres and Mista Lawnge, I salute you.

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INXS needs you tonight

I’m pretty sure that “Need You Tonight” by INXS was the last song I fell in love with through commercial radio. I would never have admitted it, and I couldn’t have articulated why, but oh yes, in middle school this track hit me exactly where I lived. It still sounds as fresh today as it did back in the eighties.

I resisted liking the song because of what I imagined it representing. I mean, watch this video with the sound off, these guys look like incredible douchebags. As a teenager I was very invested in the idea of purity in music, and INXS was the exact opposite of pure. The band was and is a capitalist venture above all else. I hadn’t yet learned that commercial music can be incredibly good, and that pure artistry is no guarantee against awfulness.

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They Reminisce Over You

Hip-hop at its best is about truth-telling. It doesn’t get any realer than “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by Pete Rock and CL Smooth.

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Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough

This song represents a lot of firsts for Michael Jackson. It was the first single from Off The Wall, and the first recording MJ made that he had complete creative control over. Many of his hits were written by Quincy Jones or Rod Temperton or the guys from Toto, but Michael wrote this one himself. It was also his first solo song to get a music video.

Here’s the real video, which sadly I can’t embed. In its place, enjoy a fan video.

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