Thursday, February 11, 2010
When I was younger I was obsessed with authenticity in music. I wouldn’t even play electric guitar because it felt too easy, like cheating somehow. I expended a lot of energy and attention trying to figure out what is and isn’t authentic. Now, at the age of 34, I’ve officially given up. I doubt there’s [...]
Also filed in Music, Race and Identity
|
Tagged acoustic, alicia keys, authenticity, autotune, bebop, big chill, bill monroe, bluegrass, blues, electronica, Emotion, harmonica, herbie hancock, howlin wolf, jay-z, jazz, john coltrane, judaica, klezmer, led zeppelin, lipsynching, michael jackson, motown, nyc, purists, rnb, Sampling, soul, synths, thelonious monk
|
Friday, December 11, 2009
Christmas makes me depressed. I would like it not to make me depressed. I want to have kids, and I want them to at least have the option to enjoy this time of year. In order for that to happen, I need to learn to enjoy it. I remember enjoying it when I was little. [...]
Also filed in Music
|
Tagged america, Autobio, christmas, dickens, drumming, duke ellington, eighties, elvis presley, Emotion, family, ibm, nostalgia, santa, tv
|
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Boys And Dance Floors Revival Revival vs Janet Jackson mp3 download, ipod format download Right-click or option click the links to save the track to your computer. There are as many different ways of writing songs as there are songwriters. Barbara Singer and I have arrived at a good one, so I figured I’d share [...]
Also filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Sampling, Software
|
Tagged autotune, composing, Improvisation, janet jackson, looping, pro tools, production, reason, Recording, remixes, revival revival, Sampling, songwriting
|
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
One night, Anna was watching me Twitter over my shoulder. After a while, she announced: “I get it. It’s a video game where you compete for attention from strangers on the internet.” She’s completely correct. Having a web presence is effectively a real-world immersive internet game. The scoreboard is your stats page or follower list. [...]
Also filed in Hardware, Social Media, Software, Writing
|
Tagged attention, blogging, civilization, recursion, simcity, Social Media, social networks, stats, twitter, Video Games, wordpress
|
Saturday, November 28, 2009
If you’re in a band, chances are you feel like you’re supposed to be writing your own material. If you write your own songs, you can make more money from the publishing rights in addition to your album sales (should you, improbably, be selling albums.) Writing your own stuff isn’t just a financial consideration. The [...]
Also filed in Composition, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
|
Tagged arrangement, big band, chet baker, copyright, count basie, duke ellington, frank sinatra, harmony, Improvisation, jay-z, jazz, john coltrane, lego, looping, memes, miles davis, modules, Music, Music Theory, my favorite things, originality, reharmonization, remixes, Sampling, swing, symmetry, the sound of music
|
Monday, November 23, 2009
One of the biggest copyright failures of copyright law ever is the The Verve’s song “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” The distinctive string sample comes from an orchestral arrangement of “The Last Time” by The Rolling Stones. Doesn’t sound much like the Verve, does it? Here’s the Andrew Oldham Orchestra‘s version, the sample will jump right out [...]
Also filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Music, Music Business, Sampling
|
Tagged allen klein, andrew oldham, bitter sweet symphony, copyright, digging the crates, fail, hip-hop, james brown, law, originality, pop, remixes, revival revival, richard ashcroft, rock, rolling stones, Sampling, staples singers, the verve, uk
|
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Spoiler alert: don’t read until you’ve watched to the end of season three. Mad Men is well-made television, but so is plenty of other television. Why is this particular show so compelling to me and so many of my buddies? I think it’s that watching Mad Men is like watching a documentary about our parents [...]
Also filed in
|
Tagged accordion, Autobio, Emotion, family, fashion, mad men, masculinity, monkeysphere, sixties, smoking, tv
|
Kramer is the name my mom’s father’s parents gave at Ellis Island because they thought it they might have an easier time with it assimilation-wise than Garfinkel. In Eastern Europe, if you want a WASP-y sounding name, you usually choose something German rather than British. My mom’s wing of her extended family calls itself the [...]
Also filed in Emotion
|
Tagged america, anxiety, Autobio, buddhism, confidence, family, fashion, george costanza, judaica, kramer, monkeysphere, nyc, obama, seinfeld, synths, tv
|
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Working on Janet Jackson songs made me want to see if she did any tracks with Michael. Here’s what the internet has to say: Michael sings backup vocals on Janet’s early album Dream Street. Janet sings backup on Michael’s “PYT.” She’s in the part towards the end where he says “Pretty young things, repeat after [...]
Also filed in Music
|
Tagged Autobio, creativity, guitar, harmony, hip-hop, janet jackson, michael jackson, molly, Music, Music Theory, psychology, singing, teaching, vest pocket psalm
|
See also a post about the Dead and electronic music. Whenever I play guitar, it comes out sounding a lot like Jerry Garcia. I can’t help it. From the ages of fifteen to twenty, my guitar-learning years, there was no musician I cared more about in the world than Jerry. It’s not about drugs; I’ve [...]
Also filed in Emotion, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Music Business
|
Tagged audience participation, depression, design, drugs, electronica, fashion, grateful dead, guitar, hippies, janis joplin, jerry garcia, midi, sixties, steal your face, tape trading, viral marketing
|