I got an unexpected email today from the legendary composer/remixer John Oswald, whose Plunderphonics project was a major inspiration for me. (For example, check out “Dab,” “Power,” and the terrifying “Pretender.”) He told me that in the course of researching the connection between the second movement of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 and the haunting …
Continue reading “John Oswald said he likes my Stevie Wonder/Laurie Anderson mashup”
One of the most significant developments in the past fifty years of popular music is the idea of using existing recordings as raw material for new musical expression. The remix began as a way to make dance versions of pop songs, but it has evolved into an entire new art medium unto itself.
I am not a lawyer, just a guy who studies hip-hop academically. But I’m married to a lawyer, and have spoken to various music industry people and done a lot of reading on this. My advice is to go ahead and post tracks with uncleared samples, even though doing so is technically illegal. Understand that …
Continue reading “Is it okay to post tracks with unlicensed samples?”
The meaning of the word “producer” has changed significantly over the history of recorded music. Before the 1960s, most record producers were businesspeople, responsible for signing checks and making sure the musicians and engineers did their jobs. Some producers took a creative role in choosing repertoire, arrangements and takes, but others were hands-off. As recording …
Glenn Gould thought people should make their own edits of classical recordings. He explains this idea in greater depth here. I read it and thought, challenge accepted!
Back in 2009, Harmonix came out with The Beatles: Rock Band. In order to prepare the sound files for the game, the company needed the original multitrack stems for fifty Beatles songs. Someone at the company posted the stems online, and they remain in widespread circulation. (You can easily obtain them via a Google search.) …
I have come to believe that Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” is the most interesting musical recording of all time. It touches every form of twentieth century American music, from blues to jazz to rock to techno, and it’s one of the founding documents of global hip-hop. Not bad for a last-ditch effort to keep Herbie’s label …
Music evolves the way life does: through change in the heritable characteristics of populations over successive generations. Most of the heritable characteristics of music are abstractions like rhythm patterns and chord progressions. However, you can also see heritability at work more obviously in the form of sampling. It’s especially illuminating when a song samples a …
I was invited by Jason Richardson to take part in a Shinobi Cuts remix chain, an album where each track is a remix of the previous track. The final remix is done by the creator of the track that started the whole thing off, making for a kind of musical strange loop. When you listen to the …
In my recent post about “Giant Steps,” I briefly mentioned the idea of doing improvisational remixes of jazz recordings. This is a big enough idea to merit a post of it own. My slow-tempo remix of the tune includes a solo section that I played by slicing up the melody, putting each note on a sample pad, …
