I always enjoy when hip-hop artists sample themselves. It makes the music recursive, and for me, “recursive” is synonymous with “good.” You can hear self-sampling in “Nas Is Like” by Nas, “The Score” by the Fugees and many songs by Eric B and Rakim. The most recent self-sampling track to cross my radar is “Unbelievable” [...]
Also filed in Key Musicians, Math, Music, Sampling
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Tagged digging the crates, dj premier, fractals, funk, hip-hop, impeach the president, keybs, lee byron, mandelbrot, nas, notorious big, nursery rhymes, patrice rushen, r kelly, recursion, rnb, Sampling, songwriting, turntablism
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You don’t go to high school biology class to learn particular facts; you go to understand the general framework of evolutionary theory. Rather than contradicting any single fact, Intelligent Design undermines the entire intellectual basis of biology.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Here are the areas of math that can most easily be understood in musical terms. Wave mechanics The concept of orbitals in quantum mechanics made zero sense to me until I finally found out that they’re just harmonics of the electron field’s vibrations. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Einstein conceptualized wave mechanics [...]
Also filed in Math, Music, Music Theory
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Tagged bellringing, circle of fifths, combinatorics, discrete math, graph theory, linkedin, logarithms, Math, modular arithmetic, Music, neal stephenson, quora, recursion, school, symmetry, wave mechanics
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Thursday, September 29, 2011
Gravity is the warping of spacetime by mass or energy. A mass like the Earth warps spacetime so that the shortest path, the “path of least resistance,” for inertial movement is towards the Earth’s center. Using instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope, it’s possible to literally see the warping of spacetime by very massive objects [...]
Also filed in Physics
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Tagged astronomy, dark matter, einstein, gravity, linkedin, loop quantum gravity, Physics, quora, relativity, space, spacetime, string theory
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Thursday, September 29, 2011
I would wish for Dawkins to use more emotional sensitivity and compassion when dealing with religious people, because his hostile tone gets in the way of his invaluable message. His condescending attitude toward believers, epitomized by calling atheists “brights,” is seriously counterproductive. I’m concerned that he’s unnecessarily confrontational and inflammatory in his TV appearances, op-eds [...]
Monday, September 26, 2011
I’ve been intrigued by Charles Lyell‘s self-described “dopamine awareness campaign,” trying to show how all of our social behaviors boil down to a desire for gratifying dopamine shots. The campaign doesn’t seem to be going so well; see, for example, the collapsing of his recent answer to Why do people contribute reviews of restaurants/theatres/events etc? [...]
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Predictable unpredictability. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine. We like repetition and symmetry because they engage our pattern-recognizers. But we only like patterns up to a point. Once we’ve recognized and memorized the pattern, we get bored and stop paying attention. If the pattern changes or breaks, it grabs our attention again. And if the [...]
Friday, September 23, 2011
Imagine you’re a parent with a young kid, and you’re hearing all these stories about vaccines and autism. Who do you trust?
Saturday, September 10, 2011
I’ve been lucky enough to experience heightened and altered consciousness from music making, listening and dancing. Chasing that feeling motivates me to keep making and studying music, in spite of the lousy pay. I’m reading a wonderful book right now by William Benzon called Beethoven’s Anvil. Benzon looks at the state of brain research and [...]
Also filed in Emotion, Evolution, Music
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Tagged carl sagan, consciousness, dreaming, Emotion, Evolution, Music, neuroscience, quora, william benzon
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Friday, September 9, 2011
If you had to name the most influential drummers in contemporary music, who would you pick? If you’re a rock fan, you might go with Ringo Starr, John Bonham, or Keith Moon. A jazz fan might talk about Max Roach, Elvin Jones or Tony Williams. You probably wouldn’t think to name Gregory Cylvester Coleman. He [...]
Also filed in Copyright and Authorship, Math, Music, Sampling
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Tagged amon tobin, aphex twin, copyright, curtis mayfield, david bowie, digging the crates, dillinja, drum n bass, drumming, eighties, electronica, futurama, golden ratio, hip-hop, jungle, looping, luke vibert, lupe fiasco, mantronix, Math, memes, nineties, nwa, powerpuff girls, recycle, reggae, rnb, salt n pepa, Sampling, snow, soul, the impressions, the winstons
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