Here’s an email conversation I’ve been having with my friend Greg Brown about Kanye West’s recent albums. Greg is a classical composer and performer with a much more avant-garde sensibility than mine. The exchange is lightly edited for clarity. Greg: I’ve been listening to 808s and Heartbreak and Twisted Fantasy. I’m really enjoying them. Far [...]
Filed in Emotion, Key Musicians, Music, Recording, Software
|
Also tagged 808, 808s and heartbreak, classical, distortion, fiona apple, frank ocean, hip-hop, jay-z, john adams, kanye west, pop, posthuman, rnb, Sampling, singing, soul, watch the throne
|
Auto-tune was already a well-established studio tool by the time “Believe” came out, though it was unknown outside the music industry.
Filed in Music, Recording, Software
|
Also tagged cher, dance, electronica, Music, pop, posthuman, quora, Recording, Software
|
If you’re a guitarist, you may have noticed that it’s hard to get your instrument perfectly in tune. This is not your imagination. If you tune each string perfectly to the one next to it, the low E string will end up out of tune with the high E string. If you use an electronic [...]
Filed in Math, Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
|
Also tagged guitar, harmonics, harmony, history, Math, Music, Music Theory, tuning
|
Saturday, February 26, 2011
This week I’ve been all about Kanye West’s “Lost In The World,” the most gripping track on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Kanye is one of the few commercial producers with a high enough profile to be able to license whatever samples he wants, so he carries the banner of memetastic collage-based music in the [...]
Filed in Composition, Music, Sampling
|
Also tagged bon iver, chipmunking, gil scott-heron, james brown, jamie foxx, kanye west, lyn collins, manu dibango, michael jackson, Sampling, singing
|
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Meet the most fascinating and problematic pop star of the moment, Antoine Dodson. If you’re a follower of internet memes, you know the story by now. If not: Antoine, his sister Kelly and her daughter were asleep in their apartment in the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama. An intruder broke in and sexually [...]
Filed in Emotion, Internet, Music, Politics, Sampling, Social Media
|
Also tagged america, antoine dodson, class, gregory brothers, memes, Politics, pop, race, remixes, tv, youtube
|
Tommy Revival Revival vs Primus mp3 download, ipod format download Vocals by Barbara Singer. Samples and programming by me. The guitar licks were originally played by Alex Torovic but have been chopped up pretty dramatically. This is part of our ongoing strategy, learned from hip-hop, of taking a familiar chorus and coming up with new [...]
Blue notes are a big part of what makes the blues sound like the blues. Most other American vernacular music uses blue notes too: jazz, funk, rock, country, gospel, folk and so on. In the video below, John Lee Hooker hits a blue note in just about every single guitar phrase. For such a foundational [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
|
Also tagged blue notes, blues, guitar, herbie hancock, john lee hooker, microtones, Music Theory, soul, tuning
|
Following up and expanding on a post about learning music theory with Auto-tune. See also a post about the major scale modes and an intro to minor keys. So maybe you want to write a song or an instrumental in a particular mood or style, and you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the scales. Here’s a [...]
Friday, February 26, 2010
The vast majority of music that I hear is recorded, and if you’re reading this the same is probably true of you. Most people don’t have a clear idea what the recording process is like, especially using computers. Here are my adventures in recording. I grew up in the eighties. Cassette recorders were just starting [...]
Filed in Autobio, Composition, Hardware, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Software
|
Also tagged analog, audio, audio editing, computers, electronica, hip-hop, Improvisation, looping, mashups, Music, pro tools, Recording, remixes, revival revival, Sampling, sequencing, synths, tape, tape editing, visualization
|
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 [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music, Race and Identity
|
Also tagged acoustic, alicia keys, authenticity, 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
|