Malawey, Victoria. Harmonic Stasis and Oscillation in Björk’s Medúlla. Music Theory Online, Volume 16, Number 1, January 2010. The fundamental unit of electronic popular music is the loop. This puts it at odds with the Western art music tradition, which typically favors linear structures with a narrative arc. Repetition has mostly appeared in classical music [...]
Filed in Composition, Emotion, Music, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged africa, attention, audio editing, Composition, linkedin, looping, medulla, nyu, repetition, singing
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The first time I heard Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” was courtesy of Motorcycle Guy, a prominent Brooklyn eccentric who drives around on a tricked-out motorcycle bedecked with lights and equipped with a powerful sound system. I encounter him every so often and he’s always bumping some good funk, soul or R&B. One night, he was [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Dance, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, big daddy kane, boy george, boyz ii men, cameroon, charles hamilton, copyright, dance, david mancuso, digging the crates, duala, eighties, Evolution, fugees, funk, geto boys, jay-z, kanye west, kool moe d, lord tariq and peter gunz, manu dibango, memes, michael jackson, poor righteous teachers, pop, rihanna, songwriting, soul makossa, thriller, will smith
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Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Update: check out my own newest visualization scheme, the radial drum machine. See also a more scholarly review of the literature on visualization and music education. Computer-based music production and composition involves the eyes as much as the ears. The representations in audio editors like Pro Tools and Ableton Live are purely informational, waveforms and [...]
Filed in Composition, Interfaces, Math, Music, Music Theory, Software, Visual art
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Also tagged euler, funky drummer, interfaces, linkedin, looping, melodyne, Music, music notation, networks, notation, reason, Recording, recycle, roger penrose, topology, visualization
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My last post on minor keys covered the three scales you need for most situations in rock, pop and so on: natural minor, harmonic minor and dorian. There’s also the blues scale, which sounds good in any key, major or minor. For musical Jedi masters, there’s one more valuable minor scale. It’s called the melodic [...]
Saturday, January 22, 2011
When you first set out to learn your scales, it can be discouraging. There are so many of them, and their names are so bewildering. The good news is that when you learn one scale, you get a bunch of other scales that you get “for free.” This is because many scales share the same [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged beatles, benny golson, blues, classical, dizzy gillespie, jazz, lynyrd skynyrd, miles davis, modes, Music Theory, rock, samuel barber, scales
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Thursday, January 20, 2011
The C major scale is the foundation that the rest of western music theory sits on. If you master it, you get a bunch of cool chords and scales for free, along with a window into a huge swath of our musical culture. How to form the scale Imagine an ice cube tray with twelve [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged beethoven, chords, classical, folk, guitar, harmony, leonard cohen, major scale, mozart, Music, Music Theory
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While I was researching the Spoonie G meme, I noticed that Brand Nubian uses a lot of remarkably creative samples. It inspired me to do a sample map of their classic first album, One For All. Click to see it bigger. Hear all the tracks sampled on One For All, via Kevin Nottingham’s awesome blog.
Filed in Music, Sampling
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Also tagged aretha franklin, billy joel, brand nubian, digging the crates, edie brickell, hip-hop, memes, new edition, nineties, Sampling
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
I revere Björk above most other musicians. She knows how to balance the coldness of electronic production with hotly unpredictable vocals and instrumental textures. Not everybody loves Björk as much as I do; her approach is eccentric and her sound gets on some people’s nerves. It took me a couple years to be convinced by [...]
Filed in Composition, Key Musicians, Music, Recording
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Also tagged audio editing, depression, electronica, hipster, iceland, interface, lord of the rings, missy elliot, pro tools, Recording, remixes, Sampling, sequencing, timbaland, tolkien
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Now that I have an office job, I’m spending a lot of time under headphones while I correct people’s grammar. It’s a good opportunity to explore the outer reaches of my music tastes. The office has some networked iTunes libraries heavy on the Pitchfork 500, and I have whatever I’m bringing from home. I’ve also [...]
Filed in Internet, Music, Music Business, Software
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Also tagged algorithmic composition, database, dj, herbie hancock, hip-hop, internet radio, itunes, kanye west, napoleon dynamite, netflix, pandora, random, remixes, shuffle, thelonious monk
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The drum intro from Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” is the perfect embodiment of The Awesome Majesty Of Rock. What makes John Bonham’s drums on this track so staggeringly heavy? Partially it’s his playing, and partially it’s the innovative production. Bonham’s performance was recorded by engineer Andy Johns in Headley Grange, a Victorian-era poorhouse [...]
Filed in Music, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged blues, digging the crates, drumming, electronica, hip-hop, history, led zeppelin, Music, pitch shifting, pop, Recording, rock
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