Wednesday, November 10, 2010
I’ve picked up some new guitar students lately, so I’m once again doing a lot of explaining what a tritone is and why people should care. Whenever I find myself explaining something a lot, I like to encapsulate it as a blog post. So here we go. A tritone is the interval between the notes [...]
Filed in Emotion, Math, Music, Music Theory
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Also tagged busta rhymes, chords, irrational numbers, Math, melodic minor, michael jackson, miles davis, Music Theory, psychology, scales, simpsons, sonny rollins, stevie wonder, thelonious monk, tritones
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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
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Also tagged autotune, blue notes, guitar, herbie hancock, john lee hooker, microtones, Music Theory, soul, tuning
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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
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Also tagged acoustic, alicia keys, authenticity, autotune, bebop, big chill, bill monroe, bluegrass, 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
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Sample-based music isn’t stealing. It’s valuable and important. It shows the way toward a future for recorded music that’s more in continuity with music’s past. Recordings are cool and everything, but they encourage passivity. If I buy a recording, I can listen to it or dance to it, both fine activities, but what if I [...]
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Music, Politics, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged amazing grace, copyright, folk, google, Improvisation, Internet, jazz, kanye west, learning, memes, Music, Music Theory, opensource, remixes, Sampling, transcribing
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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 bjork, digging the crates, drumming, electronica, hip-hop, history, led zeppelin, Music, pitch shifting, pop, Recording, rock
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