My friend and sometime musical collaborater Leo Ferguson is releasing an album of his adventurous jazz compositions and arrangements. Leo Ferguson Ensemble (2011) by Leo Ferguson As part of the album’s extended liner notes, I interviewed Leo on May 5, 2011. Here’s an edited transcript; you can also hear the audio on Leo’s site.
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music, Race and Identity
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Also tagged barack obama, composing, jazz, john coltrane, leo ferguson, miles davis, steve reich, wayne shorter
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Since it was Easter yesterday, Anna wanted to listen to Bach’s St Matthew Passion while we pottered around the house. A certain passage grabbed my ear, a hymn called “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” — in English, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” This beautiful tune was immediately familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged bach, easter, folk, genealogy, hymns, memes, Music, paul simon
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Saturday, February 12, 2011
I’ve read that Quincy Jones carries around copies of Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue in his briefcase, and that he hands them out to kids whenever he meets them. Q-Tip compares Kind Of Blue to the Bible — you’re just expected to have a copy around the house. If you’ve never heard jazz before, Kind [...]
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Music Theory, Sampling
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Also tagged ahmad jamal, debussy, erykah badu, gil evans, james brown, jazz, john coltrane, mashups, mccoy tyner, memes, miles davis, morton gould, Music Theory, public enemy, Sampling, the heavy
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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, bjork, blues, 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, bjork, chords, folk, guitar, harmony, leonard cohen, major scale, mozart, Music, Music Theory
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I’m not a big classical music guy for the most part, but I never get tired of Bach. This stodgy eighteenth century Lutheran doesn’t seem a likely inspiration for a hipster electronica producer like me. There aren’t too many other wearers of powdered wigs in my record collection, and Bach is the only one in [...]
Classical music recordings are usually straightforward snapshots of live performances. Sometimes recordings are spliced together from multiple takes or overdubbed, but this practice is considered by classical musicians to be highly shameful. Glenn Gould had a very different attitude toward the studio. He loved working there, and viewed it as a more valuable creative outlet [...]
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Here’s Brian Williams’ daughter doing a live mashup of “Nature Boy” with the Mad Men theme song. Hear my remix, electronica arrangement, whatever you want to call it, with beats from Duke Ellington and Ol Dirty Bastard: mp3 download, ipod format download Moulin Rouge! opens with Ewan McGregor’s character singing “Nature Boy.” Here’s the David [...]
Filed in Composition, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged david bowie, dvorak, ella fitzgerald, hippies, jazz, john coltrane, memes, moulin rouge, nat king cole, nature boy, remixes, Sampling
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