Friday, November 18, 2011
Ella Fitzgerald lost some of her range as she got older, but her soul and phrasing got deeper and deeper. The series of duet albums she did with Joe Pass late in her life are exquisite.
Filed in Key Musicians, Music
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Also tagged age, ella fitzgerald, funk, Improvisation, jazz, joe pass, max roach, miles davis, quora, soul
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Friday, September 23, 2011
Anna and I caught one of the best performances we’ve seen in years the other night by Tune-Yards. My friend Andrew, who was at the show, said this afterwards: “I can’t decide whether hearing the president say ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math’ or the fact that this band could become popular makes me [...]
Filed in Hardware, Music, Race and Identity, Sampling
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Also tagged africa, audience participation, hipsters, indie, looping, merrill garbus, race, tune-yards, ukelele
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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 [...]
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Math, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged amon tobin, aphex twin, copyright, curtis mayfield, david bowie, digging the crates, dillinja, drum n bass, 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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This song represents a lot of firsts for Michael Jackson. It was the first single from Off The Wall, and the first recording MJ made that he had complete creative control over. Many of his hits were written by Quincy Jones or Rod Temperton or the guys from Toto, but Michael wrote this one himself. [...]
Filed in Dance, Key Musicians, Music
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Also tagged beyonce, dance, disco, harmony, hip-hop, jay-z, mase, Math, michael jackson, mixolydian, Music Theory, pop, public enemy, Sampling, seventies, slick rick, tritones
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I wrote a general post about what makes a hot beat hot. As a followup, here’s how to program some generic patterns and a few famous breakbeats. The basic unit of dance music is a sequence of sixteen eighth notes, two measures of four-four time. Drum machines like the Roland TR-808 represent the sixteen eighth [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Software
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Also tagged dance, drum machines, funky drummer, hip-hop, hone, honey drippers, james brown, led zeppelin, looping, programming, rhythm, rock, time
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This post isn’t about Obama. I love Obama. I’m talking about a classic breakbeat, the opening few seconds of “Impeach The President” by the Honey Drippers, and the president in question is Nixon.
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged big daddy kane, biz markie, de la soul, digable planets, digging the crates, eric b & rakim, funk, hip-hop, honey drippers, mick jagger, nas, nice & smooth, notorious big, Sampling, slick rick, soul, wu-tang
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DJ Kool Herc describes “Apache” by The Incredible Bongo Band as the national anthem of hip-hop. “Apache” includes a famous drum and percussion break that has reliably put bodies on the dance floor through hip-hop’s prehistory:
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged apache, breakdancing, copyright, dance, digging the crates, dna, double dee and steinski, drum n bass, Evolution, funk, goldie, grandmaster flash, hip-hop, history, kool herc, mashups, memes, missy elliot, nas, pop, questlove, roots, Sampling, seventies
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Friday, December 11, 2009
Christmas makes me depressed. I would like it not to make me depressed. I want to have kids, and I want them to at least have the option to enjoy this time of year. In order for that to happen, I need to learn to enjoy it. I remember enjoying it when I was little. [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music
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Also tagged america, Autobio, christmas, dickens, duke ellington, eighties, elvis presley, Emotion, family, ibm, nostalgia, santa, tv
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The most-sampled album in history is probably James Brown’s compilation In The Jungle Groove. It includes the original “Funky Drummer Parts One And Two” along with a sampling-friendly remix. It also includes some other much-loved funk tracks. None of them have been sampled as heavily as “Funky Drummer” but there are some contenders. The compilation [...]
Filed in Evolution, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged Evolution, funk, funky drummer, james brown, lil mama, michael jackson, Music, percussion, primates, queen, remixes, rhythm, rnb, Sampling, seventies, sixties, soul, steven mithen, stone age
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We take clocks so much for granted that it’s easy to forget how radical and recent a development they are. It wasn’t so long ago that clocks had to be painstakingly assembled by hand one at a time. Accurate timekeeping on the order of fractions of a second is a heroic engineering undertaking if you’re [...]
Filed in Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Music Theory, Software
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Also tagged audience participation, clocks, Evolution, john coltrane, Music, pro tools, quantum, rhythm, rubato, steven mithen, time
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