I can’t breakdance. I want to learn. It looks like fun. When I worked for the Parks Department I was involved in their afterschool programs. One of them met in the Alfred E Smith Recreation Center in the housing project of the same name. In the basketball gym, Roc-a-fella (the b-girl, not the record label) [...]
Filed in Dance, Improvisation, Music
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Also tagged breakdancing, dance, disco, electronica, fan art, grandmaster flash, hip-hop, michael jackson, nyc, turntablism, youtube
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Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Today the Michael Jackson fan art I have on my mind (and on the iPod) is “Please Don’t Stop The Music,” sung by Rihanna and produced by a couple of Norwegian guys. It includes a sample of MJ singing “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.” The sample includes both his quasi-Swahili chant and his unearthly woo-hoo. It [...]
Filed in Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged beatboxing, dance, digging the crates, eighties, fan art, Improvisation, manu dibango, memes, michael jackson, pop, recursion, remixes, rihanna, Sampling, seventies, songwriting, soul, soul makossa
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I found this picture of Herbie Hancock on a stranger’s blog. There was no caption or any other context. So I posted it on my Flickr with a note asking if anyone could identify the computer Herbie is sitting in front of. A couple of days later my friend Mike responded with this video of [...]
Filed in Hardware, Interfaces, Key Musicians, Math, Music, Software
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Also tagged computers, drum machines, eighties, electronica, Emotion, herbie hancock, interface, jazz, keybs, Music, quincy jones, sequencing, sesame street, synths
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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 drumming, Evolution, 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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My friend Leo told me that he always faces a conflict when shopping for jazz records. He wants to show love for working musicians by buying their newer recordings, but then, he could always just pick up another Miles Davis album and know it’s going to be ridiculously good. Probably my favorite Miles album out [...]
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged audio editing, Improvisation, jazz, miles davis, Music, Music Theory, Recording, recursion, remixes, seventies, sixties, tape editing
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Back in 1966, Glenn Gould predicted that recorded music would become an interactive conversation between musician and listener. He described dial twiddling as “an interpretive act.” He was wrong about the dials, but right about the main point, that technology would make listening to music more like making music. Anybody with iTunes instantly becomes a [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Internet, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged dave brubeck, digging the crates, dj, dj earworm, django reinhardt, double dee and steinski, electronica, fan art, fugees, girl talk, glenn gould, grandmaster flash, green lantern, hip-hop, jonathan lethem, kelis, ludacris, mashups, memes, michael jackson, mixtapes, mozart, nas, paul simon, pop, pro tools, radiohead, recursion, remixes, sample maps, Sampling, sasha frere-jones, wayne marshall, youtube
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Say “oooh” as in “noodle.” Then say “aaah” as in “park.” When you say “oooh” your mouth is more closed, with less resonating space and a smaller opening. This configuration blocks the higher overtones of your voice. When you say “aaah” your jaw and lips open, creating more resonating space and letting more high overtones [...]
Filed in Hardware, Music, Physics
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Also tagged electronica, envelope filter, guitar, harmonics, jimi hendrix, keybs, metal, overtones, Physics, physiology, pop, resonance, rock, seventies, sixties, soul, speech, wah pedal
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Herbie Hancock is a musician’s musician. He pushed the boundaries of acoustic piano in the sixties. He found a uniquely personal voice on an array of synthesizers in the seventies. And in the eighties, he helped bring turntablism into the pop mainstream. People have been experimenting with recording playback devices as musical instruments for a [...]
Filed in Interfaces, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged breakdancing, digging the crates, drum machines, eighties, electronica, herbie hancock, hip-hop, jazz, keybs, Music, pop, remixes, sequencing, synths, turntablism, vocoder
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“The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two” by James Brown and the JBs is one of the most-sampled recordings in history. “The Funky Drummer” is a cornerstone of hip-hop and other sample-based electronic music, but for the first decade after its release it was an obscure tune. It’s a nice groove, but as a song, [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Evolution, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged algorithms, audio editing, black thought, copyright, digging the crates, eminem, freestyle, funky drummer, godel, hip-hop, james brown, looping, memes, mos def, Music, programming, recursion, remixes, rnb, Sampling, soul, susan blackmore
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