Tuesday, October 11, 2011
When you do computer-based music production and composition, you’re working as much with your eyes as you are with your ears. It’s only natural to start wondering about other music visualization systems. The representations in audio editors like Pro Tools and Ableton Live are purely informational, waveforms and grids and linear graphs. Some visualization systems [...]
Filed in Composition, Interfaces, Math, Music, Music Theory, Software, Visual art
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Also tagged bjork, euler, interfaces, linkedin, looping, melodyne, Music, music notation, networks, notation, reason, Recording, recycle, roger penrose, topology, visualization
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Wednesday, August 3, 2011
When teaching guitar, I find that my students need the most help with groove. Students come to me expecting to learn chords, scales, riffs and ultimately entire tunes. I do teach those things, but after a little guidance, anyone can learn them on their own just as well from books, videos, web sites and so [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged attention, funk, groove, guitar, hip-hop, linkedin, meditation, rhythm, swing, time
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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, drumming, hip-hop, hone, honey drippers, james brown, led zeppelin, looping, programming, rhythm, rock, time
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My friend Adam, a non-musician but devoted music fan, asked me why sampling is good. He’s used to hearing me defend sampling from the accusation that it’s bad, but he’d never heard a positive argument for it. In case you’ve ever asked the same question, here’s my answer.
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Improvisation, Interfaces, Music, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged beyonce, brian eno, chi-lites, copyright, disney, Evolution, fan art, fans, grateful dead, intellectual property, janet jackson, joni mitchell, kickstarter, lil wayne, manu dibango, memes, michael jackson, midi, monkeysphere, Music, public domain, remixes, Sampling, songwriting, swv
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The most sampled recording in history is (probably) the Funky Drummer loop from James Brown’s song “The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two.” Here I go deeper into how this sample can be reworked into new music. DJs call this practice chopping a sample. It’s much easier to chop samples with computers than with hardware [...]
Filed in Composition, Music, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged dna, electronica, Evolution, funk, hip-hop, james brown, memes, midi, mutation, recursion, recycle, remixes, Sampling, sequencing, songwriting, visualization
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Turntablists use record players to play records in ways they weren’t meant to be played. By speeding up, slowing down and reversing the record under the needle, a whole universe of new sounds becomes possible. The record player as musical instrument is still in its early stages of development. DJs already invented the instrumental sound [...]
Filed in Hardware, Improvisation, Interfaces, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, afrika bambaataa, apache, dj, dj premier, grand mixer dst, grandmaster flash, herbie hancock, hip-hop, Improvisation, looping, mashups, music notation, peter piper, rahzel, remixes, rhythm, rockit, run-dmc, Sampling, scratch, turntablism, visualization, wu-tang
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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, funk, 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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“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, funk, godel, hip-hop, james brown, looping, memes, mos def, Music, programming, recursion, remixes, rnb, Sampling, soul, susan blackmore
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