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, blues, herbie hancock, john lee hooker, microtones, Music Theory, soul, tuning
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This weekend my electronica band Revival Revival is doing some shows for the first time in many months. We’ll be doing a lot of what my non-electronic-musician friends consider to be cheating. The lead vocals and guitar will be live, as will some of the synths. Everything else will be canned, recordings played back from [...]
Filed in Autobio, Hardware, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Software
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Also tagged authenticity, electronica, Improvisation, lionel richie, michael jackson, midi, miles davis, pop, pro tools, reason, remixes, revival revival, songwriting
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In keeping with my posts thinking of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix as electronic musicians, I thought I’d round out the techno-hippie trifecta with the Dead. Their fans might lean to the crunchy granola side, and they did some of their most endearing work in unplugged mode, but for the most part the Dead were [...]
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Meet guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers, one of my favorite musicians in the world. He founded Chic along with the late bassist Bernard Edwards, and he’s on Twitter. Nile Rodgers has led an action-packed life. As a teenager, he played with the Sesame Street band, and then with the Apollo Theater house band, where he [...]
Filed in Dance, Key Musicians, Music
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Also tagged bass, bernard edwards, chic, dance, david bowie, disco, duran duran, eighties, funk, gremlins, hip-hop, madonna, nile rodgers, pop, Sampling, sugarhill gang
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Here’s Revival Revival’s arrangement of Lionel Richie’s classic “Dancin’ On The Ceiling.” Ohhh What A Feelin’ Revival Revival vs Lionel Richie vs Michael Jackson mp3 download, ipod format download Vocals, guitar and bass by Babsy. Beats, loops and production by me. The beat is from “Billie Jean.” We love this song. Here’s the original.
Filed in Music
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Also tagged autotune, billie jean, dance, eighties, lionel richie, michael jackson, pop, remixes, revival revival, rock, Sampling, typography
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Working on Janet Jackson songs made me want to see if she did any tracks with Michael. Here’s what the internet has to say: Michael sings backup vocals on Janet’s early album Dream Street. Janet sings backup on Michael’s “PYT.” She’s in the part towards the end where he says “Pretty young things, repeat after [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music
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Also tagged Autobio, creativity, harmony, hip-hop, janet jackson, michael jackson, molly, Music, Music Theory, psychology, singing, teaching, vest pocket psalm
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See also a post about the Dead and electronic music. Whenever I play guitar, it comes out sounding a lot like Jerry Garcia. I can’t help it. From the ages of fifteen to twenty, my guitar-learning years, there was no musician I cared more about in the world than Jerry. It’s not about drugs; I’ve [...]
Filed in Autobio, Emotion, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Music Business
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Also tagged audience participation, depression, design, drugs, electronica, fashion, grateful dead, hippies, janis joplin, jerry garcia, midi, sixties, steal your face, tape trading, viral marketing
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Thursday, August 20, 2009
Hip-hop artists love Prince. Like them, he blends drum machines, live jazz-funk musicians and samples of other songs.
Filed in Composition, Hardware, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged digging the crates, drum machines, eighties, george clinton, keybs, pop, prince, remixes, rock, sample maps, Sampling, synths
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There are a lot of different musical instruments out there. Just about all of them share four basic components: a harmonic oscillator, a source of noise, a control surface for modulation, and a resonator.
Filed in Hardware, Interfaces, Music, Physics, Video Games
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Also tagged chiptunes, Music, Music Theory, overtones, Physics, resonance, singing, synths, Video Games
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People had been playing electric guitar for decades before Jimi Hendrix. Mostly they used it as a louder, less effortful version of the acoustic guitar. Jimi was one of the first musicians to think of the guitar amp as a musical instrument unto itself, an early analog synth, with the guitar as a very sophisticated [...]
Filed in Hardware, Interfaces, Key Musicians, Math, Music, Physics
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Also tagged analog, electricity, electromagnetism, electronica, feedback, harmonics, harmony, interface, jimi hendrix, Music, Music Theory, recursion, remixes, resonance, tuning, wah pedal
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