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Tag Archives: harmony

Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

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. [...]

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Music theory for beginner guitarists

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Most beginner guitarists start by learning the same fifteen chords, usually called the “standard fifteen.” I’ve also heard them called the open chords because they make use of open strings and are thus easy to play. For fingerings, have a look at wikipedia or any book on beginner guitar. You can also see this handy [...]

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Imogen Heap and artificial harmony

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Here’s a live rendition of Imogen Heap’s song “Hide And Seek.” It’s introduced by Zach Braff, but don’t let that dissuade you from watching.

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Coltrane was an analog remixer

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The current fetish for originality in music is partially an outgrowth of copyright law. If you write your own songs, you can make more money from the publishing rights in addition to your album sales. The influence of Bob Dylan and the Beatles further created the expectation that popular musicians would mostly be writing their [...]

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Janet and Michael vs Molly and me

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 [...]

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Jimi Hendrix, electronic musician

Monday, July 6, 2009

People had been playing electric guitar for decades before Jimi Hendrix. Mostly it had been used as a louder, less effortful version of the acoustic guitar. Jimi was one of the first to think of the guitar amp as a musical instrument unto itself, an early analog synth, with the guitar as a very sophisticated [...]

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Learning music theory with Auto-tune

Monday, May 4, 2009

Auto-tune makes producing music easier. It can also make understanding music theory easier. The way you dial up different keys and scales doesn’t just guide your ear, it also guides your eye. Your voice can produce a smooth continuum of pitches. To sing, you eliminate most of those possibilities, vibrating your mouth and throat only [...]

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Tuning the quantum guitar

Friday, March 20, 2009

In high school science class, you probably saw a picture of an atom that looked like this: The picture shows a stylized atom, a nucleus with red protons and blue neutrons, surrounded by three grey electrons. It’s an attractive and iconic image, and it would make a great logo. It’s also misleading, and in some [...]

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