Saturday, November 28, 2009
If you’re in a band, chances are you feel like you’re supposed to be writing your own material. If you write your own songs, you can make more money from the publishing rights in addition to your album sales (should you, improbably, be selling albums.) Writing your own stuff isn’t just a financial consideration. The [...]
Filed in Autobio, Composition, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged arrangement, big band, chet baker, copyright, count basie, duke ellington, frank sinatra, Improvisation, jay-z, jazz, john coltrane, lego, looping, memes, miles davis, modules, Music, Music Theory, my favorite things, originality, reharmonization, remixes, Sampling, swing, symmetry, the sound of music
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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, guitar, hip-hop, janet jackson, michael jackson, molly, Music, Music Theory, psychology, singing, teaching, vest pocket psalm
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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, guitar, harmonics, interface, jimi hendrix, Music, Music Theory, recursion, remixes, resonance, tuning, wah pedal
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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 [...]
Filed in Math, Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory, Software
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Also tagged audio, autotune, binary, electronica, hip-hop, informationtheory, john coltrane, kanye west, lil wayne, Math, Music, Music Theory, pro tools
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Music is really just orderly vibrations: in the air, in instrument bodies, in speaker cones, in tiny hairs in your inner ear, in electromagnetic fields in wires, in patterns of neurons firing in your brain. If you understand the math behind these vibrations, it can help you understand how music works. Surprisingly, it can also [...]
Filed in Math, Music, Music Theory, Physics
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Also tagged guitar, harmonics, Math, molecules, Music, Music Theory, overtones, Physics, resonance, Science, strings, vibration, visualization
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