Here’s an email conversation I’ve been having with my friend Greg Brown about Kanye West’s recent albums. Greg is a classical composer and performer with a much more avant-garde sensibility than mine. The exchange is lightly edited for clarity. Greg: I’ve been listening to 808s and Heartbreak and Twisted Fantasy. I’m really enjoying them. Far [...]
Filed in Emotion, Key Musicians, Music, Recording, Software
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Also tagged 808, 808s and heartbreak, autotune, classical, distortion, fiona apple, frank ocean, hip-hop, jay-z, john adams, pop, posthuman, rnb, Sampling, singing, soul, watch the throne
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The first time I heard Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” was courtesy of Motorcycle Guy, a prominent Brooklyn eccentric who drives around on a tricked-out motorcycle bedecked with lights and equipped with a powerful sound system. I encounter him every so often and he’s always bumping some good funk, soul or R&B. One night, he was [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Dance, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, big daddy kane, bjork, boy george, boyz ii men, cameroon, charles hamilton, copyright, dance, david mancuso, digging the crates, duala, eighties, Evolution, fugees, funk, geto boys, jay-z, kool moe d, lord tariq and peter gunz, manu dibango, memes, michael jackson, poor righteous teachers, pop, rihanna, songwriting, soul makossa, thriller, will smith
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
The bassline is neglected by most non-musicians. But if you want to write or produce music, you quickly find out how important it is. The bassline is the foundation of the whole musical structure, both rhythmically and harmonically. The best basslines interlock with the drums and other rhythm instruments to propel the groove, without you [...]
Filed in Composition, Dance, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged 808, art blakey, bass, beatles, black sheep, bootsy collins, charles mingus, daft punk, dance, digable planets, duke ellington, electronica, funk, groove, herbie hancock, hip-hop, james brown, janet jackson, jazz, john coltrane, ladysmith black mambazo, looping, michael jackson, miles davis, morphine, paul simon, pop, rock, sequencing, talking heads, teddy riley
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Saturday, February 26, 2011
This week I’ve been all about Kanye West’s “Lost In The World,” the most gripping track on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Kanye is one of the few commercial producers with a high enough profile to be able to license whatever samples he wants, so he carries the banner of memetastic collage-based music in the [...]
Filed in Composition, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged autotune, bon iver, chipmunking, gil scott-heron, james brown, jamie foxx, lyn collins, manu dibango, michael jackson, Sampling, singing
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Thursday, February 10, 2011
As part of New York Social Media Week, I attended a panel entitled “The Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy of Social Media as Music’s Savior.” It was first thing in the morning, which really asks a lot from the music hipsters. I would normally have just live-tweeted this thing, but the wi-fi in the place was [...]
Filed in Music, Music Business, Social Media
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Also tagged ciara, facebook, ice-t, linkedin, marketing, Music Business, Social Media, soundcloud, twitter, youtube
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Classical music recordings are usually straightforward snapshots of live performances. Sometimes recordings are spliced together from multiple takes or overdubbed, but this practice is considered by classical musicians to be highly shameful. Glenn Gould had a very different attitude toward the studio. He loved working there, and viewed it as a more valuable creative outlet [...]
Sample-based music isn’t stealing. It’s valuable and important. It shows the way toward a future for recorded music that’s more in continuity with music’s past. Recordings are cool and everything, but they encourage passivity. If I buy a recording, I can listen to it or dance to it, both fine activities, but what if I [...]
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Music, Politics, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged amazing grace, blues, copyright, folk, google, Improvisation, Internet, jazz, learning, memes, Music, Music Theory, opensource, remixes, Sampling, transcribing
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Saturday, October 3, 2009
Okay, so we’ve all firmly established that he’s not exactly Mr Personality. President Obama called him a jackass. Even before he disrupted the MTV awards, a lot of my friends disliked him intensely. This dislike crosses racial, class and gender boundaries. And yet, I like Kanye’s music better than just about anything that anyone is [...]
Filed in Emotion, Key Musicians, Music, Race and Identity
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Also tagged autotune, depression, drum machines, electronica, Emotion, hip-hop, lil wayne, masculinity, pop, posthuman, remixes, t-pain, taylor swift
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See a followup post about female remixes of “A Milli” Lil Wayne and I have some differences of style and taste: about facial tattoos, about drinking cough syrup recreationally, about jewelry on one’s teeth. But we agree about music. He brags constantly that he’s the best rapper alive. I think he makes a pretty good [...]
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged america, anxiety, autotune, class, cole porter, comedy, computers, drum machines, Evolution, hip-hop, Improvisation, irony, lil wayne, memes, michael jackson, minimalism, natalie portman, natural selection, Recording, recursion, remixes, Sampling, snl, Social Media, t-pain, white people
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Update: hear my 5.1 surround remix of “Here Comes The Sun.” Why are the Beatles still so cool? By which I mean the late Beatles, Revolver onwards. I like Please Please Me as much as the next guy, but it isn’t why the Beatles are cool now. No, I mean the last few records, especially [...]
Filed in Key Musicians, Music, Recording, Sampling, Video Games
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Also tagged abbey road, analog, audio, audio editing, beatles, common, divorce, hip-hop, john lennon, mellotron, memes, mixtapes, multitracking, paul mccartney, prince, remixes, rock, rock band, Sampling, tape, tape editing, Video Games
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