My friend Adam, a non-musician but devoted music fan, asked me why sampling is good. He’s used to hearing me defend it from the idea 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 computers, music
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Also tagged beyonce, book, brian eno, chi-lites, copyright, disney, evolution, fan art, fans, funky drummer, grateful dead, intellectual property, janet jackson, joni mitchell, kickstarter, manu dibango, memes, michael jackson, midi, monkeysphere, music, public domain, remixes, sampling, songwriting, swv
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Saturday, December 5, 2009
Is lip-synching to a recording a form of music? It’s definitely dance, of a specific kind. But is it music, or just mime? I feel instinctively that Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” routine on the Motown 25th Anniversary is a musical performance, one of the all-time great ones. So I guess I consider lip-synching to be [...]
Filed in music, tv
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Also tagged ashlee simpson, attention, billie jean, book, dance, lipsynching, michael jackson, moonwalk, purists, singing, tv
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Saturday, November 28, 2009
We were on our way to Grand Central, on the first leg of our trip north for Thanksgiving. A girl sitting near us on the 4 train had her headphones cranked to where I could recognize the beat as the one from “A Milli” by Lil Wayne. I could also make out that there was [...]
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 music
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Also tagged autotune, depression, drum machines, electronica, emotion, hip-hop, kanye west, 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 music
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Also tagged america, anxiety, autotune, class, cole porter, comedy, computers, drum machines, evolution, hip-hop, improvisation, irony, kanye west, memes, michael jackson, minimalism, natalie portman, natural selection, recording, recursion, remixes, sampling, snl, social media, t-pain, white people
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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, software
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Also tagged audio, autotune, binary, book, coltrane, electronica, harmony, hip-hop, informationtheory, kanye west, math, music, music theory, pro tools
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Wednesday, December 3, 2008
My experience with Auto-tune has felt like stepping out the door of a rocket ship to explore a whole new sonic planet. Hear me singing with Auto-tune, over a loop of The Roots and some samples of Jesse Selengut. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] And here’s me singing with Auto-tune over samples of [...]
Filed in math, music, software
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Also tagged audio editing, autotune, book, computer evolution, electronica, fourier, fun, hip-hop, imaginarynumbers, kanye west, karaoke, multitracking, music, music theory, pop, posthuman, pro tools, quantum, revival revival, software
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