Chapman, Dale. “That Ill, Tight Sound”: Telepresence and Biopolitics in Post-Timbaland Rap Production. Journal of the Society for American Music (2008) Volume 2, Number 2, pp. 155–175. Chapman examines the impact that Timbaland has had on popular music production, and what his significance is to the broader culture. While Timbaland himself is no longer the …
Tag Archives: LinkedIn
Image schemas in music software
I’m doing a ton of writing for grad school, and will be posting the highlights here. First off, an abstract and discussion of this article: Katie Wilkie, Simon Holland, and Paul Mulholland. Winter, 2010. What Can The Language Of Musicians Tell Us About Music Interaction Design? Computer Music Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4, Pages 34-48 …
Round Midnight
Thelonious Monk’s beautiful ballad “Round Midnight” is said to be the most widely recorded and performed jazz tune — that is, a tune that was written specifically for jazz, not an adaptation of a showtune or pop song. It’s a testament to its popularity that it’s one of exactly two songs that Dave Chappelle knows …
How does jazz work?
Rather than attempting the impossible task of explaining how everything in jazz works, I’m going to pick a specific tune and talk you through it: “Someday My Prince Will Come” by Miles Davis, off the 1961 album by the same name. First, here’s the original version of the tune from Snow White. Once you’ve got …
Who should you follow to keep up to date on digital music trends?
Here are some recommended people to follow on Twitter. Most of them have blogs of various kinds which you can access via their Twitter profiles. For hip-hop, sampling and everything related: Questlove Kevin Nottingham Whosampled Grown Folks Music Wayne Marshall Hank Shocklee Jeff Chang For technology: Deb Chachra Tara Busch Paul Lamere For the highbrow …
Continue reading “Who should you follow to keep up to date on digital music trends?”
Updated social flow
Every so often I like to document my ever-evolving internet presence. Here’s how things stand at the moment. Click the flowchart to see it bigger; explanation is below.
Where does the “Egyptian” melody originally come from?
I know this melody as the cartoon snakecharmer song. Here’s a kid playing it on bass clarinet: I’ve always wondered where the Egyptian melody came from. It turns out to be hundreds of years of old, and goes by many different names. You can find an excellent capsule history of it in William Benzon’s book …
Continue reading “Where does the “Egyptian” melody originally come from?”
Is music the most abstract art form?
The Quora question that prompted this post asks: Why has music been historically the most abstract art form? We can see highly developed musical forms in renaissance polyphony and baroque counterpoint. The secular forms of this music is often non-programmatic or “absolute music.” In contrast to this, the paintings and sculpture of those times are …
Why do I grimace when I concentrate?
The parts of your brain that do your abstract thinking are very tightly interconnected with the parts that control your muscles. In fact, some of that abstract thinking is done by the same brain regions that control your muscles. We don’t yet know why a specific brain region produces a given specific thought, but the …
What is the evolutionary purpose of dreaming?
Dreaming doesn’t have an evolutionary purpose per se. It’s just an emergent property of the piecemeal way our brains have evolved, from the older and more automatic systems out to the newer, learning-enabled systems. I’ve seen it suggested by several different scientists that most animals go about their waking lives in a state similar to …
Continue reading “What is the evolutionary purpose of dreaming?”