This post is longer and more formal than usual because it was my term paper for a class in the NYU Music Technology Program. Questions of authorship, ownership and originality surround all forms of music (and, indeed, all creative undertakings.) Nowhere are these questions more acute or more challenging than in digital music, where it [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Key Musicians, Music, Music Business, Politics, Recording, Sampling
|
Also tagged ableton, afrika bambaataa, amazing grace, amen break, authenticity, bach, beatles, beyonce, biz markie, brian eno, classical, compulsory licensing, copyright, danger mouse, david shields, dj, dj earworm, dj premier, double dee and steinski, entropy, Evolution, fairlight cmi, fugees, girl talk, grandmaster flash, harold bloom, hip-hop, informationtheory, jay-z, jesse walker, john coltrane, jonathan lethem, linkedin, marcus boon, mashups, memes, midi, missy elliot, mohawks, nas, nyu, originality, plato, plunderphonics, questlove, reason, Recording, remixes, richard dawkins, Sampling, sasha frere-jones, stravinsky, susan blackmore, theodor adorno, walter benjamin, william gibson
|
Malawey, Victoria. Harmonic Stasis and Oscillation in Björk’s Medúlla. Music Theory Online, Volume 16, Number 1, January 2010. The fundamental unit of electronic popular music is the loop. This puts it at odds with the Western art music tradition, which typically favors linear structures with a narrative arc. Repetition has mostly appeared in classical music [...]
Filed in Composition, Emotion, Music, Recording, Sampling
|
Also tagged africa, attention, audio editing, bjork, Composition, linkedin, medulla, nyu, repetition, singing
|
Saville, Kirt. Strategies for Using Repetition as a Powerful Teaching Tool. Music Educators Journal, 2011 98: 69 When a student brings a recorded song to me that they want to learn, the first thing I do is load it into Ableton and mark off the different sections with a simple color-coding scheme: blue for verses, [...]
Filed in Music Teaching, Sampling, Software
|
Also tagged ableton, attention, chunking, flow, linkedin, memory, nyu, teaching, transcribe
|
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter describes and defines the concept of recursion, and discusses its applications in computer science, consciousness, art, music, biology and various other fields. Recursion is crucial to writing computer programs in a compact, elegant way, but it also opens the door to infinite loops and irreconcilable logical contradictions.
Filed in Math, Music, Writing
|
Also tagged anthills, bach, books, buddhism, computer science, douglas hofstadter, emergence, escher, fractals, godel, meditation, recursion, Sampling, xkcd
|
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
|
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, kanye west, ladysmith black mambazo, michael jackson, miles davis, morphine, paul simon, pop, rock, sequencing, talking heads, teddy riley
|
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
When you do computer-based music production and composition, you’re working as much with your eyes as you are with your ears. It’s only natural to start wondering about other music visualization systems. The representations in audio editors like Pro Tools and Ableton Live are purely informational, waveforms and grids and linear graphs. Some visualization systems [...]
Filed in Composition, Interfaces, Math, Music, Music Theory, Software, Visual art
|
Also tagged bjork, euler, funky drummer, interfaces, linkedin, melodyne, Music, music notation, networks, notation, reason, Recording, recycle, roger penrose, topology, visualization
|
Friday, September 23, 2011
Anna and I caught one of the best performances we’ve seen in years the other night by Tune-Yards. My friend Andrew, who was at the show, said this afterwards: “I can’t decide whether hearing the president say ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math’ or the fact that this band could become popular makes me [...]
Filed in Hardware, Music, Race and Identity, Sampling
|
Also tagged africa, audience participation, drumming, hipsters, indie, merrill garbus, race, tune-yards, ukelele
|
Friday, September 9, 2011
If you had to name the most influential drummers in contemporary music, who would you pick? If you’re a rock fan, you might go with Ringo Starr, John Bonham, or Keith Moon. A jazz fan might talk about Max Roach, Elvin Jones or Tony Williams. You probably wouldn’t think to name Gregory Cylvester Coleman. He [...]
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Math, Music, Sampling
|
Also tagged amon tobin, aphex twin, copyright, curtis mayfield, david bowie, digging the crates, dillinja, drum n bass, drumming, eighties, electronica, futurama, golden ratio, hip-hop, jungle, luke vibert, lupe fiasco, mantronix, Math, memes, nineties, nwa, powerpuff girls, recycle, reggae, rnb, salt n pepa, Sampling, snow, soul, the impressions, the winstons
|
Back in June we went to see the incomparable Reggie Watts perform at Central Park Summerstage. I think Reggie is one of the most exciting artists of our time, but it’s difficult to verbalize exactly what he does. His performances combine improvisational music and absurdist standup comedy into a free-associative yet oddly coherent and impactful [...]
Filed in Hardware, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Race and Identity, Recording, Sampling
|
Also tagged comedy, hip-hop, Improvisation, jake lodwick, jazz, reggie watts
|
Hip-hop isn’t usually big on chord progressions, but “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys has an awesome set of changes. Because Alicia Keys was involved, I thought she might have written the chord progression. But no, it’s built from samples of the intro to “Love On A Two-Way Street” by The Moments.
Filed in Composition, Music, Sampling
|
Also tagged alicia keys, chords, digging the crates, hip-hop, jay-z, lego, Music Theory, nyc, Sampling, songwriting, the moments
|