“Peter Piper” is the leadoff track on Raising Hell, the third album by Run-DMC. It was their big commercial and critical breakthrough. My stepbrother Dan had it on cassette and it pretty much defined the sound of my sixth and seventh grade experience.
Filed in Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged bob james, copyright, digging the crates, eighties, hip-hop, jazz, memes, Music, nursery rhymes, paul simon, run-dmc, Sampling, turntablism
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Here’s a more specific post on programming various well-known beats. The brain is a pattern recognition machine. We like repetition and symmetry. But we only like it up to a point. Once we’ve recognized and memorized the pattern, we get bored and stop paying attention. If the pattern changes or breaks, it grabs our attention [...]
Filed in Composition, Music, Music Teaching
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Also tagged dance, drum machines, drumming, electronica, hip-hop, meditation, Music, programming, questlove, recursion, repetition, rhythm, time
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Like this sentence, computer programs and songs can refer to themselves. Many computer programs and songs are made of loops within loops within loops. Self-reference gives computers their extreme versatility. It also makes for richer, more interesting music.
Filed in Composition, Music, Software
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Also tagged audio editing, computers, fugees, hip-hop, Music, programming, recursion, remixes, Sampling, self-reference
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Writing a song is a lot like writing a computer program. They both require clever management of loops and control flow. The simplest sheet music reads as a straightforward top-to-bottom list of instructions. You start on measure one and read through to the end sequentially. That’s fine unless the music is very repetitive, which most [...]
Filed in Composition, Math, Music, Software
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Also tagged chameleon, computer science, computers, electronica, fractals, herbie hancock, Improvisation, james brown, mandelbrot, Math, Music, music notation, programming, recursion, visualization
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“The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two” by James Brown and the JBs is one of the most-sampled recordings in history. “The Funky Drummer” is a cornerstone of hip-hop and other sample-based electronic music, but for the first decade after its release it was an obscure tune. It’s a nice groove, but as a song, [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Evolution, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged algorithms, audio editing, black thought, copyright, digging the crates, eminem, freestyle, funk, funky drummer, godel, hip-hop, james brown, memes, mos def, Music, programming, recursion, remixes, rnb, Sampling, soul, susan blackmore
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
When the computer crashes, it seems like it’s frozen. Actually, it’s still working as fast as usual. It only appears to be stuck because it isn’t responding to you. The computer is too busy to take input because it’s in a loop, executing the same short list of instructions over and over. Computers have become [...]