If I had to pick a single track to explain to an alien or time traveler what hip-hop is and why it’s so awesome, I think I’d pick “Nas Is Like.” Nas has a great flow full of powerful imagery, but what makes this track for me is DJ Premier’s production. It’s a complex web [...]
Filed in music
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Also tagged advertising, biz markie, dj premier, eurythmics, hip-hop, kool & the gang, michael jackson, nas, nineties, recursion, roxanne shante, sample maps, sampling, steve miller, turntablism
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Saturday, August 14, 2010
In 1988, a pair of British acid house DJs named Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, variously known as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs), The Timelords and The KLF, had an improbable number one hit with “Doctorin’ The Tardis.” The track isn’t so much a song as it is an early mashup. Aside [...]
Filed in music, tv
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Also tagged book, dance, doctor who, eighties, looping, mashups, michael jackson, pop, production, recording, rick astley, songwriting, uk, whitney houston
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Hip-hop at its best is about truth-telling. It doesn’t get any realer than “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by Pete Rock and CL Smooth.
While I was researching the Spoonie G meme, I noticed that Brand Nubian uses a lot of remarkably creative samples. It inspired me to do a sample map of their first album, One For All. Click to see it bigger. Hear all the tracks sampled on One For All, via Kevin Nottingham’s awesome blog.
I’ve been hearing this line in a lot of hip-hop songs: “One for the treble, two for the time” or “One for the treble, two for the bass” or some variation. I wanted to find out what everybody’s quoting. After some internet detective work, here’s what I’ve got. The phrase is a play on the [...]
Filed in music
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Also tagged aceyalone, brand nubian, common, davy dmx, dj khaled, eighties, elvis presley, grandmaster flash, hip-hop, kurtis blow, mos def, sergio mendes, seventies, snoop dogg, spoonie g
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
The best tool for understanding where music comes from is evolutionary biology. Songs don’t spontaneously spring into being any more than animals or plants do. They evolve, descending from reshuffled pieces of existing songs, the way our genes are shuffled together from our parents’ genes. The same way that all life has a single common [...]
Filed in music, science
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Also tagged cassettes, dna, evolution, family, genealogy, midi, music theory, originality, sample maps, sampling, sequencing, songwriting
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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, lil wayne, manu dibango, michael jackson, midi, monkeysphere, music, public domain, remixes, sampling, songwriting, swv
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This PBS Independent Lens documentary on sampling culture is a good one, and you can watch the whole thing on Youtube. Their resources and links page includes my Biz Markie blog post. Thanks Beautiful Decay for posting the videos. Part one:
Filed in movies, music, software, tv
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, audio editing, beastie boys, biz markie, book, clyde stubblefield, computers, copyright, dance, dj, eighties, george clinton, hip-hop, improvisation, james brown, jeff chang, looping, mashups, michael jackson, music, pro tools, public enemy, recording, remixes, rock, sampling
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DJ Kool Herc likes to say that The Incredible Bongo Band’s version of “Apache” is the national anthem of hip-hop. Its famous drum and percussion break reliably put bodies on the dance floor through hip-hop’s prehistory and has been sampled untold numbers of times. Here’s the break: [Audio clip: view full post to listen] On [...]
Filed in music
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Also tagged apache, book, breakdancing, copyright, dance, dna, double dee and steinski, drum n bass, drumming, evolution, funk, goldie, grandmaster flash, hip-hop, history, kool herc, mashups, missy elliot, nas, pop, questlove, roots, sampling, seventies
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The most sampled recording in history is (probably) the Funky Drummer loop from James Brown’s song “The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two.” Here I go deeper into how this sample can be reworked into new music. DJs call this practice chopping a sample. It’s much easier to chop samples with computers than with hardware [...]
Filed in music, software
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Also tagged dna, electronica, evolution, funk, funky drummer, hip-hop, james brown, midi, mutation, recursion, recycle, remixes, sampling, sequencing, songwriting, visualization
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