Skip to content

Tag Archives: microtones

Blues for the Jews

Monday, December 6, 2010

December is always a complex month for half-Jewish mutts like me. When pressured to self-identify, I usually just go with “Jewish” for the sake of simplicity, but this is in spite of not having being bar mitzvahed, not knowing any Hebrew, having only the vaguest idea what all the holidays and rituals mean, and having [...]

Filed in Autobio, Music, Music Theory, Race and Identity | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Tommy The Cat

Monday, May 31, 2010

Tommy Revival Revival vs Primus mp3 download, ipod format download Vocals by Barbara Singer. Samples and programming by me. The guitar licks were originally played by Alex Torovic but have been chopped up pretty dramatically. This is part of our ongoing strategy, learned from hip-hop, of taking a familiar chorus and coming up with new [...]

Filed in Music, Sampling | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Blue notes and other microtones

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Blue notes are a big part of what makes the blues sound like the blues. Most other American vernacular music uses blue notes too: jazz, funk, rock, country, gospel, folk and so on. In the video below, John Lee Hooker hits a blue note in just about every single guitar phrase. For such a foundational [...]

Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)