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Tag Archives: miles davis

What does live music mean in the laptop era?

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

This weekend my electronica band Revival Revival is doing some shows for the first time in many months. We’ll be doing a lot of what my non-electronic-musician friends consider to be cheating. The lead vocals and guitar will be live, as will some of the synths. Everything else will be canned, recordings played back from [...]

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Coltrane was an analog remixer

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The current fetish for originality in music is partially an outgrowth of copyright law. If you write your own songs, you can make more money from the publishing rights in addition to your album sales. The influence of Bob Dylan and the Beatles further created the expectation that popular musicians would mostly be writing their [...]

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Human Nature

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Enjoy my remix of Human Nature. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Me vs Michael Jackson mp3 download, ipod format download For a long time, “Human Nature” was not my favorite song on Thriller. It took me many years to wise up to how awesome it is. Maybe it’s a gender thing. I played [...]

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Loop mode: improvisation is composition is recording

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Before digital recording media, recording artists faced a tradeoff between spontaneity and perfection. Recording take after take until the performances are spotless can quickly suck the joy and energy out of the music. But the kind of sloppiness that goes unnoticed in a live performance can get on your nerves after many repeated listens. It’s [...]

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Jazz Jazz Revolution

Monday, July 20, 2009

It’s no accident that music and games share the verb “to play.” Both music and games are semi-structured forms of social learning. As far as I’m concerned, the most exciting thing happening in the video game world is the explosion of music-based games like Dance Dance Revolution.

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In A Silent Way is a remix of itself

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

My friend Leo told me that he always faces a conflict when shopping for jazz records. He wants to show love for working musicians by buying their newer recordings, but then, he could always just pick up another Miles Davis album and know it’s going to be ridiculously good. Probably my favorite Miles album out [...]

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