The defining musical experience of my lifetime is hearing familiar samples in unfamiliar contexts. For me, the experience is usually a thrill. For a lot of people, the experience makes them angry. Using recognizable samples necessarily means having an emotional conversation with everyone who already has an attachment to the original recording. Music is about [...]
Filed in Emotion, Evolution, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged beatles, beyonce, chi-lites, elvin jones, Evolution, grateful dead, jay-z, john coltrane, manu dibango, mashups, memes, michael jackson, pop, radiohead, remixes, sample maps, Sampling, sarah mclachlan, soul makossa, susan blackmore, tribe, zap mama
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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 sampling from the accusation 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 Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Improvisation, Interfaces, Music, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged beyonce, 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, memes, michael jackson, midi, Music, public domain, remixes, Sampling, songwriting, swv
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Spoiler alert: don’t read until you’ve watched to the end of season three. Mad Men is well-made television, but so is plenty of other television. Why is this particular show so compelling to me and so many of my buddies? I think it’s that watching Mad Men is like watching a documentary about our parents [...]
Kramer is the name my mom’s father’s parents gave at Ellis Island because they thought it they might have an easier time with it assimilation-wise than Garfinkel. In Eastern Europe, if you want a WASP-y sounding name, you usually choose something German rather than British. My mom’s wing of her extended family calls itself the [...]
Filed in Autobio, Emotion
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Also tagged america, anxiety, Autobio, buddhism, confidence, family, fashion, george costanza, judaica, kramer, nyc, obama, seinfeld, synths, tv
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Technology keeps getting better. Do our lives get better as a result? In certain specific ways, maybe yes, but in general, I would say, not really. How is that possible? I think there are two big things at work. Technology is evolving semi-independently of the humans that produce it. We don’t control the evolution of [...]