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Songwriting and genealogy

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 | Also tagged cassettes, dna, evolution, family, genealogy, memes, midi, music theory, sample maps, sampling, sequencing, songwriting | Comments (5)

Avatar is totally unoriginal but still pretty cool

Monday, December 28, 2009

I don’t get to movie theaters much. But as part of the new family plan to enjoy ourselves on Christmas, I went to see Avatar in 3D with a bunch of relatives. I went in intending to dislike it, and came out having thoroughly enjoyed myself. So much for my hipsterish snobbery. What’s interesting to [...]

Filed in movies | Also tagged aliens, america, anne mccaffrey, avatar, capitalism, gaia hypothesis, green, james cameron, mashups, memes, military, movies, native americans, pop, racism, roger dean, scifi, south park, the abyss, the matrix, white people, yes | Comments (3)

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 [...]

Filed in autobio, computers, music | Also tagged arrangement, big band, book, chet baker, coltrane, copyright, count basie, duke ellington, frank sinatra, harmony, improvisation, jay-z, jazz, lego, looping, memes, miles davis, modules, music, music theory, my favorite things, reharmonization, remixes, sampling, swing, symmetry, the sound of music | Comments (0)

Bitter Sweet Symphony

Monday, November 23, 2009

One of the biggest copyright failures of copyright law ever is the The Verve song “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” The distinctive string sample comes from an orchestral arrangement of “The Last Time” by The Rolling Stones. Doesn’t sound much like the Verve, does it? The two bands do share a taste in the I – flat [...]

Filed in autobio, music | Also tagged allen klein, andrew oldham, bitter sweet symphony, copyright, fail, hip-hop, james brown, law, pop, remixes, revival revival, richard ashcroft, rock, rolling stones, sampling, staples singers, the verve, uk | Comments (1)

God don’t ever give me nothing I can’t handle, so please don’t ever give me records I can’t sample

Sunday, June 14, 2009

The title is a lyric by Kanye West on Common’s track “They Say.” A hundred percent of my musical energy right now is coming from and going into sample-based music. To wit: Records I Can’t Sample [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Me vs Michael Jackson vs Herbie Hancock vs Missy Elliot vs Kanye [...]

Filed in music | Also tagged book, common, copyright, electronica, evolution, hip-hop, homebrewing, jonathan lethem, kanye west, mashups, memes, music, property, remixes, sampling | Comments (1)

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