Auto-tune was already a well-established studio tool by the time “Believe” came out, though it was unknown outside the music industry.
Filed in Music, Recording, Software
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Also tagged autotune, cher, dance, electronica, Music, posthuman, quora, Recording, Software
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
The trumpet player Nicholas Peyton wrote a blog post recently: On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the art form. If jazz is ever going to be popular again, it needs to regain its cool. Jazz was popular when it was intimately connected to popular culture. [...]
Thursday, November 17, 2011
There’s a certain jazz lick that’s so heavily used that it’s just known as The Lick. It’s the only jazz lick I know of that has its own Facebook page. Here’s a greatest hits compilation:
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged akon, bobby hutcherson, classical, cliches, digging the crates, Evolution, facebook, freddie hubbard, grant green, Improvisation, jazz, john coltrane, memes, miles davis, Music, player, reggae, rock, santana, stravinsky
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Thursday, November 3, 2011
I know this melody as the cartoon snakecharmer song. Here’s a kid playing it on bass clarinet: I’ve always wondered where the Egyptian melody came from. It turns out to be hundreds of years of old, and goes by many different names. You can find an excellent capsule history of it in William Benzon’s book [...]
Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Evolution, Music
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Also tagged beatles, cartoons, cliches, das racist, folk, jazz, linkedin, louis armstrong, memes, middle eastern music, quora, stereotyping, steve martin, they might be giants
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The first time I heard Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” was courtesy of Motorcycle Guy, a prominent Brooklyn eccentric who drives around on a tricked-out motorcycle bedecked with lights and equipped with a powerful sound system. I encounter him every so often and he’s always bumping some good funk, soul or R&B. One night, he was [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Dance, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, big daddy kane, bjork, boy george, boyz ii men, cameroon, charles hamilton, copyright, dance, david mancuso, digging the crates, duala, eighties, Evolution, fugees, funk, geto boys, jay-z, kanye west, kool moe d, lord tariq and peter gunz, manu dibango, memes, michael jackson, poor righteous teachers, rihanna, songwriting, soul makossa, thriller, will smith
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
The bassline is neglected by most non-musicians. But if you want to write or produce music, you quickly find out how important it is. The bassline is the foundation of the whole musical structure, both rhythmically and harmonically. The best basslines interlock with the drums and other rhythm instruments to propel the groove, without you [...]
Filed in Composition, Dance, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged 808, art blakey, bass, beatles, black sheep, bootsy collins, charles mingus, daft punk, dance, digable planets, duke ellington, electronica, funk, groove, herbie hancock, hip-hop, james brown, janet jackson, jazz, john coltrane, kanye west, ladysmith black mambazo, looping, michael jackson, miles davis, morphine, paul simon, rock, sequencing, talking heads, teddy riley
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DJ BC is my favorite mashup artist right now. He deserves the nod just for Snoop’s Nu Shooz:
Filed in Autobio, Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged bangles, beatles, brian eno, danger mouse, dj bc, dj earworm, hip-hop, jay-z, linkedin, mashups, mia, nu shooz, Sampling, snoop dogg, soundcloud, wu-tang
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I don’t enjoy Girl Talk’s music all that much — I find it overwhelming, like watching someone flip channels on a TV. But I think he’s really important, and anyone who cares about music, technology, originality and ownership should be paying close attention. Adam Bossy raised an intriguing idea in his answer — describing an [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Dance, Key Musicians, Sampling
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Also tagged audio editing, copyright, girl talk, hip-hop, hipster, inspiration, linkedin, mashups, memes, rock, songwriting
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Sunday, September 4, 2011
The phenomenon of annoyingly persistent earworms is a great introduction to the meme theory: the idea that songs (and all other forms of cultural expression) are self-replicating informational “viruses” that use the mind as their host, the way DNA viruses use living cells and software viruses use computers. The best overview of this theory is [...]
It’s hard to figure out what key a piece of music is in. There are a lot of conflicting answers from different music theory texts. To make matters worse, it’s not at all unusual for a song to change keys, even within a section or phrase. Even rock songs written by totally naive songwriters can [...]
Filed in Music, Music Theory
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Also tagged blues, classical, hall and oates, harmonic minor, jazz, keys, major scale, melodic minor, Music Theory, rock, scales
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