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, monkeysphere, radiohead, remixes, sample maps, Sampling, sarah mclachlan, soul makossa, susan blackmore, tribe, zap mama
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“Ye-yeah” and “baby” are open-ended expressions of love, enthusiasm and general positive energy. They might be specifically directed at a loved one, but usually they’re directed at everyone and no one and have no particular meaning at all. Pop lyrics aren’t about conveying specific information. They’re about sound for the sake of sound. The voice [...]
If you’ve been following my internet presence, you know how much I love flowcharts. So naturally, I was amused by this Randall Munroe cartoon: I was reminded of it walking down the street the other day, because someone in our neighborhood in Brooklyn was blasting a dancehall track from their car that sampled the “na, [...]
Filed in Music, Sampling
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Also tagged ableton, bananarama, beatles, flowcharts, katamari, mashups, memes, rock, singing, songwriting, soul, Video Games, wilson pickett, xkcd
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Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Meet the most fascinating and problematic pop star of the moment, Antoine Dodson. If you’re a follower of internet memes, you know the story by now. If not: Antoine, his sister Kelly and her daughter were asleep in their apartment in the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama. An intruder broke in and sexually [...]
Filed in Emotion, Internet, Music, Politics, Sampling, Social Media
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Also tagged america, antoine dodson, autotune, class, gregory brothers, memes, Politics, race, remixes, tv, youtube
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Saturday, August 14, 2010
In 1988, a pair of British acid house DJs named Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, variously known as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords, and The KLF, had an improbable number one hit with “Doctorin’ The Tardis.” The track isn’t so much a song as it is an early mashup. Just about everything [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Dance, Music, Music Business, Music Teaching, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged dance, digging the crates, doctor who, eighties, looping, mashups, memes, michael jackson, production, Recording, rick astley, songwriting, uk, whitney houston
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I’m pretty sure that “Need You Tonight” by INXS was the last song I fell in love with through commercial radio. I would never have admitted it, and I couldn’t have articulated why, but oh yes, in middle school this track hit me exactly where I lived. It still sounds as fresh today as it [...]
Filed in Music, Music Theory
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Also tagged drum machines, eighties, electronica, hip-hop, inxs, mashups, michael jackson, mtv, neneh cherry, Sampling
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This song represents a lot of firsts for Michael Jackson. It was the first single from Off The Wall, and the first recording MJ made that he had complete creative control over. Many of his hits were written by Quincy Jones or Rod Temperton or the guys from Toto, but Michael wrote this one himself. [...]
Filed in Dance, Key Musicians, Music
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Also tagged beyonce, dance, disco, drumming, harmony, hip-hop, jay-z, mase, Math, michael jackson, mixolydian, Music Theory, public enemy, Sampling, seventies, slick rick, tritones
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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 [...]
Filed in Autobio, Hardware, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Software
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Also tagged authenticity, electronica, guitar, Improvisation, lionel richie, michael jackson, midi, miles davis, pro tools, reason, remixes, revival revival, songwriting
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Meet guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers, one of my favorite musicians in the world. He founded Chic along with the late bassist Bernard Edwards, and he’s on Twitter. Nile Rodgers has led an action-packed life. As a teenager, he played with the Sesame Street band, and then with the Apollo Theater house band, where he [...]
Filed in Dance, Key Musicians, Music
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Also tagged bass, bernard edwards, chic, dance, david bowie, disco, duran duran, eighties, funk, gremlins, guitar, hip-hop, madonna, nile rodgers, Sampling, sugarhill gang
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Here’s a live rendition of Imogen Heap’s song “Hide And Seek.”
Filed in Hardware, Improvisation, Music, Recording
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Also tagged authenticity, autotune, brian eno, electronica, harmony, imogen heap, Improvisation, interface, keybs, midi, Music, remixes, Sampling, synths
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