Saturday, September 11, 2010
Missy Elliot is one of the most futuristic electronic adventurers out there, especially in her collaborations with Timbaland. Yet her stuff is as hot and soulful as music gets. How does she do it?
Filed in Key Musicians, Music, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged blondie, breakdancing, digging the crates, eighties, hip-hop, missy elliot, run-dmc, Sampling, timbaland
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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, pop, reason, remixes, revival revival, songwriting
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Friday, February 26, 2010
The vast majority of music that I hear is recorded, and if you’re reading this the same is probably true of you. Most people don’t have a clear idea what the recording process is like, especially using computers. Here are my adventures in recording. I grew up in the eighties. Cassette recorders were just starting [...]
Filed in Autobio, Composition, Hardware, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Software
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Also tagged analog, audio, audio editing, autotune, computers, electronica, hip-hop, Improvisation, looping, mashups, Music, Recording, remixes, revival revival, Sampling, sequencing, synths, tape, tape editing, visualization
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This PBS Independent Lens documentary on sampling culture is a good one, and you can watch the whole thing on Youtube. Their resources and links page includes my Biz Markie blog post. Thanks Beautiful Decay for posting the videos. Part one:
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Music, Music Business, Politics, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged a tribe called quest, audio editing, beastie boys, biz markie, clyde stubblefield, computers, copyright, dance, dj, eighties, george clinton, hip-hop, Improvisation, james brown, jeff chang, looping, mashups, memes, michael jackson, Music, public enemy, Recording, remixes, rock, Sampling
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Thursday, December 3, 2009
Boys And Dance Floors Revival Revival vs Janet Jackson mp3 download, ipod format download Right-click or option click the links to save the track to your computer. There are as many different ways of writing songs as there are songwriters. Barbara Singer and I have arrived at a good one, so I figured I’d share [...]
Filed in Autobio, Composition, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged autotune, composing, Improvisation, janet jackson, looping, production, reason, Recording, remixes, revival revival, Sampling, songwriting
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Janet has been on my mind a lot the past few months, what with Michael, and I was driven to go listen to Control again.
Filed in Music
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Also tagged candida haynes, drum machines, eighties, erykah badu, janet jackson, jimmy jam, joni mitchell, mashups, michael jackson, new jack swing, nicole bishop, prince, production, q-tip, remixes, revival revival, Sampling, terry lewis
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
I revere Björk above most other musicians. She knows how to balance the coldness of electronic production with hotly unpredictable vocals and instrumental textures. Not everybody loves Björk as much as I do; her approach is eccentric and her sound gets on some people’s nerves. It took me a couple years to be convinced by [...]
Filed in Composition, Key Musicians, Music, Recording
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Also tagged audio editing, bjork, depression, electronica, hipster, iceland, interface, lord of the rings, missy elliot, Recording, remixes, Sampling, sequencing, timbaland, tolkien
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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 [...]
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music, Recording, Sampling, Software
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Also tagged audio editing, beatles, composing, gnarls barkley, hip-hop, kind of blue, looping, michael jackson, miles davis, Music, psychology, Recording, thriller
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We take clocks so much for granted that it’s easy to forget how radical and recent a development they are. It wasn’t so long ago that clocks had to be painstakingly assembled by hand one at a time. Accurate timekeeping on the order of fractions of a second is a heroic engineering undertaking if you’re [...]
Filed in Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Music Theory, Software
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Also tagged audience participation, clocks, drumming, Evolution, john coltrane, Music, quantum, rhythm, rubato, steven mithen, time
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Back in 1966, Glenn Gould predicted that recorded music would become an interactive conversation between musician and listener. He described dial twiddling as “an interpretive act.” He was wrong about the dials, but right about the main point, that technology would make listening to music more like making music. Anybody with iTunes instantly becomes a [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Internet, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged dave brubeck, digging the crates, dj, dj earworm, django reinhardt, double dee and steinski, electronica, fan art, fugees, funk, girl talk, glenn gould, grandmaster flash, green lantern, hip-hop, jonathan lethem, kelis, ludacris, mashups, memes, michael jackson, mixtapes, mozart, nas, paul simon, pop, radiohead, recursion, remixes, sample maps, Sampling, sasha frere-jones, wayne marshall, youtube
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