Here’s my final project for NYU’s Psychology of Music class, enjoy. Feel free to download this presentation or the full paper. Multimedia version coming soon. Friends Don’t Let Friends Clap on One and Three: a Backbeat Clapping Study
This is part of a research project I’m doing for my Psychology of Music class at NYU, thus the formal tone. The backbeat is a ubiquitous, almost defining feature of American popular and vernacular music. Clapping or snapping on the backbeats is generally considered by musicians to be more correct than doing so on the [...]
Filed in Dance, Music, Race and Identity, Science
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Also tagged africa, america, backbeat, dance, drumming, funk, hip-hop, james brown, jazz, neuroscience, nyu, rhythm, rock, swing, syncopation
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Sunday, November 11, 2012
Susan McClary “Rap, Minimalism and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture.” in Audio Culture, Daniel Warner, ed, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004, pp 289 – 298. This is essay is the best piece of music writing I’ve read in quite a while. She articulates my personal ideology of music perfectly. Also, she quotes Prince! [...]
Filed in Composition, Emotion, Improvisation, Music, Music Theory, Race and Identity, Recording
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Also tagged america, classical, Composition, hip-hop, history, Improvisation, prince, Recording, repetition, schoenberg, susan mcclary, technomusicology, theodor adorno
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I recently saw Under African Skies, the documentary about Paul Simon’s Graceland, and it was spellbinding. The music is so beautiful, the politics are so agonizing. I watched it with my mom and sister, which is appropriate since Graceland was in heavy rotation through my childhood. Mom isn’t a big pop scholar and knew next [...]
Filed in Autobio, Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Race and Identity, Recording
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Also tagged accordion, africa, apartheid, Bakithi Kumalo, bass, chevy chase, copyright, graceland, guitar, judaica, ladysmith black mambazo, Music, ownership, paul simon, Politics, ray phiri, south africa
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I pride myself on having big ears, on listening to everything I can and trying to find the beauty in it. I’ve learned to enjoy some aspect of just about every kind of music, except one: high modernist twentieth century classical music. I just can not deal with it, at all. But I’m in music [...]
Filed in Emotion, Music, Music Theory
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Also tagged academia, anxiety, aphex twin, boulez, classical, coltrane, dissonance, einstein, Emotion, horror, milton babbitt, modernism, Music, musique concrete, nyu, stockhausen, varese
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Friday, September 23, 2011
Anna and I caught one of the best performances we’ve seen in years the other night by Tune-Yards. My friend Andrew, who was at the show, said this afterwards: “I can’t decide whether hearing the president say ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math’ or the fact that this band could become popular makes me [...]
Filed in Hardware, Music, Race and Identity, Sampling
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Also tagged africa, audience participation, drumming, hipsters, indie, looping, merrill garbus, tune-yards, ukelele
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Tuesday, February 1, 2011
A little while back I went to a screening and discussion at NYU of Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity, a documentary about the wigger phenomenon by Robert Clift. I’m a very white person who has been heavily involved with “black” music over the years, like for example rapping an Ice Cube song [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music, Politics, Race and Identity
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Also tagged al jolson, america, authenticity, elvis presley, eminem, harry allen, hip-hop, hipster, james baldwin, paul mooney, Politics, snl, vanilla ice, wiggers
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Since I’m teaching the twelve-bar blues to some guitar students, I figured I’d put the lessons in the form of a blog post. Blues is a big topic and this isn’t going to be anything like a definitive guide. Think of it more as a tasting menu. Blues is a confusing term. You probably have [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged aretha franklin, batman, blues, chords, country, duke ellington, Emotion, flatt and scruggs, guitar, hank williams, harmonica, herbie hancock, jazz, john coltrane, john lee hooker, louis armstrong, memes, modules, muddy waters, Music Theory, thelonious monk, tritones
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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, pop, remixes, tv, youtube
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I’ve been making sample maps, diagrams showing what songs include samples of what other songs. I’m a big sample geek. I like knowing where my music comes from the same way I like knowing where my food comes from. This map shows many, probably not nearly all, of the songs that sample Michael Jackson’s solo [...]
Filed in Autobio, Copyright and Authorship, Internet, Key Musicians, Music, Race and Identity, Sampling, Social Media
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Also tagged anthro, blogs, copyright, digg, digging the crates, flickr, hip-hop, Internet, jackson 5, memes, michael jackson, Music, Politics, pop, remixes, sample maps, Sampling, Social Media, soul makossa, twitter
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