Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter describes and defines the concept of recursion, and discusses its applications in computer science, consciousness, art, music, biology and various other fields. Recursion is crucial to writing computer programs in a compact, elegant way, but it also opens the door to infinite loops and irreconcilable logical contradictions.
Filed in Math, Music, Writing
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Also tagged anthills, bach, books, buddhism, computer science, douglas hofstadter, emergence, escher, fractals, godel, looping, meditation, Sampling, xkcd
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I always enjoy when hip-hop artists sample themselves. It makes the music recursive, and for me, “recursive” is synonymous with “good.” You can hear self-sampling in “Nas Is Like” by Nas, “The Score” by the Fugees and many songs by Eric B and Rakim. The most recent self-sampling track to cross my radar is “Unbelievable” [...]
Filed in Key Musicians, Math, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged digging the crates, dj premier, fractals, funk, hip-hop, impeach the president, keybs, lee byron, mandelbrot, nas, notorious big, nursery rhymes, patrice rushen, r kelly, rnb, Sampling, songwriting, turntablism
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Friday, September 30, 2011
Here are the areas of math that can most easily be understood in musical terms. Wave mechanics The concept of orbitals in quantum mechanics made zero sense to me until I finally found out that they’re just harmonics of the electron field’s vibrations. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Einstein conceptualized wave mechanics [...]
Filed in Math, Music, Music Theory
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Also tagged bellringing, circle of fifths, combinatorics, discrete math, graph theory, linkedin, logarithms, Math, modular arithmetic, Music, neal stephenson, quora, school, symmetry, wave mechanics
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I have a theory that what people find most interesting in music is self-reference, recursion and fractal-like scale-invariance. Rhythms based on powers of two are a great way to get this kind of recursion because they can be compounded or subdivided so easily. A bar of four can be treated as two bars of two, [...]
Thursday, September 30, 2010
In 1987 I remember having my ears grabbed by this thing on the radio called “Pump Up The Volume” by MARRS. Now that mashups are so common, this track doesn’t sound particularly remarkable. But in seventh grade it was startling to hear a house music track full of random samples. “Pump Up The Volume” was [...]
Filed in Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged authenticity, bobby byrd, digging the crates, dj hero, eagles, eighties, eric b & rakim, flow, fugees, hip-hop, james brown, jimi hendrix, marrs, mashups, nas, revival revival, sample maps, Sampling, stetsasonic, turntablism
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If I had to pick a single track to explain to an alien or time traveler what hip-hop is and why it’s so awesome, I think I’d pick “Nas Is Like.” Nas has a great flow full of powerful imagery, but what truly sets this track apart for me is DJ Premier’s production. It’s a [...]
Filed in Composition, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged advertising, biz markie, digging the crates, dj premier, eurythmics, hip-hop, kool & the gang, memes, michael jackson, nas, nineties, roxanne shante, sample maps, Sampling, steve miller, turntablism
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For my 35th birthday, my sister gave me a CD of Muppet Silly Songs, a favorite of ours when we were kids. It’s been out of print for years and last time I checked wasn’t even available on the web, legally or not. We unearthed the vinyl at our mom and stepfather’s place when we [...]
I’m not a big classical music guy for the most part, but I never get tired of Bach. This stodgy eighteenth century Lutheran doesn’t seem a likely inspiration for a hipster electronica producer like me. There aren’t too many other wearers of powdered wigs in my record collection, and Bach is the only one in [...]
I’ve had a lot of music teachers, formal and informal. The best one has been the computer. It mindlessly plays anything I tell it to, over and over. Hearing an idea played back on a continuous loop tells me quickly if it’s good or not. If the idea is bad, I immediately get annoyed, and [...]
Filed in Composition, Math, Music, Music Teaching, Recording, Sampling
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Also tagged beatles, country, dance, electronica, fela kuti, hip-hop, jazz, looping, memory, modules, remixes, rza, structure, symmetry, theodor adorno
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Thursday, January 14, 2010
If you want to get your web page noticed but don’t want to spend a lot of money on advertising, your best bet is search engine optimization, or SEO. As of this writing, that mostly means understanding how Google ranks search hits, and adapting your web presence accordingly. Historically, search engine results were ranked based [...]
Filed in Internet, Social Media, Writing
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Also tagged blogging, Evolution, google, Internet, search engines, seo, Social Media, twitter, wordpress
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