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, pop, radiohead, remixes, Sampling, sarah mclachlan, soul makossa, susan blackmore, tribe, zap mama
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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, recursion, revival revival, 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, recursion, roxanne shante, Sampling, steve miller, turntablism
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
The best tool for understanding where music comes from is evolutionary biology. Songs don’t spontaneously spring into being any more than animals or plants do. They evolve, descending from reshuffled pieces of existing songs, the way our genes are shuffled together from our parents’ genes. The same way that all life has a single common [...]
Filed in Composition, Evolution, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged cassettes, dna, Evolution, family, genealogy, memes, midi, Music Theory, originality, Sampling, sequencing, songwriting
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Thursday, August 20, 2009
Hip-hop artists love Prince. Like them, he blends drum machines, live jazz-funk musicians and samples of other songs.
Filed in Composition, Hardware, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged digging the crates, drum machines, eighties, george clinton, guitar, keybs, pop, prince, remixes, rock, Sampling, synths
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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, pro tools, radiohead, recursion, remixes, Sampling, sasha frere-jones, wayne marshall, 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, race, remixes, Sampling, Social Media, soul makossa, twitter
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