I’m a huge stone age dork, so Werner Herzog’s 3D documentary about cave paintings was catnip for me.
Music has substantial evolutionary survival value. There’s a theory, which I find totally convincing, that music is the evolutionary precursor to language, the bridge between the cries and gestures of other primates and our own more abstract communication. Read about it here: Humans’ success as a species is due entirely to our social organization, and [...]
The most-sampled album in history is probably James Brown’s compilation In The Jungle Groove. It includes the original “Funky Drummer Parts One And Two” along with a sampling-friendly remix. It also includes some other much-loved funk tracks. None of them have been sampled as heavily as “Funky Drummer” but there are some contenders. The compilation [...]
Filed in Evolution, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
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Also tagged drumming, Evolution, funk, funky drummer, james brown, lil mama, michael jackson, Music, percussion, primates, queen, remixes, rhythm, rnb, Sampling, seventies, sixties, soul, steven mithen
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Technology keeps getting better. Do our lives get better as a result? In certain specific ways, maybe yes, but in general, I would say, not really. How is that possible? I think there are two big things at work. Technology is evolving semi-independently of the humans that produce it. We don’t control the evolution of [...]
Friday, February 13, 2009
So the other night my friend Jesse played at the Shorty Awards with his Tin Pan Blues Band. Because it was an awards ceremony dedicated to the best of Twitter, they were projecting people’s tweets about the event itself onto a screen in real time. Some of those tweets were comments about the band. The [...]
Filed in Improvisation, Music, Social Media
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Also tagged hip-hop, Improvisation, interface, Internet, iphone, jazz, Music, Social Media, twitter
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