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Tag Archives: transcribing

How do I learn to improvise music?

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Improvising music is like giving a speech off the cuff. Before you can do it, you need to know some vocabulary and grammar. In music, the vocabulary is riffs, phrases, scales, sequences and other melodic building blocks. The grammar is music theory. It’s not necessary to learn either one formally, you can figure them out [...]

Filed in Improvisation, Music, Music Theory | Also tagged , , | Comments (4)

Moody’s Mood For Love

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

My neighbor and friend Diéry Prudent is working on a documentary on the bebop saxophonist and flutist James Moody, best known for his 1949 recording “Moody’s Mood For Love.” It’s an improvised solo over the changes to “I’m In The Mood For Love,” one of those off-the-cuff jazz solos that came out so tightly structured [...]

Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music, Sampling | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Open-source music

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Sample-based music isn’t stealing. It’s valuable and important. It shows the way toward a future for recorded music that’s more in continuity with music’s past. Recordings are cool and everything, but they encourage passivity. If I buy a recording, I can listen to it or dance to it, both fine activities, but what if I [...]

Filed in Copyright and Authorship, Music, Politics, Sampling, Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)