I’ve picked up some new guitar students lately, so I’m once again doing a lot of explaining what a tritone is and why people should care. Whenever I find myself explaining something a lot, I like to encapsulate it as a blog post. So here we go. A tritone is the interval between the notes …
Yearly Archives: 2010
Capturing sound
I was doing a frivolous Google search for the Simpsons episode where Bart, Nelson, Milhouse and Ralph form a boy band. They’re in the studio singing, and they sound terrible, until the producer pushes a huge button labeled “studio magic.” Then suddenly they sound like the Backstreet Boys. While I was digging through the Google …
Improvising electronica
The other day Brian Eno was on NPR talking about his process. He likes to have people walk into the studio without any preconceived ideas or written out material. Then he has the musicians improvise within certain constraints. Usually these constraints are more about a mood or a vibe than a particular musical structure. After …
Empire State Of Mind
Hip-hop isn’t usually big on chord progressions, but “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys has an awesome set of changes. Because Alicia Keys was involved, I thought she might have written the chord progression. But no, it’s built from samples of the intro to “Love On A Two-Way Street” by The Moments.
Busta Rhymes has got you all in check
Sampling has the power to bridge gaps between seemingly widely different musical styles. You can take something lame, sample it, place it in a new context and make it hot. Busta Rhymes’ classic “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” is a prime example. The devastating beat, produced by Shamello and first-timer Buddha, is …
Music in The Social Network
Over the weekend I went to see The Social Network, and totally enjoyed it. Hurray, movies that glamorize angry nerds! My friend Alex asked me if it’s better than the classic Pirates Of Silicon Valley. Nothing could be better than Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates, but Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerburg is good too.
The Mad Men theme and Autumn Leaves
Mad Men’s obsessive devotion to period accuracy has one conspicuous exception: its hip-hop theme song by RJD2. The track plays under one of television’s all-time great opening title sequences, which I can’t embed because AMC doesn’t understand how internet marketing works. Click this collage I made to watch on YouTube. The theme song is an …
Cold Sweat in the Terrordome
The internet is home to a lot of questionably legal breakbeat collections like Drumaddikt and Cyberworm’s Sample Blog. “Cold Sweat” by James Brown is always included in these collections. It’s beloved equally by hip-hop and drum n bass producers. The break is at 4:30. There’s probably a whole generation of producers who have sliced and …
Eric B and Rakim
In 1987 I remember having my ears grabbed by this track 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 …
The Champ
Music blogs, magazines and cable channels like to run lists of the best albums of all time. Certain albums get listed again and again: Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds, Highway 61 Revisited. If you were to compile the best albums as measured by how often they get sampled by hip-hop producers, the list would look very …