For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. Here I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Toni Blackman that I recorded on August 20, 2020 in Prospect Park. The remix is made from the eighteen most interesting/pertinent/relevant minutes of an hour and a …
Continue reading “Toni Blackman interview remix – What is hip-hop education?”
Here’s a question from the always insightful Debbie Chachra: @ethanhein I just realized you are the right person to ask this–are there great analyses that make the connection between Bach's Art of Fugue and sampling in hip-hop? — Deb Chachra is mostly not here (@debcha) June 12, 2020 @ethanhein [Query prompted by hearing DJ Dahi …
For his NYU music technology masters thesis, Tyler Bisson created a web app called Groove Pizzeria, a polyrhythmic/polymetric extension of the Groove Pizza. Click the image to try it for yourself. Note that the Groove Pizzeria is still a prototype, and it doesn’t yet have the full feature set that the Groove Pizza does. …
Music evolves the way life does: through change in the heritable characteristics of populations over successive generations. Most of the heritable characteristics of music are abstractions like rhythm patterns and chord progressions. However, you can also see heritability at work more obviously in the form of sampling. It’s especially illuminating when a song samples a …
This Vox explainer video about John Coltrane’s most iconic tune is making the rounds right now. It’s well made and engaging. You should watch it! “Giant Steps” is a beautiful tune, one that rewards as much scrutiny as you care to give it. But it also had some negative effects on jazz as an art …
I was asked on Quora to give a list of my favorite hip-hop songs, because what better source is there than a forty-year-old white dad? (I am literally a mountain climber who plays the electric guitar.) I did grow up in New York City in the 80s, and I do love the music. But ultimately, …
