I have been enjoying Adam Neely’s videos for a few years, so it was pretty exciting when he asked me to help out with his recent examination of white supremacy and music theory. It was even more exciting when he invited me to do an interview on the problem of the white rap cover. See …
Tag Archives: YouTube
I’m making a bunch of music teaching videos
Partially to prepare for remote teaching my courses, and partially to keep myself from losing my mind, I’m putting a bunch of new videos on YouTube. I’m starting with material I’ve done many times in classes and conference presentations, and then will be branching out into newer stuff as I go. I imagine that these …
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Ilan meets the Fugees
My youngest private music production student is a kid named Ilan. He makes moody trip-hop and deep house using Ableton Live. For our session today, Ilan came in with a downtempo, jazzy hip-hop instrumental. I helped him refine and polish it, and then we talked about his ideas for what kind of vocal might work on top. He wanted an …
When does a speech turn into a song?
Daniel Jacobson, a musician in Ireland, was inspired by this post to give the following speech:
Listening, hearing, and the infinite loop
Rob Walker wrote a blog post listing different strategies for how to pay attention. (Update: he later wrote a whole book about it, I’m quoted in it.) Deep attention makes the difference between looking at something and actually seeing it. Rob is talking mostly to visual artists and designers, but his methods work well for …
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Play With Your Rhythm
As we continue to flesh out the video content for Play With Your Music, I put together this series on rhythm.
Why do people watch music videos, especially tweens and teenagers?
I have a bunch of teenaged cousins, and they do the majority of their music listening on YouTube. They even DJ parties with it using playlists. Anytime they have a choice, they’ll always prefer music with some kind of video accompanying it, even if it’s just a still of the album cover.
Promoting music through social media
As part of New York Social Media Week, I attended a panel entitled “The Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy of Social Media as Music’s Savior.” It was first thing in the morning, which really asks a lot from the music hipsters. I would normally have just live-tweeted this thing, but the wi-fi in the place was …
The complicated case of Antoine Dodson
Meet the most fascinating and problematic pop star of the moment, Antoine Dodson. If you’re a follower of internet memes, you know the story by now. If not: Antoine, his sister Kelly and her daughter were asleep in their apartment in the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama. An intruder broke in and sexually …
Breakdance
I can’t breakdance. I want to learn. It looks like fun. When I worked for the Parks Department I was involved in their afterschool programs. One of them met in the Alfred E Smith Recreation Center in the housing project of the same name. In the basketball gym, Roc-a-fella (the b-girl, not the record label) …