Hip-hop artists love Prince. Like them, he blends drum machines, live jazz-funk musicians and samples of other songs.
Author Archives: Ethan
Music at my house
My parents and stepparents loved music when I was growing up, more as spectators than participants.
Real guitars are for old people
Here’s one of my favorite bits of South Park.
Can robots DJ?
Now that I have an office job, I’m spending a lot of time under headphones while I correct people’s grammar. It’s a good opportunity to explore the outer reaches of my music tastes. The office has some networked iTunes libraries heavy on the Pitchfork 500, and I have whatever I’m bringing from home. I’ve also …
Brian Eno writes songs with the mixing desk
“Once In A Lifetime” by Talking Heads and Brian Eno is one of my favorite songs by anyone ever.
Sampling keyboards
One of the greatest weirdnesses of electronic music is the sampling keyboard. You press a key and any sound recording you want pops out, at whatever pitch. The recent passing of John Hughes made me think of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when Ferris samples his coughing and puking on an E-mu Emulator …
Loop mode: improvisation is composition is recording
Before digital recording media, recording artists faced a tradeoff between spontaneity and perfection. Recording take after take until the performances are spotless can quickly suck the joy and energy out of the music. But the kind of sloppiness that goes unnoticed in a live performance can get on your nerves after many repeated listens. It’s …
Continue reading “Loop mode: improvisation is composition is recording”
How musical instruments work
There are a lot of different musical instruments out there. Just about all of them share four basic components: a harmonic oscillator, a source of noise, a control surface for modulation, and a resonator.
Nah, na na na na nah na naah, Katamari Damacy!
Japan doesn’t have a substantial psychedelic drug culture that I’m aware of, but you’d never guess it from Katamari Damacy.
Auto-tune (is) the news
See a followup post on the Gregorys’ breakout hit, the “Bed Intruder Song.” The Gregory Brothers (including a sister-in-law) are musicians here in Brooklyn who have a series of videos called Auto-tune The News. Here are a selection of their better episodes as of this writing.