In my recent post about “Giant Steps,” I briefly mentioned the idea of doing improvisational remixes of jazz recordings. This is a big enough idea to merit a post of it own. My slow-tempo remix of the tune includes a solo section that I played by slicing up the melody, putting each note on a sample pad, and then playing the slices back as an “instrument.” Listen at 1:49.
Rap and techno producers have been playing samples as instruments since the 1980s. The typical use case is to sample a breakbeat, slice it into individual drum hits, and then play the drum hits back as a new rhythm pattern. But you can just as easily slice up melodic samples too. This technique is so effortless with Ableton Live and similar programs that electronic music producers have come to take it for granted. But it’s a bonkers idea!
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 form. Read on!
I’m recently home from Ableton’s stupendous “summit for music makers,” and I’m still mentally unpacking it all.
Loop was quite a different experience from last year, when Ableton held it in their home city of Berlin. This year, they moved it to Los Angeles to make it easier for people in Latin America and the Pacific to get there. Rather than the dark and cold of November in Germany, we got to enjoy Southern California’s high seventies (and raging forest fires, so, a tradeoff.) In Berlin, the conference was all held in one big building, the Funkhaus recording studio complex. In LA, it was spread across several smaller venues, including the Ricardo Montalbán Theater with its beach-like roof deck, and the legendary EastWest Studios.
Every semester, I have my music technology students do a project using found sound. They record environmental sounds with their phones, and then they create tracks that incorporate those sounds somehow. The only rule is that they have to use at least one found sound–it doesn’t have to be their own. Otherwise, they can use whatever other audio, MIDI or loops they see fit. The project satisfies several pedagogical goals. Students get a taste of field recording, and they start thinking about ways to use “non-musical” sounds in musical contexts. Also, because their phone recordings are usually of poor quality, they have to get creative with audio effects. I like to walk the class through my own approach to the project as well. Here’s what I came up with for my current Montclair State University students:
You can download the Ableton session here. I did some of the work before class: downloading a bunch of students’ sounds, identifying the best parts of them, and finding a good breakbeat to put underneath. I did the bulk of the production during class, with feedback from the students. Then I figured out the structure and applied some polish afterwards.
White people appropriating black music is America’s main contribution to world culture. Black music itself is a big deal, too, but it is dwarfed by the commercial ubiquity of white imitators. It’s easy to dismiss the crass knockoffs, the modern-day minstrels, and the cynical thieves. But what happens when a white person is expressing sincere admiration, with only the purest intentions? What happens when Chris Thile sings “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar, as he did on the February 6, 2016 broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion?
If you’re unfamiliar with Kendrick’s song, get familiar, it’s one of the most significant musical works of this century so far, and it comes with a devastating video.
This song is a hard one to play and sing, and Chris Thile does it more than capably. He’s a brilliant musician, arguably the best mandolin player in the world, maybe the best one ever. He has spent his entire career transgressing genre boundaries. Based on interviews, he seems like a good person. Who can blame him for being taken by Kendrick’s song? Who can blame him for wanting to learn it, and sing it at home for his son, and then eventually do it on stage?
I have to admire Chris Thile, in a way. He had little to gain by doing “Alright” in front of the Prairie Home Companion audience, and much to lose. I went to a couple of tapings of the show back in the Garrison Keillor era, and while the crowd might have been politically liberal, it was also very old and uniformly white. Thile’s risk paid off, to an extent–you can go online and read positive reactions from people who had never heard “Alright” before, who were impressed by it, and who were even motivated to go listen to the Kendrick Lamar original. So, mission accomplished, right?
I started posting writing online long before I had any academic ambitions. I wrote for self-promotion, self-expression, and because I wasn’t sure what else to do with myself. I did a lot of what I would now call a reflexive and reciprocal process for research into music and related topics. As it turns out, this was a good habit to have when I went to grad school. I have posted most of my masters and doctoral level writing assignments, notes, papers, and research materials on the web. In the process, I have met an incredible lot of people who I would not have met otherwise.
For a while I was only posting about innocuous music and technology-related topics: theory, production, general appreciation. But as I go deeper into the intersection of music education and hip-hop, my posts have been getting more political. This material attracts supporters and allies, which is gratifying, but also heated criticism, and, since the dawn of the Trump era, a growing volume of hate speech. The constructive feedback comes in the form of affirmation, social contacts, corrections, arguments, tips, and directions for further inquiry. Some of these interactions are direct, in the form of comments or replies on social media, but I also get plenty of indirect feedback via my Google alerts. Research and writing are lonely undertakings, and feeling myself connected to a lively conversation at all times has been an invaluable motivator.
In my continuing quest to learn the classical canon through remixing with Ableton Live, I’ve taken on Bach’s Minuet in G major. Which is apparently not by Bach at all, but rather by some guy named Christian Petzold. Live and learn.
A minuet is a dance, but in 2018, it’s hard to dance in triple meter. So as usual, I wanted to put the piece in 4/4, and give it a better beat. Here’s the result:
