Here’s a presentation I gave at the December 2012 Advanced Ableton User Meetup at Tekserve, hosted by Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy. I speak about how useful Ableton Live is as a music teaching tool, using Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” as an example.
Very shortly after I concluded my talk, my wife went into labor with our son Milo. Quite a memorable night.
I’m a longtime closeted beatboxer. I do it while walking around, doing household tasks, in the shower, pretty much anywhere except in front of other people. My wife is remarkably tolerant of it, bless her, and my infant son has no choice but to listen to me do it. I don’t expect to ever beatbox for audiences, but I still fascinating and delightful. It’s simultaneously modern and ancient — imitating high-tech drum machines, samplers and turntables, using the most ancient musical instrument of them all, the human body.
Growing up in New York City, I was exposed to a lot of beatboxing at the background level. The earliest track I can definitely point to as impacting my consciousness was “Make The Music With Your Mouth, Biz” by the great Biz Markie.
From from Sagan’s highly-recommended 1977 book The Dragons Of Eden:
There is a popular game, sometimes called Pong, which simulates on a television screen a perfectly elastic ball bouncing between two surfaces. Each player is given a dial that permits him to intercept the ball with a movable “racket”. Points are scored if the motion of the ball is not intercepted by the racket. The game is very interesting. There is a clear learning experience involved which depends exclusively on Newton’s second law for linear motion. As a result of Pong, the player can gain a deep intuitive understanding of the simplest Newtonian physics – a better understanding even than that provided by billiards, where the collisions are far from perfectly elastic and where the spinning of the pool balls interposes more complicated physics.
Continue reading “Carl Sagan explains why Pong is good for you”
This past November, I had the privilege of performing in the fourth Disquiet Junto concert of 2012 in the apexart gallery.
Because I’m old and out of touch, most of these are pre-2012 songs that were new to me this year.
Nas — “The World Is Yours”
In 1994 I was not paying attention to hip-hop at all. My loss.
Blackalicious — “Swan Lake”
More vintage 1994 hip-hop. Samples three different cover versions of the Stylistics’ “People Make The World Go Round.” Hip.
No.
Paul McCartney joined John Lennon’s skiffle band in 1957, when they were fifteen and sixteen, respectively. George Harrison joined the following year, when he was fourteen. (Ringo didn’t join the band until 1962.) Who were your friends when you were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen? Imagine yourself intensely and inseparably joined with these same people professionally, socially and creatively, thirteen years later. When I was in my late twenties, I certainly wouldn’t wanted to have been trapped in a series of windowless rooms with my high school friends under enormous pressure to be brilliant. It would have been a miracle for the Beatles to keep a good working relationship any longer than they did under the best of circumstances. And the Beatles’ circumstances were not, emotionally speaking, ideal.
Born 12/8/12, 6 pounds 7 ounces. We’re excited, and exhausted. See lots more pictures.
Susan McClary “Rap, Minimalism and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture.” in Audio Culture, Daniel Warner, ed, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004, pp 289 – 298.
This essay is the best piece of music writing I’ve read in quite a while. McClary articulates my personal ideology of music perfectly. Also, she quotes Prince!
Here are some long excerpts.
Matthew D. Thibeault. Wisdom for Music Education From the Recording Studio. General Music Today, 20 October 2011.
Stuart Wise, Janinka Greenwood and Niki Davis. Teachers’ Use of Digital Technology in Secondary Music Education: Illustrations of Changing Classrooms. British Journal of Music Education, Volume 28, Issue 2, July 2011, pp 117 - 134.
Digital recording studios in schools are becoming more common as the price of the required hardware and software falls. Matthew Thibeault urges music teachers to think of the studio not just as a collection of gear that can be used to document the “real” performance, but as a musical instrument in its own right, carrying with it an entire philosophy of music-making. Digital studio techniques have collapsed composition, recording and editing into a single act. Since most of the music we encounter in the world is recorded, and most of that digitally, any music program needs to include the recording, sequencing and editing process as part of the core curriculum.
In this post, I compare and contrast the soundscapes of two iconic sample-based tracks: “Regiment” by David Byrne and Brian Eno, and “Little Fluffy Clouds” by The Orb.
Recorded ten years apart using very different technology, these two tracks nevertheless share a similar structure: dance grooves at medium-slow tempos centered around percussion and bass, overlaid with decontextualized vocal samples. Both are dense and abstract soundscapes with an otherworldly quality. However, the two tracks have some profound sonic differences as well. “Regiment” is played by human instrumentalists onto analog tape, giving it a roiling organic murk. “Little Fluffy Clouds” uses synthesizers and digital samples quantized with clinical precision.
Continue reading “The Schizophonia of David Byrne, Brian Eno, and The Orb”
