There’s a certain jazz lick that’s so heavily used that it’s just known as The Lick. It’s the only jazz lick I know of that has its own Facebook page. Here’s a greatest hits compilation:
Update: now there’s a volume two!
How do you learn to remix/mashup songs?
The best remix/mashup tool that I’ve used is Ableton Live. For many years I used a combination of Recycle, Reason and Pro Tools, which was cumbersome and labor-intensive. Ableton handles the same tasks more easily and has a bunch of cool effects the other programs don’t.
Updated social flow
Every so often I like to document my ever-evolving internet presence. Here’s how things stand at the moment. Click the flowchart to see it bigger; explanation is below.
The best jazz versions of classical pieces
For my tastes, you can’t beat the Ellington Nutcracker.
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Ellington’s Peer Gynt suite is also pretty wonderful.
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This one has inspired some remixing from me.
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Donner Social
My friend Jenny manages an electronica duo called Donner Social, and she asked me to review their EP, The Archetype For Defeat. Here are some tracks to give you the flavor.
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Where does the “Egyptian” melody originally come from?
I know this melody as the cartoon snakecharmer song. Here’s a kid playing it on bass clarinet:
I’ve always wondered where the Egyptian melody came from. It turns out to be hundreds of years of old, and goes by many different names. You can find an excellent capsule history of it in William Benzon’s book Beethoven’s Anvil. The context is a discussion of a Louis Armstrong recording from 1928 called “Tight Like This.” Listen at 2:04 as Louis quotes the “Egyptian” melody and varies it a few times.
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Is music the most abstract art form?
The Quora question that prompted this post asks:
Why has music been historically the most abstract art form?
We can see highly developed musical forms in renaissance polyphony and baroque counterpoint. The secular forms of this music is often non-programmatic or “absolute music.” In contrast to this, the paintings and sculpture of those times are often representational. Did music start as representational but merely move to a more abstract art form than other types of arts sooner? Does it lend it self to this sort of abstraction more easily?
I had an art professor in college who argued that all “representational” art is abstract, and all “abstract” art is representational. Any art has to refer back to sensory impressions of the world, internal or external, because that’s the only raw material we have to work with. Meanwhile, you’re unlikely to ever mistake a work of representational art for the object it represents. You don’t mistake photographs (or photorealistic paintings) for their subjects, and even the most “realistic” special effects in movies require willing suspension of disbelief.
What is the best live album?
For me it’s a tie between two John Coltrane recordings.
First, the Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings, featuring some of Eric Dolphy’s finest work.
What are the main ideas and highlights of Gödel, Escher, Bach?
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter describes and defines the concept of recursion, and discusses its applications in computer science, consciousness, art, music, biology and various other fields.
Recursion is crucial to writing computer programs in a compact, elegant way, but it also opens the door to infinite loops and irreconcilable logical contradictions.
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Why do I grimace when I concentrate?
The parts of your brain that do your abstract thinking are very tightly interconnected with the parts that control your muscles. In fact, some of that abstract thinking is done by the same brain regions that control your muscles. We don’t yet know why a specific brain region produces a given specific thought, but the overall pattern is clear: you grimace when you concentrate because in your brain (and in a lot of other peoples’ too), the brain regions controlling your facial muscles are also focusing your attention.
My musician friends use the term “jazz face” to describe the sometimes ridiculous expressions they have when they’re most deeply immersed in the music. Think also of Michael Jordan sticking his tongue out in the heat of play. And consider the fact that some people need to pace in order to think, or gesticulate, or perform repetitive manual tasks like knitting or splitting wood.