A synthesizer is like an axe

I found this picture of Herbie Hancock on a stranger’s blog. There was no caption or any other context. So I posted it on my Flickr with a note asking if anyone could identify the computer Herbie is sitting in front of. A couple of days later my friend Mike responded with this video of …

Jazz Jazz Revolution

It’s no accident that music and games share the verb “to play.” Both music and games are semi-structured forms of social learning. As far as I’m concerned, the most exciting thing happening in the video game world is the explosion of music-based games like Dance Dance Revolution.

Herbie Hancock gets future shock

Herbie Hancock is a musician’s musician. He pushed the boundaries of acoustic piano in the sixties. He found a uniquely personal voice on an array of synthesizers in the seventies. And in the eighties, he helped bring turntablism into the pop mainstream. People have been experimenting with recording playback devices as musical instruments for a …

Bad meaning good

“Peter Piper” is the leadoff track on Raising Hell, the third album by Run-DMC. It was their big commercial and critical breakthrough. My stepbrother Dan had it on cassette and it pretty much defined the sound of my sixth and seventh grade experience.

Twitter, jazz and moving music forward into the stone age

So the other night my friend Jesse played at the Shorty Awards with his Tin Pan Blues Band. Because it was an awards ceremony dedicated to the best of Twitter, they were projecting people’s tweets about the event itself onto a screen in real time. Some of those tweets were comments about the band. The …