Hip-hop artists are musicologists, and sampling is one way histories are folded into the present.
Music
Arnold Schönberg: Playing Cards
Arnold Schönberg: Playing Cards. I love those designs.
This facsimile edition of playing cards painted by the composer Arnold Schönberg in c.1910 was published by Belmont Music Publishers in 1981 and produced by Ferd Piatnik (Vienna), with a preface by the composer’s daughter, Nuria Schoenberg-Nono. The original cards were made in watercolours and gouache on cardboard with gold and silver, size: 10.5 by 5.5 cm. No reverse has been found for the cards so a coloured pattern painted in one of his diaries was used.
Filed under: not just a composer.
Alan Watts – “Music and Life”
Alan Watts – Music and Life. (via somewhere on Twitter months and months ago)
I Want You Still: Celebrating 40 Years of Marvin Gaye’s Sensual Classic | Pitchfork
Fun interview about creating one of my favorite albums. Nice bit:
Out of the 13 months we took to make the album, there was six months of partying. Seriously. We would come into the studio, and Marvin would say, “Let’s go play basketball.” And we would play basketball half the day, on studio time. There was no pressure.
I Want You Still: Celebrating 40 Years of Marvin Gaye’s Sensual Classic | Pitchfork
The Weird Global Appeal of Heavy Metal
The explosion of local bands around the world tends to track rising living standards and Internet use. Making loud music is expensive: You need electric guitars, amplifiers, speakers, music venues and more leisure time. “When economic development happens, metal scenes appear. They’re like mushrooms after the rain,” says Roy Doron, an African history professor at Winston-Salem State University.
Resonant Frequency: A Glitch in Time: How Oval’s 1995 Ambient Masterpiece Predicted Our Digital Present
By virtue of being atmospheric, ambient music tends to make the listener aware of the hardware involved in reproducing it, so it’s always, in a sense, about technology.
Finally, A Non-Embarrassing Classical-Music Scene in a Blockbuster Movie – The New Yorker
The tendency to associate classical music with murderous insanity is a curious neurosis of the American pop-cultural psyche.
Finally, A Non-Embarrassing Classical-Music Scene in a Blockbuster Movie – The New Yorker
Why Can’t Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?
Don’t get me started. Hard out there for a baller.
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect. A perfectly average and enjoyable modern musical comedy. So much of the humor is non sequitur. Anna Kendrick is a delight, as always. I won’t go out of my way to watch the sequel, though.
That Ominous Pulse
I’ve noticed a few recent movies with electro-ish scores that feature some sort of pulse or buzz or building waves of raw sound. Not especially melodic, just a persistent, engulfing motif that swallows you up.
From *Upstream Color*, one of my favorite soundtrack moments in recent memory, “As If It Would Have A Universal And Memorable Ending”:
From *Gone Girl*, “Consummation”:
And recently in *Ex Machina*, there’s the last minute or so of “Hacking/Cutting”:
The last two especially remind me of the opening few seconds of Yeezus. I’m sure I’m missing some other good examples?
The Myth and the Reality of the $43 Download | The Pitch | Pitchfork
Yet here is a most crucial piece of knowledge regarding sound quality: Transmitting electricity is easy, moving air is hard.
The Myth and the Reality of the $43 Download | The Pitch | Pitchfork
Making Peace With Music That Everyone Loves But You
Part of maturing, I think, is realizing that charges of acting in bad faith are often themselves made in bad faith, an attempt to explain away gaps in understanding between two people rather than trying to bridge them, or even make peace with them.
The Ultimate David Lee Roth Karate Kick Compilation. Bring it, 2015.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
The Dark Science of Pop Music
While most users think of Shazam as a handy tool for identifying unfamiliar songs, it offers music executives something far more valuable: an early-detection system for hits. By studying 20 million searches every day, Shazam can identify which songs are catching on, and where, before just about anybody else.
