Tag: music

superstition

I must have heard the riff hundreds of times since it was released in 1972. Yet whenever I do, it never fails to make me smile and move. Here it is in its entirety.

Superstition quickly became an iconic funk track, perhaps the iconic funk track, which came out of Motown in the 1970s. After a 1972 tour with the Rolling Stones in the US introduced Stevie Wonder to a largely white audience, Superstion went to number one in the US charts, his second number 1. His first was as ‘Little Stevie’, nine years previously in 1963.

This was the first time that the bright, fractious, sound of the Hohner Clavinet – basically an amplified clavichord – had been used to such effect in a funk track. For years I thought that it was basically two clavinet parts placed to the extremes of the stereo mix.

And then I came across this analysis by someone who used the audio production software Protools to dissect Wonder’s multi-track master recording of the song by isolating all of the tracks and putting them back together one by one.

It’s a great lesson in how the genius of this groove is built: how the sum of the parts adds something special so that, no matter how many times you hum it to yourself, when you hear it on the original recording, its always capitivating.

And a bonus track? Here’s Stevie Wonder recording one of those Clavinet tracks in the studio.

Music sharing/distribution

Just been having a look at soundcloud – a way of uploading and distributing music. Established by a couple of musicians/engineers in Germany in 2007, it has begun to eclipse MySpace as the place musicians publish their music. It’s helped by the integration of its API in various Apps for the Iphone and Android making it much easier to capture and upload music to your account. Various widgets also help the marketing of songs each of which are given their own page and can be embedded pretty much anywhere. Here’s an example of an embed from the site.

http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F11174639&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=f77604
Why Me? by MiladMaleki A.K.A MilamDo

Online Metal – music sharing/collaboration

“Djent is really an online phenomenon,” explains Sander Dieleman, webmaster of got-djent.com. “The internet gives young artists a way to easily share their music, and it’s very easy to produce professional-sounding music in your bedroom. If you want to play djent, all you need is a guitar, a computer, a guitar interface and understanding neighbours.”

via guardian.gyford.com

Heavy metal famously shunned the whole online thing thus making of their refusal to connect a kind of cult. This sub-genre of metal (how many sub-sub forms are there?) has instead grown from a connection with the online. Bedroom forums and amp simulators running on heavy games computers ..

Nice to see the comments in the djent forum though – please to see they are in the mainstream (a Guardian article).

Networked production still needs face-to-face: student speaks

12.1.10 | In this webisode, Studentspeak follows 17-year-old Daniel Robbins as he takes his music to the next level with digital mixing equipment and software—and some social media marketing savvy.

Robbins, a talented musician, just completed “The Endless Summer Project,” an album he recorded and mixed at YOUmedia, the Chicago Public Library’s digital space for teens. While the finished product reflects the countless hours of painstakingly separating each music track and polishing the sound, it took some convincing to nudge Robbins beyond his comfort zone.

“I kept telling him,” said JoVia Armstrong, YOUmedia’s music mentor, “‘It’s time for you to move into Pro Tools or some other professional program.’ And he just kept fighting me on it,” preferring instead to stick with Garage Band, Apple’s basic music-composing software.

“JoVia said we’ve got to balance each and every track. I’m like, ‘that’s going to take hours.’ But we mixed it and now it sounds as best as it could sound,” said Robbins.

The project was also a lesson in collaboration and networking, something Robbins proved equally adept at, rounding up musicians from across the city to contribute to the 14 songs on “The Endless Summer Project.”

“The easiest way to get in touch with people is on Facebook,” he says.

Robbins also put his music on YOUmedia’s iRemix social networking site, which helped spread the word.

The teens, working with Robbins, also continued the collaboration online, sharing music files over email and social networking sites to get suggestions for instrumentals and to brainstorm ideas. Now they’re using Facebook and iRemix to find an audience for their work. 

One 20th-century lesson Robbins has learned, however, is that online relationships can only go so far.

“Anyone can put something on MySpace or Twitter,” Robbins says. “It’s who you know, and relationships. That’s when physical contact becomes more important.”

In other words, face to face still matters.

StudentSpeak, a video series produced by Spotlight, goes behind the scenes to show how teens use digital media in their daily lives. View previous webisodes here.

Art Inspires Activism: Teens Use Digital Media to Respond to Gulf Oil Spill

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via spotlight.macfound.org