The other day when I posted about iconic hip-hop samples from the past 50 years, I noticed a name that featured prominently in the early years: Sylvia Robinson. Robinson was the CEO and co-founder of the very first rap record label, Sugar Hill Records. She produced the first rap record, Rapper’s Delight, and the seminal The Message, widely regarded as one of the best and most influential rap and hip-hop tracks ever.
Sylvia Robinson played many roles in the music world — artist, producer, and, most notably, record executive. But as the founder and leader of the pioneering Sugar Hill label, she revealed herself to be something even rarer. She was a visionary.
In 1979, “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang introduced hip-hop to the global mainstream, illustrating the genre’s commercial and creative potential. Robinson had overseen the record’s backing track, assembled the group members, and arranged their vocals — but fundamentally, it was her idea that rap was even viable as recorded music. Her place in history would be secured by that track alone, though it was far from her only impact on the direction of pop.
Here’s a short video that covers the high points of her career:
It’s sad that Robinson and her achievements haven’t been more widely known — this seems like another case (as in computing and other industries) where women played an early vital role and were then forgotten.
This started off a little slow for me but once it hit the early-to-mid 80s, I was hooked — and bobbing my head uncontrollably throughout. The visualizations really help you see how the various samples were modified, repeated, and layered to achieve the desired sounds — geniuses at work. Man, watching stuff like this makes me want to learn how to do this. (via waxy
The music for Sinéad O’Connor’s 1990 smash hit Nothing Compares 2 U is already pretty stripped down to emphasize the vocals, but in this video, the vocals are almost fully isolated so you can really hear the clarity and emotion in that wonderful voice of hers.
“I actually think the intensity of Sinéad’s performance came from the breakup of her latest relationship,” opines Chris Birkett, who co-produced and engineered the track as well as the accompanying, Grammy Award-winning album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, which topped the Billboard 200 for six weeks and sold seven million copies worldwide. “She had been dating her manager, Fachtna O’Ceallaigh, who’s a really good guy and had been instrumental in getting her deal with Ensign Records. However, their relationship had gone pear-shaped and they were in the process of breaking up when we recorded ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, so that’s probably why she did such a good vocal. She came into the studio, did it in one take, double-tracked it straight away and it was perfect because she was totally into the song. It mirrored her situation.”
The roots of hip-hop and rap are various and stretch back in time to the antebellum South and from there to Africa. But by some accounts, a song called Noah by gospel group The Jubalaires was the first instance of recorded music that sounded like rap. Listen for yourself…the relevant bit is right around the 35-second mark:
I’m not a music historian by any stretch, but that sounds 30 years ahead of its time. There are several bad remixes of Noah on YouTube…this one is maybe the best at pairing their singing with a rap beat.
This is fun: Aqua’s pop hit Barbie Girl, redone in the style of six classical composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, and Ravel. (via @Erikmitk)
To help celebrate 50 years of hip-hop, Cypress Hill visited NPR’s studios to perform a Tiny Desk Concert.
While the term “pioneer” is used loosely in pop culture today, few terms describe Cypress Hill’s impact over the past three decades more adequately. They are the first Latino hip-hop group to achieve platinum and multi-platinum status. B Real, Sen and producer DJ Muggs crafted a sound in the ’90s that stretched beyond regional boundaries. It was dark, psychedelic and at times directly addressed mental health before the topic was commonplace. Many dismissed the group as “stoner rappers,” yet the members were fervent advocates for the legalization of weed long before it came to fruition.
Really enjoyed this one…I’m not a particular fan of Cypress Hill but after this, maybe I am?
Craig Mod recently finished a 16-day tour of jazz kissas in northern Japan. Jazz kissas are bar/cafes where one goes to listen to jazz, mostly on records and not live. Mod loosely defies them thusly:
Mostly defined as: Mid-20th century “listening cafes” for jazz music. But there is a lot of variance in this definition. Lots are coffee-focused cafes, fitting into the broader “kissaten” universe. But some are more bar-like, and some even jazz clubs (but for the most part, live music is rare). You can tie yourself in knots splitting hairs over this stuff. Though they’re traditionally known as “jazz kissa” — the shortened version of “kissaten” (fear not: even if you call them “jazz kissaten” you won’t suddenly turn into a pillar of salt). Some are seventy years old. Some forty. Some are five years old. The important defining element is simply: A presiding and effusive ever-abiding love for jazz, jazz, and more jazz.
At each stop, he recorded the ambient sounds of each kissa so that you can experience a little bit of the atmosphere at these places — here’s the full playlist. The recordings were done with a pair of microphones so that the audio is in stereo. This sounds great with a good pair of headphones!
I’m good at making things, but not talking about why. I made them because I don’t know how to talk about why. The explanation is the thing I made.
This too is something I try to hold myself to:
I also just do it, you know what I mean? I just make shit. 90% of doing anything is doing it. Not to sound self-help-y, but when people are asking me for advice, my first thought is, you should just do it. You beat so many people already if you just actually make a finished thing.
I am still a perfectionist sort of person, but when your work entails publishing 10-20 things in public every single day, you have to let go of that. Good enough is better than nothing at all.
Embrace your inner little baby (with really good taste):
I essentially have to get back to feeling like I’m a little baby to make things that are good. A baby with really good taste.
I was totally fascinated by this look at the absurd logistics of concert tours and now have a newfound appreciation for all the people involved who collaborate to make the magic happen (and perhaps also a little bit more forgiving about the high price of tickets (but Ticketmaster can still go to hell)).
Now, to an outsider, the load out process might look chaotic, and the pace of the tour may seem unsustainable or unmanageable. But though grueling and exhaustingly complicated, these massive, nation-wide tours function remarkably smoothly considering the variety of variables.
In 1979, just a few short years before she hit it big as a pop artist, Madonna was in a post-punk rock band called The Breakfast Club — she sang and played the drums. In the video above, the band rips through four demo songs in just over 8 minutes. From Dangerous Minds, some context:
Hardcore fans will also know Madonna has been known to perform versions of these songs (and other early material) live. Here’s the thing — much like the early days of the Go-Go’s, Madonna is definitely flexing her affinity for punk rock while mixing it with her own brand of spirited pop which the entire world would soon embrace and others would emulate. Now, if you’ve never heard this version of Madonna, and dig your punk with a side of pop, you are going to love these raw jams. It’s also quite compelling to hear them, knowing what was to come from Madonna in a few short years.
Polyphonic’s videos on music are always worth a watch and in this latest one, they explore the history of the concept album, from its proto-origins in the Romantic era to the 70s rock opera heyday to the modern era, where a large percentage of all album releases are conceptual in nature. Along the way, they namecheck a variety of artists from many genres, including Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, Iron Maiden, De La Soul, Arcade Fire, Daft Punk, Janelle Monáe, Kendrick Lamar, and Taylor Swift. (via open culture)
Earlier this week, the retired electronic duo Daft Punk released the 10th anniversary edition of Random Access Memories, their last studio album. The anniversary album includes 35 minutes of previously unreleased music.
Among the tracks is a demo of Infinity Repeating, featuring Julian Casablancas and The Voidz, which a recent interview w/ Casablancas on Daft Punk’s YouTube channel called “the last Daft Punk song, ever”. The music video for Infinity Repeating, embedded above, features a cool evolution-of-humanity animation (with robots!) and is highly re-watchable.
Leave it to the Auralnauts to take The Mandalorian’s solemn catchphrase “This is the way”, back it with a pulsing beat, and turn it into the banger of the summer. Ok, maybe not. But in the process, they counted 222 uses of the phrase over the three seasons of the show (and also during The Book of Boba Fett, I think).
First up is DJ Shortkut explaining the 15 levels of turntable scratching. DJing is one of those things that I enjoy the output of but don’t know much about, so it was fun to have it broken down like that. Beat juggling is incredibly cool and looks super difficult to master. 🤯
Charles Brooks takes photographs of the insides of musical instruments like pianos, clarinets, violins, and organs and makes them look like massive building interiors, enormous tunnels, and other megastructures. So damn cool. Some of the instruments he photographs are decades and centuries old, and you can see the patina of age & use alongside the tool marks of the original makers. Prints are available if you’d like to hang one of these on your wall.
Hahaha you thought I was kidding about this being a Larnell Lewis fan site today, but I’ve got one more video for you. This is a live recording of a song by the jazz fusion band Snarky Puppy and — hold on, before you wander off having heard that collection of words, let me preface this by saying that I am not really a jam band person or a jazz fusion person and I thought this was pretty amazing.
So anyway, legend has it that Snarky Puppy were all set to record a live record in Holland and their regular drummer couldn’t make it, so they called Lewis to fill in. He learns the music on the plane ride over to Europe and — what? yeah, he learned the music on the plane ride over and then when he gets there…just watch the video above to see what happens.
I admit I didn’t quite get what was so special about this at first, but around the 4:20 mark things really start to get interesting and by the end I was grinning like an idiot. Cory Henry does the keyboard solo and Lewis backs him on it like they’ve been playing together for three lifetimes. As one of the YouTube commenters put it:
I just discovered this about 2 hours ago… I’ve been a musician for 20+ years… After watching this performance, I’ve now been a musician for about 2 hours.
Ok sorry everyone but kottke.org is a Larnell Lewis fan blog today. This morning, I featured a video of Lewis, a Grammy-winning musician and music professor, explaining the 13 levels of complexity of drumming. In response, a pair of readers sent me this video, in which Lewis hears Metallica’s Enter Sandman for the first time (!) and then largely succeeds in playing it after a single listen (!!). You may find yourself wanting to skip to the part where he starts playing, but it’s really fascinating to watch him encoding the music into his brain and body through a combination of active listening, moving his body to the drumbeat, and spatially mapping the music to his drum kit. (thx, robert & matthew)
I love Wired’s video series on the levels of complexity of various activities, and they got someone really good to show us about drumming. Larnell Lewis is a Grammy Award-winning musician and a professor of music at Humber College in Toronto and his tour of the 13 levels of drumming, from easy to complex, is super clear, entertaining, and informative. Aside from the names of some of the drum kit pieces, I did not know a damn thing about drumming before watching this and now my eyes have been opened to how amazing drummers are to be able to do all of that (and look cool as hell at the same time). Like, I can’t even comprehend how they keep all those rhythms going at the same time…it just seems like magic to me. Watching Lewis’s solo at the end gave me a real boost this morning.
Oh man, this is a huge huge nostalgia bomb for me - a 50-minute medley of the most popular song from each month since January 1980. When I was a kid growing up in rural Wisconsin, there were basically four choices of music to listen to: country, metal, oldies, and pop/top 40. I chose pop, so the first ~15 minutes of this video is basically the soundtrack to my childhood.
The most recognizable half of U2 made the trip to the NPR offices to perform a Tiny Desk Concert recently. Accompanied by the Duke Ellington School of the Arts Choir, the pair sang four songs from their 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, including Beautiful Day.
Musician Andrea Boma Boccarusso’s tour of rock ‘n roll history through guitar riffs is a lot of fun. Each year from 1965 to 2022, Boccarusso plays one iconic riff that represents the vibe of rock at the time. Here are a few that made the list:
1965 - The Rolling Stones, Satisfaction
1975 - Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody
1977 - David Bowie, Heroes
1982 - Michael Jackson, Beat It
1985 - Dire Straits, Money for Nothing
1992 - Rage Against the Machine, Killing in The Name of
1995 - Oasis, Wonderwall
2003 - The White Stripes, Seven Nation Army
The riffs get a little less iconic as the 2000s go on, but that’s to be expected in the age of the ascendancy of hip hop. (via digg)
Tchiks is a luthier from Belgium who, after his daughter outgrew her crib, turned it and a bunch of other Ikea products into a guitar.
The guitar started out as a joke. I remember going upstairs and telling my wife “I’m gonna make a guitar out of Zoé’s old bed”. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and asked me “why”. Then I immediately thought “This is the way”.
It sounds good! Like any good craftspeople, luthiers can get a little fussy about their materials and the specs list for the Ikea guitar at the end of the video pokes some gentle fun at that:
You’ve probably never heard of Raymond Scott’s Powerhouse, even though it’s one of the most well-known songs of the 20th century. Powerhouse is the slapstick “the chase is on!” and relentless “assembly line” music that you’ve heard in many Looney Tunes shorts and other cartoons, including The Simpsons and Spongebob. Here it is in the 1946 ‘toon, Baby Bottleneck:
I’m sure Raymond Scott never would’ve guessed that he was sealing his legacy when he sold his publishing rights to Warner Bros. Music in 1943. This little transaction gave genius composer Carl Stalling free reign to plug Raymond Scott’s melodies into his scores for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The propulsive energy of Scott’s quirky instrumental jazz compositions made perfect fodder for the likes of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and Stalling found immediate use for his new library; Stalling’s first quotation of “Powerhouse” appears in the Frank Tashlin classic Porky Pig’s Feat (1943).
The peculiar strains of Raymond Scott’s music and the screwball slapstick of the Warner Bros. cartoons were a match made in heaven…
That CB post has a bunch of embedded videos of different uses of the song, along with this gem of Scott and his “Quintette” playing Powerhouse on TV in 1955:
So, here’s how they make vinyl records at Third Man Records in Detroit. As you might expect, the process is a bit less automated than what you’d imagine for digital music media — those records are human-handled dozens of times before they are finally placed into their jackets.
Vinyl is in the real world. It’s not something that exists only on your computer or your phone, it’s three-dimensional. Your nervous system is designed to take in the sound. It heals you. It’s a nutrient. It’s like vitamins. You feel it. It’s like getting a massage or eating a beautiful sandwich.
This will probably get taken down soon, but in the meantime… This is the ASL performance of Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show by Justina Miles. So good — I love how her long fingers and fingernails accentuate and amplify her signing.
Miles, a Philadelphia native and current nursing student at HBCU Bowie State University, is hard of hearing, according to reporting from Billy Penn. Her mom is deaf, and her family is mixed with hearing people.
Miles was also part of the USA team that went to the 2021-22 Deaflympics in Brazil and won a silver medal as part of the 4x100 women’s track relay team. She was the valedictorian at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington D.C., according to the National Association of the Deaf.
I have never seen this before so maybe you haven’t either: a full-length video recording of Prince and the Revolution playing at First Avenue in 1983. This show marked the first time Prince played Purple Rain in public; it’s this recording of the song (lightly edited and reworked) that you hear on the album of the same name released the next year. From a piece in The Current about the show:
Before the 1984 blockbuster Purple Rain catapulted Prince on to the national stage, there was an Aug. 3, 1983 benefit concert for the Minnesota Dance Theatre at the recently re-branded First Avenue. It was there that the budding pop star debuted much of the Purple Rain album tracks, and recorded the versions of “Purple Rain,” “I Would Die 4 U” and “Baby I’m A Star” heard in the film and soundtrack.
“Those versions were almost exactly what he did live,” said longtime Prince producer David Rivkin, also known as David Z.
Since technology at the time couldn’t record wireless bass well, Rivkin said, Prince later added bass overdubs. He did some content edits, cutting the song down from about 14 to nine minutes.
“It was incredible; I mean little did I know it was gonna be that big of a recording,” Rivkin said. “Prince was really not a well-known figure back then. This is the kind of recording that launched him into super stardom.”
While Prince and the Revolution had been carefully rehearsing Purple Rain all summer, adjusting each detail of how the song was structured and played, Prince’s nearly-unequalled ability to spontaneously take a live performance to the next level was certainly on display that August night.
Exemplifying this ability is the repeated lilting motif that Prince begins playing on his guitar at 4:40 in the song. For all the countless times they’d practiced the song, even earlier on the same day as the First Avenue performance, Prince had never played this riff during Purple Rain before. In the original live show, it’s clear that Prince realizes he’s found something magical, returning again and again to this brief riff, not just on guitar but even singing it himself during the final fade of the song.
Just as striking is how this little riff shows the care and self-criticism that went into making the song Purple Rain. Like any brilliant 25-year-old guy who’s thought of something clever, Prince’s tendency when he thought of this little gem was to overdo it. In the unedited version of the song, Prince keeps playing the riff for almost another minute, pacing around the stage trying to will the audience into responding to it.
After Melvoin’s opening acoustic chords, Bobby Z’s drums — mostly acoustic, and triggering Linn drums later added to in the mix — accompanied Prince’s singing for the first two minutes. “It’s just a back-beat and him from his guts,” Bobby says. “It’s just so raw for him. I remember those two minutes. Because the room is silent except for the pattern you’re playing. He was in the moment, and you’re in it with him, and it was a special place to be. It was a whole different planet.”
Yesterday, Fox aired a very short, very good Rihanna concert, preceded and succeeded by a football game — you can watch it in its entirety on YouTube (possibly US-only). I caught this live and loved every second of it. The set design, choreography, costumes, the baby bump, and, of course, the music & singing: all pitch-perfect.
Update: I took out the embedded video because for some dumb reason the NFL doesn’t allow embeds on that video.
Google Research has released a new generative AI tool called MusicLM. MusicLM can generate new musical compositions from text prompts, either describing the music to be played (e.g., “The main soundtrack of an arcade game. It is fast-paced and upbeat, with a catchy electric guitar riff. The music is repetitive and easy to remember, but with unexpected sounds, like cymbal crashes or drum rolls”) or more emotional and evocative (“Made early in his career, Matisse’s Dance, 1910, shows a group of red dancers caught in a collective moment of innocent freedom and joy, holding hands as they whirl around in space. Simple and direct, the painting speaks volumes about our deep-rooted, primal human desire for connection, movement, rhythm and music”).
As the last example suggests, since music can be generated from just about any text, anything that can be translated/captioned/captured in text, from poetry to paintings, can be turned into music.
It may seem strange that so many AI tools are coming to fruition in public all at once, but at Ars Technica, investor Haomiao Huang argues that once the basic AI toolkit reached a certain level of sophistication, a confluence of new products taking advantage of those research breakthroughs was inevitable:
To sum up, the breakthrough with generative image models is a combination of two AI advances. First, there’s deep learning’s ability to learn a “language” for representing images via latent representations. Second, models can use the “translation” ability of transformers via a foundation model to shift between the world of text and the world of images (via that latent representation).
This is a powerful technique that goes far beyond images. As long as there’s a way to represent something with a structure that looks a bit like a language, together with the data sets to train on, transformers can learn the rules and then translate between languages. Github’s Copilot has learned to translate between English and various programming languages, and Google’s Alphafold can translate between the language of DNA and protein sequences. Other companies and researchers are working on things like training AIs to generate automations to do simple tasks on a computer, like creating a spreadsheet. Each of these are just ordered sequences.
The other thing that’s different about the new wave of AI advances, Huang says, is that they’re not especially dependent on huge computing power at the edge. So AI is rapidly becoming much more ubiquitous than it’s been… even if MusicLM’s sample set of tunes still crashes my web browser.
This is a delightfully early-80s clip about how electronic music legendSuzanne Ciani created the soundtrack and sound effects for the Xenon pinball game. Xenon was the first talking Bally pinball game and the first pinball game voiced by a woman.
The idea of using the short grunts and groans came to me when I watched people playing the game — the way that people expressed their frustrations or their involvement with the game — and I wanted the game to do that back. I wanted it to talk back to the people playing.
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