Composed in L.A. and finished in Paris. I need beats in my life. I need that groove on, keeping you on and on and on. Repetitive, but not robotic. The Funk!
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Category: Music
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Music charts and me
It’s the best article on the state of music from that past decade and this paragraph explains it all:
Music is also contingent. The part of a song that is ‘‘musical’’ is totally up for grabs, and changes from society to society and age to age. The European tradition has tended to elevate melody, so we think of ‘‘writing a song’’ as ‘‘writing the melody.’’ Afro-Caribbean traditions stress rhythms, especially complex polyrhythms. To grossly oversimplify, a traditional European song with a different beat (but the same melody) can still be the same song. A traditional Afro-Caribbean song with a different melody (but the same rhythm) can still be the same song. The law of music – written by Europeans and people of European descent – recognizes strong claims to authorship for the melodist, but not the drummer. Conveniently (for businesses run in large part by Europeans and people of European descent), this has meant that the part of the music that Europeans value can’t be legally sampled or re-used without permission, but the part of the music characteristic of Afro-Caribbean performers can be treated as mere infrastructure by ‘‘white’’ acts. To be more blunt: the Beatles can take black American music’s rock-n-roll rhythms without permission, but DJ Danger Mouse can’t take the Beatles’ melodies from the White Album to make the illegal hip hop classic The Grey Album.
The melody. It’s all about the melody is you ask an extremely white field like game development. As long as you provide that European tradition of elevated melody, you are good. To cater to a white crowd if you don’t focus on melody, you are kind of screwed. Music appreciation comes with time, we learn how to appreciate it. It’s socially engineered.
I never really have been a melody guy and felt bad about it for a long time. Growing up in a white world, I felt that I was wrong, except that I wasn’t. I’ve always preferred harmonies and rhythm. I always loved the call and response that are all so anchored in black music. Jazz, funk soul and hip hop are almost all about everything but the melody. They’re all about playing with silence and performance, that movement. Fun. In my opinion it’s deeper and more interesting to connect these with gameplay instead of an upbeat locked melody but I diverge.
It’s interesting to see what Cory describes -differences of taste between black and white- show up in billboards. First thing first, you can’t survive if you only sell music to a black crowd. Music sells to white people, and this is where it gets weird when you think that NWA, Ice T or Whitney Houston aside of their talent own their financial success to that world they were not invited to (and they made it because they were not that black: NWA wouldn’t exist without that Jewish dude Jerry Heller and Ice and Whitney own a lot to their light skins). It’s fucked up. Social considerations aside, let’s stay on musical taste and see how it shows up in billboards:
Parliament’s singles performances. “US” charts are white people and “US R&B” are black people. First observation George Clinton’s band reached gold when white people put them in the top 20. Look at how the two songs in the white top 20, “Tear The Roof Off The Sucker (Give Up The Funk)” and “Flashlight” are the easiest grooves and the most melodic leads. And yes, hearing Aqua Boogie the first time I was blown away and loved it so much, huge claps, psychedelic and jam-ish, super nasty and unique bass line and #1 for black people when it came out and #89 for white folks. Not surprised.
For a couple of years though there was no distinction between black and white music charts.
From November 30, 1963, to January 23, 1965, there was no Billboard R&B singles charts. The chart was discontinued in late 1963 when Billboard determined it unnecessary because that there was so much crossover of titles between the R&B and pop charts in light of the rise of Motown.[2] The chart was reinstated in early 1965 when differences in musical tastes of the two audiences, caused in part by the British Invasion in 1964, were deemed sufficient to revive it.
So for merely two years, music wasn’t racial. The 60s man, even music is telling us that we missed an opportunity to go further and unify more. Instead we chose to separate ourselves as audiences -less in Europe but still- and I don’t think it was only a British Invasion thing -they all “stole” black music to make their rock n roll-. Socially, that interracial stuff going on in the streets of Philly, Chicago or LA scared the shit out of a lot of white people. Sad.
Today, things are pretty much still the same. The more Kanye caters to white people with weird noisy artsy stuff, the more black people are like “nigga where my beat at?” but the bigger he gets. If you ask black people about Radiohead they’ll be like “who?”, if you ask white people about Usher they’ll be like “ewww”. I’m not making this up, there’s a real backlash against black music, always has been despite its success. “Is it really possible that Michael Jackson, arguably the most influential artist of the 20th century, merited less than half the coverage of Bono, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna?” asks the Atlantic.
Music is still massively race-ish. As a composer and musician it’s uh, interesting. Music is a universal language and by marketing the hell out of it, by racial division and lack of will it’s not anymore. But it still is and always be.
Mixing down quite a lot of music and sound design these days so I ended up looking at levels often and it’s not that I want to freak out but I think we’re peaking now.
This is Pearl Jam’s Jeremy song.
You can see, the “body” of the sound is around -6dB, -4dB with peaks up to almost 0dB. We’re talking about rock music, three guitars, bass drums etc. It’s not like it’s acoustic.
Now, some Skrillex I don’t even remember the song but I think it’s Devil.
It doesn’t look so different for untrained eyes but trust me, it’s laughable. I didn’t even know it was physically possible to saturate a signal without saturating it at that output level. Look at this motherfucking blue square!!!! Even when it’s calm like at the start it peaks at 0dBppm/+11dBVU every time drums kick in. Unbelievable.
It’s compression. We reached the maximum compression we can do on records, that’s it. After that our bodies don’t even process anymore and we become cavemen all over again. Did you try to listen to some Toro y Moi for more than a song? This shit is so compressed and pumps so hard that even half a song exhausts me. It’s supposed to be chill…
Ultra Compression like above is like fast food. It feels extremely exciting and powerful but you hate yourself after inflicting your ears with fat, very fat burgers and oily fries. But yeah, I’m learning how to make that shit too. It’s quite fun.
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Double Lamar
Kendrick Lamar.
I heard about him through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog, analyzing Kendrick’s work.
Good Kid is not simply one the best hip-hop albums I’ve ever heard, but one of the most moving pieces of art I’ve seen/heard in a long, long, long time. I sort of initially bristled at the notion of comparison to Illmatic–my personal favorite ever–but it is exactly the right comparison. Nas was able to do was conjure the chaos of inner city black America in the late ’80s and ’90s. Now Kendrick Lamar summons it nearly 20 years later (with more focus, by the way) and virtually nothing has changed.
"Good Kid" is narrative told from behind the mask. Fantasies of rage and lust are present, but fear pervades Lamar’s world. He pitches himself not as "Compton’s Most Wanted" but as "Compton’s Human Sacrifice." He loves the city, even as he acknowledges that the city is trying to kill him. "If Pirus and Crips all got along," he says, "They’d probably gun me down by the end of this song…."
So when my white friend sees the mighty folder with the songs on my portable hard drive, he’s like “oh Kendrick Lamar I have it too, it’s good right?’”
Good. How can it be good or bad for you? Sorry if it’s offensive.
For him, it’s the last hip-hop album people are talking about. There’s Dre on it, white people’s favorite hip-hop artist (they always will be over enthusiastic; “dude, The Chronic!”). It’s probably been announced on PitchfuckingFork as one of the hottest hip-hop album of the year or some shit. For him, it’s a piece of music you have to listen to because it’s hot. It’s a product.
To me, it’s a look in the soul of a young black man in Los Angeles. As I understand lyrics probably much better than my French friends now, it strikes me hard how great Kendrick’s raps are. To me, this album is a blog. To me who rode through South LA, Compton, who read the construction of this city, segregation, civil rights, fights to live a normal life, the BPP and its assassination, the crack epidemic… It’s powerful to have someone tell you a story from the inside, how his world functions and how fucking alarming it is, narrated with cold humor and cold facts from warm LA.
And then there’s the connection with the universal struggle black people and black men have to deal with. Remember, a Newton every four months in black Chicago. This fucking hopelessness. The system is running over our hopes, hard work, everything. There’s no fixing anymore. Do what you can to escape.
There’s a great connection happening to me and I don’t see where my friend is getting any. So somehow, I don’t see where this album is good or bad to him. Like I wouldn’t be able to say if some indie rock band is good or not as I can’t really connect to this music therefore I wouldn’t be able to have an opinion about it nor act like I know what I’m talking about. Double standard in yo face, Harold. Which I don’t care so much about, compared to consistency and making sense.
This is where I have a big disconnection with my white world, even if we listen to the same stuff.
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In the house
I always liked house music. I mean, I hated it in the 90s as a hard rock/trash metal listener that wasn’t my thing (so mainstream, ew) for sure but hey, I was young.
What drove me to it is hedonism, just feeling good and dancing is a great, great feeling. House music is kind of the king for that. But also, it ages well.
I listen to some electronic music from the past decade -broken beat and what not- and so many things sound dated, gimmicky. House music, especially deep house never does. The great house tracks from 96 still are awesome in 2013. Too simple, too funky and soulful to feel outdated (except for very early acid house, it sounds like today’s phone ringtones).
I also love it as a background music when doing something that requires focus. When the kick comes in, your head banging while you grok some stuff on your computer, the rain hitting the windows… It makes you warm inside. I mostly like house music in the winter, it’s like a call for summer and sun. Chicago’s deep house is the best for that.
ANYWAY. I made two house tracks (that you can buy on Bandcamp!). One love,
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Genesis memory lane
One of the only console ever with a headphones jack and volume slider. Sigh. (poster here)
Some people grew up with the infamous SID or NES sounds. It was the new thing to them. To me it was the transition from these bleeps and blops to a much more detailed world through the one and only Sega Genesis, part of the last generation of consoles creating music and sounds through chips instead of simply reading audio files.
Mainly powered by the Yamaha YM2612 OPN2 sound chip, it is the sound I grew up with every Saturday at my friend’s place in the 90s. I didn’t owned one at that time but I would borrow it and listen to sound test menus over and over. This FM based sound chips series from Yamaha was also ubiquitous in Japan for 20 years. They also developed the DX7 synthesizer which anyone who grew up in the 80s/90s heard at least once in a song (look at the list of artists in bold).
Rounded basses, metallic leads, dreamy bells, razor sharp pads, dynamic snares -thanks to the second sound chip– and amazing musicality for such a limited -and yet so versatile- pair of synthesizers.
I don’t know if it was because Japanese composers were all into funk at that time, but I think the chip invites the funk. From bubbly Rhodes to slap bass emulation (hello Seinfeld) it sounds funky. So many games just sound like this video, some kind of progressive jazz funk, 90s FM Japanese groove. Definitely dated as a style, but I can tell you that the amount of mastering happening in this video is amazing. The dude knows the chip by heart.
Yamaha and musicians, thanks a lot. /drops a tear.
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Punk to the hop
Throughout punk rock history, technical accessibility and a DIY spirit have been prized. In the early days of punk rock, this ethic stood in marked contrast to what those in the scene regarded as the ostentatious musical effects and technological demands of many mainstream rock bands. Musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion. According to Holmstrom, punk rock was "rock and roll by people who didn’t have very much skills as musicians but still felt the need to express themselves through music". In December 1976, the English fanzine Sideburns published a now-famous illustration of three chords, captioned "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band." The title of a 1980 single by the New York punk band Stimulators, "Loud Fast Rules!" inscribed a catchphrase for punk’s basic musical approach.
It’s interesting to me because it kind of makes no sense. Music is much more than just energy coming out of speakers. Refusing it and going against musical virtuosity is like being against Michelin chefs: if you like food, you can’t be against great food. At worse, you ignore it and enjoy your junk food. I never liked the arrogance of thinking that doing something is enough and trying to elevate things is wrong. If you don’t try to get better, you have no goal and you’re just running in circle. It’s not that great of an advice, creatively speaking. Eventually punk music got more musical and ended up mutating to New Wave. The Sugarhill Gang impressed the Clash so hard (funk dance-ish tracks, political lyrics) they made Rock the Casbah back in the UK.
The interesting part of punk rock in the 70s/80s VS hip hop is that it wasn’t a problem of money that lead punk bands to be limited and raw in their musical output. It was a decision, an aesthetic to follow against the “oppression” of Pink Floyd and complex music.
Hip hop on the other side is the pure product of a real oppression, poverty. No money to buy instruments, no money to rent a place to rehearse, no money to tour. Hip hop is born from black people’s ingenuity to make music with nothing but music players. For two genres born around the same time in the same city, both being full of energy but limited musically, one was the product of an obligation the other was the product of a necessity. No wonder why the latter took over the world so hard.
True, deep things often explode and expand. It’s physical.
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A decade later people still don’t get it
I would suggest to you that, like so many other policies in our society, it is up to us individually to put pressure on our governments and private corporations to act ethically and fairly when it comes to artists rights.
Oh really? Were you fighting Apple when they were offering 160 Gb iPod that obviously no one could entirely buy the music for? You should have gone apeshit on Western Digital, in the name of artists. I’m serious.
75,000 albums released in 2010 only 2,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1,000 sold more than 10,000 copies.
I would stop at the first number. 75 motherfucking thousands in ONE year. And you want them all to make money? Do you realize how it’s like, unrealistic? It’s not food, it’s not an amazing tool like a computer (that you can use for other things than downloading music, you know?) and you have music everywhere around, how can you almost demand that these albums make money. It’s ridiculous.
The accepted norm for hundreds of years of western civilization is the artist exclusively has the right to exploit and control his/her work for a period of time.
You dreamin’. Artists didn’t own shit up to very recently -thanks digital freedom- and that’s why it usually ended up badly, especially with bands. Don’t you watch Unsung or Behind the Music?
And journalists applaud and everybody follows.
Now while something like Spotify may be a solution for how to compensate artists fairly in the future, it is not a fair system now.
Neither was iTunes! And yet, you all embraced that pathetic pile of shit so that you can sleep at night for not going on the internet, “stealing” even though you still “steal”.
Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract. Many of them will never even see this paltry share because they have to pay for producers and recording costs, both of which can be enormous. Until the musician "recoups" these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing. Despite huge new efficiencies created by internet distribution –no CDs to make, no distributors to store and ship them, no CD stores to build and run– artists receive the same pathetic cut. That is the disaster of iTunes. Instead of using this new medium to empower musicians and their fans, it helps the record industry cartel perpetuate the exploitation.
This is from the still very informative unofficial iTunes page.
On the other side they are very happy to sell a bunch of iWhatever, music is just a way to attract you (like apps and games). Also, Spotify: “24,000 people have listened to the Dear Esther soundtrack on Spotify. My revenue for this: 93 euros. Hmm.”. It’s the same disaster as iTunes, same cartels controlling rates (so that even independent artists get fucked too) except that you stream instead of downloading which technically is the exact fucking same, same terrible hype and same terrible greed.
I didn’t hear you guys complain to Apple. You swam in their kool-aid, happy. So when I hear artists complain about how Spotify is unfair I really want to say STFU quite a bit. Join good alternatives. Bandcamp is the star at the moment. Sell directly, it’s still better.
On nearly every count your generation is much more ethical and fair than my generation. Except for one thing. Artist rights.
Untrue. It’s more like a large majority of artists still believe in the old system from your generation and get fucked by it through Spotify and what not. Artists today have not only rights but also power they never had before and they are respected as long as they don’t play the game like dicks.
I saw some artists who don’t sell but ONE of their albums on the internet, the rest being ONLY available on P2P. It is stupid (but maybe it’s a legal problem with labels? Sorry guys). I saw artists selling their CDs on their websites but sending you the wrong one that you already have without even bothering to tell you etc. I think artists are bad -if not retarded sometimes- with technology and distribution but it has nothing to do with gen X or gen Y not wanting to spend some bucks. It’s totally untrue. I’m not proud but I paid a CD album more than 50 bucks on Amazon because I loved the shitty mp3s I had so much. It was unavailable anywhere but thanks to Japan, I had a perfect CD. When you genuinely love, you spend. It will happen, with no effort.
I make music, 70+ tracks on the internet entirely made by myself, some for free some streaming only, some for download some are asking a minimum price of $1. I just try to make good stuff that will still be good in ten years or more and put my heart in it. I don’t tour, I know a thing or two about musician’s depression and I still don’t think Emily is wrong.
Actually I think her generation will get tired from hardware ownership and visual dictatorship and will blossom with sound, music and silence. Because cycles, son.
This is what you can do with audio today with a $4000 computer. To give you an idea this pretty cheap PC can record a philharmonic orchestra, simulate two 12-people bands’ instruments (24 virtual instruments), put effects over everything, synchronize a video over all this music, all at the same time in HD and still have room for more.
It’s more power than one person behind the Digital Audio Workstation can dream of for his entire life. We can play 24/192 digital audio files but it makes no sense. I think we’re set with digital audio for a while.
I can do a lot already with my modest dual core. Like 50 tracks and a dozen of virtual instruments and another dozen of audio effects at 2 ms. It’s huge. So many possibilities. I can create a chain of effects in a few clicks that would have taken DAYS of preparation forty years ago.
It’s overwhelming but that’s every musician’s dream since the beginning of recording music, the ability to control in an easy way the process of actually making music, not just playing it.
For that Garage Band on the iPad is amazing, making recording music even more simple.
Times are fast and I feel like it’s hard to keep up when things that were just a dream a decade ago become the norm later in your life. It’s kind of wow. There’s so much to learn.
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Black music
What the fuck is happening.
How come Mint Condition is so low on the radar, a 20 year old classic R&B band like them? Only two albums in ten years for a big talent like Jaguar Wright? Maxwell made a come back last year but was missing for an entire decade. Last album for the Jazzyfatnastees, beautiful and warm voices, 2002.
And Sa-Ra! They were supposed to be the digital blender of black music, the next big thing; one title here, one remix there… An album out, never really heard about it…
Where is D’Angelo??? 12 years and still no new album (one is expected in 2012, but still not confirmed). What the hell Dr Dre is doing beside of selling headphones??? Van Hunt, hello???
I watched a documentary about women MCs which was saying that girls peaked mid 90s in the mainstream and then went back to something much more underground.
Wait. Isn’t it the case for a LOT of post 80s black music?
So I can enjoy a 30 years old R&B band with members in their late 50s (<3 The Whispers), rocking like it’s Saturday night in 1982. I can be fed up to death with Justin Bieber the “pop R&B” kid with ONE album, but I can’t have artists from the 90s, strong, good artists from the late 90s early 00s with regular output, without searching like crazy? How is that black music, soul and blues pretty much only sold for the last decade with white artists? Justin Timberlake, Amy Winehouse, Adele. You think light skinned Beyonce and Rihanna are just a coincidence?
The good thing is that behind the curtains, black people are doing all the audio production. The Neptunes, Babyface, Timbaland, 9th Wonder you name it. But there’s a share of terrible stories like The Pharcyde’s producer, J-Swift. He’s the star of a documentary which sports the tagline: “From hip hop visionary to homeless in Hollywood.” Hip-hop became the most universal music on this planet and one of its goldsmith is smoking crack in the streets of LA? Great.
One more chance
There’s a drug problem for sure but who in show business doesn’t do drugs. Paris Hilton is caught with cocaine and it’s almost like it’s funny (banned from Japan lol). Same with Mr. Sheen or Lindsay Lohan. and all these crazy ass UK rockers from the 60s. Still here! So drugs are not the main issue. Black people are just badly judged and stigmatized with them. Racism.
There’s a business problem, a huge one. Not that artists are searching to be successful and sell a lot of records, that never changed, it was already the case at the start of the music industry. What changed is that people are no longer buying music for their ears first, but for the image/attitude thanks to music videos and the rise of punk/hip-hop during the late 70s. Music has been popularly losing its sonic aspect, the beauty of it, the originality etc Music has been commercially about being louder, noisier, bragging more than the other since the 80s while before, you had some freaking experimental music like this band named Pink Floyd, one of the best selling band of ALL TIME (200 million albums sold) or how Led Zep did their two first albums in 69 with tracks on a 5 minutes average.
Black music is kind of guilty of not having seen what the 00s were going to do to music: revolutionize it.
It’s sad to see that Prince is the first major artist to release an entire album exclusively on the internet in 1997 and that it didn’t start anything in the black music community. I first believe in the internet liberating artists on Prince’s website, linking to another artist which was saying “Napster is making me richer, here are the numbers and how”. The file sharing phenomenon was putting the music business into light and showed how much it’s a hidden, filthy and nasty world.
It didn’t stop black music business to deal with majors and lawsuits and I-start-my-own-label shit and I wear more jewelry than Lord Pimp… So many stories of bands or talents disappearing for years because of copyrights, wrong credits and other “intellectual property” issues. It’s a long tradition, since the early days of recordings in the 30s and it’s like black people don’t learn anything, once again. Black people and technology, there’s something going on. Black people and internal fights, it’s insane (Zapp’s terrible tragedy).
Marketing kills black music, too. Hip-hop struggled to renew itself in the past decade and when a producer has The Sound, he’s likely to be all over the radio for every single artists, regardless of the music style. There’s no shortage of good producers and the most successful ones financially and creatively are all accomplished musicians. But today a fast, minimal beat with a stupid ass 4 notes melody is all the rage. There is so much marketing efficiency that nothing really sounds fresh, no matter what you do. Bringing all the current hot producers for your album doesn’t make it a masterpiece.
I don’t know. It feels like music business with so many black people owning this shit should create much more dream, emotions and things that bands I’m talking about at the start of this post were and can provide. We need this.