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The natural history of the Funky Drummer break
“The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two” by James Brown and the JBs is one of the most-sampled recordings in history. “The Funky Drummer” is a cornerstone of hip-hop and other sample-based electronic...
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Clap your hands, stomp your feet
The most-sampled album in history is probably James Brown’s compilation In The Jungle Groove. It includes the original “Funky Drummer Parts One And Two” along with a sampling-friendly remix. It also...
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DJ on the one and two
Turntablists use record players to play records in ways they weren’t meant to be played. By speeding up, slowing down and reversing the record under the needle, a whole universe of new sounds becomes...
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Resequencing the Funky Drummer’s DNA
The most sampled recording in history is (probably) the Funky Drummer loop from James Brown’s song “The Funky Drummer Parts One And Two.” Here I go deeper into how this sample can be reworked into new...
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The case for sampling
My friend Adam, a non-musician but devoted music fan, asked me why sampling is good. He’s used to hearing me defend sampling from the accusation that it’s bad, but he’d never heard a positive argument...
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Drum machine programming
This post has been superseded by my giant collection of rhythm patterns, which you can see here. I wrote a general post about what makes a hot beat hot. As a followup, here’s how to program some...
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How to groove
When teaching guitar, I find that my students need the most help with groove. Students come to me expecting to learn chords, scales, riffs and ultimately entire tunes. I do teach those things, but...
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Visualizing music
Update: check out my masters thesis, a radial drum machine. Specifically, see the section on visualizing rhythm. See also a more scholarly review of the literature on visualization and music education....
View ArticlePlay With Your Rhythm
As we continue to flesh out the video content for Play With Your Music, I put together this series on rhythm. The first video takes you through the basics of counting in 4/4 time, along with some...
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Freedom ’90
Since George Michael died, I’ve been enjoying all of his hits, but none of them more than this one. Listening to it now, it’s painfully obvious how much it’s about George Michael’s struggles with his...
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Groove challenges with the Groove Pizza
One of our key design principles at the NYU MusEDLab is not to confront beginners with a blank canvas. We want to introduce people to our tools by giving them specific, real-world music to play around...
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