It appears to be Kunitaka Watanabe time once again here on Nullary Sources. Have you ever wanted to hear a version of “Hello, Dolly!” on Otamatone and banjolele? Well now you can, courtesy of Mr. Watanabe and Takashi Nakamura.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxp5XF7sAfQ
For some reason today I am linking a mashup up Busta Rhymes “Don’t Touch Me (Throw da Water on ‘Em)” and Koji Kondo’s “Athletic” from the game Yoshi’s Island. Music by tenlettername, visualization by stuff3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGITlEhYfRc
Enjoy “Burlesque in Barcelona”, a ’70s smooth jam from Iceland penned by Jakob Magnússon. (The repeated bassline may sound familiar — it was sampled by Hi-Tek on his track “Round and Round”.)
GZA involved in initiative to bring rap to NYC science classes
Martin Rand III, CNN:
Along with [Columbia University Professor Christopher] Emdin, Wu-Tang member GZA and the founders of the hip-hop lyrics website Rap Genius will announce a program that utilizes hip-hop to teach science in 10 New York City public schools. […]
Science has been one of the harder subjects to teach to black and Latino students, who make up 70% of the city’s rolls, according to New York’s Independent Budget Office. The 2009 National Assessment of Education Progress said only 4% of African-American seniors were proficient in sciences, compared with 27% of whites. […]
The process is simple, Emdin said. After learning the material, students will have to create rap songs relaying the material back to the teacher. This can be done individually or in groups known as cyphers, where people stand in a circle and take turns rapping.
This is a supremely fantastic idea. I really hope it works well.
Coming at you on this Tuesday is “idyllic” by the Japanese band Spiritual Vibes, fronted and produced by Nobukazu Takemura. This is one of the two original pieces from their 1994 remix album newly.
Check the nearly two minute vibraphone solo starting at 3:38 by Kazumi Totaka, who co-wrote the song with Takemura and vocalist Kikuko Nonaka.
The (as of this writing still) anonymous rapper Captain Murphy has put out his first mixtape. Murphy’s debut was earlier this year on Flying Lotus’s “Between Friends” alongside with Earl Sweatshirt and Murphy seems to be sticking more with the latter than the former — “Immaculation” features Azizi Gibson and Jeremiah Jae both of whom are signed to FlyLo’s Brainfeeder label.
Regardless of identity or affiliation, Murphys new mixtape, “Duality” is really quite good. Additionally it has been released in an innovative way: the entire mixtape, all 35 minutes of it, has been made into a single video by French director Xavier Magot. In fact, so far at least it’s the only way to even hear the mixtape.
You may click through above to watch it but let the clicker be warned: the video contains NSFW images.
The music industry is changing
Damon Krukowski:
Which gets to the heart of the problem. When I started making records, the model of economic exchange was exceedingly simple: make something, price it for more than it costs to manufacture, and sell it if you can. It was industrial capitalism, on a 7” scale. The model now seems closer to financial speculation. Pandora and Spotify are not selling goods; they are selling access, a piece of the action. Sign on, and we’ll all benefit. (I’m struck by the way that even crowd-sourcing mimics this “investment” model of contemporary capitalism: You buy in to what doesn’t yet exist.)
But here’s the rub: Pandora and Spotify are not earning any income from their services, either. In the first quarter of 2012, Pandora— the same company that paid Galaxie 500 a total of $1.21 for their use of “Tugboat”— reported a net loss of more than $20 million dollars. As for Spotify, their latest annual report revealed a loss in 2011 of $56 million.
I’ve quoted here what is to me most interesting of Krukowski’s observations but the whole piece is a great read especially if you’re not familiar with how and how much Pandora and Spotify pay out to artists.
Andrew McPherson of Drexel University’s Music and Entertainment Lab:
The acoustic piano is a percussion instrument: felt hammers strike steel strings, causing them to vibrate. As a result of centuries of development, the piano has a rich, vibrant sound and tremendous versatility; on the other hand, it lacks the degrees of performer control commonly found in electronic synthesizers. In particular, once a note is struck, the performer has no further control over it until it is released. My research installs electromagnetic actuators inside the piano to directly vibrate the strings, allowing continuous control of the resonant sound of the instrument. This hybrid acoustic-electronic instrument maintains the richness of the acoustic piano while expanding its vocabulary to include infinite sustain, notes that crescendo from silence, harmonics, and new timbres.
I want one of these so bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUUqtR1czAM
A while ago I was having a bit of angrytime, so friendpal and generally Swedish individual Mattias sent me some Spyro Gyra to help chill me out. This worked quite well, actually, as Spyro Gyra is rather high on my “I NEED TO BE HAPPY RIGHT THIS SECOND” music list.
The song he sent me was “Bob Goes to the Store” from their 1986 album Breakout, and I’m sharing it with you all now.
Apparently the Austrian composer Johann Albrechtsberger composed several classical works that include the mouth harp. Why? I’m not sure. But the world is a better place for it.
This is the first movement of his Concertina in E flat for violin, viola, cello, piano, and mouth harp.