Best music history & criticism books according to redditors
We found 2,194 Reddit comments discussing the best music history & criticism books. We ranked the 929 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 2,194 Reddit comments discussing the best music history & criticism books. We ranked the 929 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Not really. Hip Hop wouldn't spread globally until years later. And the people who accomplished that didn't get their DJ equipment in 1977.
What had a much bigger impact on hip hop was the 1971 south Bronx gang truce that allowed people to go to clubs and block parties without worrying about crossing rival gang territory.
The book Can't Stop Won't Stop covers it extremely well.
https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0312425791
https://www.amazon.com/Swedish-Death-Metal-Daniel-Ekeroth/dp/097961631X
If anyone hasn't already, read this cover to cover.
Also, here's some full demos then.
Obscurity- Damnations Pride (Full Demo, 1987)
Sorcery- Unholy Crusade (Full Demo, 1989)
Nosferatu- Decadence Remains (Full Demo, 1990)
Unanimated- Rehearsal Demo 1990
Dysentery- Crawling in Blood (Full Demo, 1991)
Megaslaughter- Demo 1991
>So if it isn't a minor mode, isn't a diminished mode, and certainly isn't a major mode, than is it really even a usable scale?
You know, all that theorizing is well and good, but you're closing off your mind and your ears maaaan. I like how Dmitri Tymoczko talks about this in A Geometry of Music:
>>Broadly speaking, theorists have explained centricity in two ways. Internal explanations assert that the structure of a group of notes is sufficient to pick one out as a tonal center, without any effort on the composer’s part. External explanations focus on what composers do, asserting that composers make notes more prominent (or stable) by playing them more frequently, accenting them rhythmically or dynamically, placing them in registrally salient positions, and so on. Rather than being a property of collections considered abstractly, centricity is a property of collections as they are used in actual music. (177)
>>...
>>My own sympathies lie very much with the external view: in most practical cases, I believe the internal contributions to centricity are relatively weak and can easily be overridden. Consequently it is entirely possible to write diatonic music that is acentric, or chromatic music that emphasizes a particular note. I do not consider either kind of music to be "unnatural." Nor do I have any problem with any of the diatonic modes (or any other mode of any other scale): I am entirely convinced by the music of the Renaissance, of Debussy, Ravel, and Shostakovich, and of contemporary jazz and rock; I enjoy those numerous passages of twentieth-century music that make use of symmetrical scales while still asserting a tonal center; and as a composer I believe I can make virtually any note of virtually any collection sound like a tonic. (This last conviction has been reinforced by my experience with computers: by emphasizing particular notes through repetition, duration, loudness, and step- wise melodic motion, it is easy to create the effect of centricity in otherwise random sequences.) Any theorist who wants to argue against these convictions would have to fight an uphill battle: indeed, the very claim that the phrygian mode is deficient, or that centric music cannot use symmetrical scales, strikes me as evidence of a limited musical imagination. (180-181)
---
Not that this is a masterpiece or anything, but I wrote this as a proof of concept to toss around Reddit threads about locrian mode. In my real compositions, I use locrian occasionally. And John Kirkpatrick has this folk tune, Dust to Dust, that uses some polyphony with a very ex tempore feel.
I feel like this argument ^(apologies ^if ^I ^misinterpreted ^it!) is always brought up whenever new technology gets introduced. New technology threatens an old system of music production and while it frees up artistic creativity because of its availability, some people point to the perceived value of loss of musical integrity.
People will say something like "It's just not as good as it was before", that there are too many people diluting what x music should be.
A particular example I'm thinking about is the deejaying aspect of hip-hop in the 1970s; at first, it was just only people who had the resources to purchase turntables and speakers. Who had the double turntable/loudest was king. The rap aspect took the backseat to the dub/deejay aspect. In the early days, it was all about having a good time, getting people to come to your party, and keeping the music playing.
But then when radio discovered what was going on in New York, power dynamics changed. Rapper's Delight by The Sugarhill Gang was recorded and broadcasted in 1979 and the entire hip-hop landscape changed. Hip-hop was no longer viewed as a simple extracurricular activity, but the possibility of a potential profitable career. The live aspect of deejaying yielded to the much more profitable rapping aspect.
And this made some people upset. These rappers were diluting the already "good" deejaying scene. If you were big and didn't adapt to these new changes, you basically lost.
What do I think? I think over-saturation is great! I don't need to depend on filters to find good music; I can be in a small town in Kentucky and still find cool musicians who play in Austin, TX. While I do occasionally use BIRP and some indie youtube channels/tumblr pages, I am able to make value decisions. From my computer. I simply need a library account to access the computer and I have access to a world of music. It is super egalitarian in my mind.
Hipster moment here: I remember when I listened to Zoe Yin's Midnight back when it had a hundred something views. She's incredibly talented imho. I don't know her, probably wouldn't have seen her live even if she was in my town. But because she uploaded her stuff on the internet, I was able to find it in my free time. That's cool!
But I do acknowledge that there are some poorly mastered mixes out there. That's the nature of the beast. With ease of availability comes inexperience.
Another example (not music-related, but very relevant): film photography vs. digital photography. I learned how to take photos with b&w 35 mm film. It was expensive and it demanded a lot of time. Hours and days were put into developing/burning/dodging that I wanted my pictures to count. So, I worked and only took photos that passed a threshold of interest (due to the limitations of materials, expense, and time). Therefore, what I produced had a significant amount of thought and effort into them. And people liked it.
But now we have instagram, mobile phone cameras, and inexpensive point and shoots. More importantly, we have SD cards. Now instead of limited to 24 shots, you can take thousands! And it is reusable!
What does this mean? It means the effort behind the photo is reduced. Just a simple click with minimal thought. A lot of stuff I see on Facebook or Twitter... Well, it isn't that "good". But that doesn't mean it isn't art. And it doesn't mean we get to immediately write it off. We just need to look at it differently with the technical process in mind. Who is taking it? Who is their audience? What is their intention? How did they do it? Just like the internet scene, photography is going through the same debates.
And the best advice I can give is... just go with it! Find stuff. Hate it, love it, be indifferent. As long as you keep questioning the basis of your value system and don't hold on to a traditional viewpoint of what x should be every time/all the time... You'll be good!
^Jesus... ^this ^was ^long, ^thanks ^for ^reading ^if ^you ^made ^it ^this ^far
Citations:
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
tl;dr: the perception of oversaturation is just a mindset; allow yourself to be open from whatever old nostalgic system of value you hold and you can find some really cool stuff out there
The Caribbean New York link is often cited as one of the key factors in the formation of hip hop. I strongly recommend you read Jeff Chang’s book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop to find a more detailed narrative on the link. It dedicates a chapter to the socio-economic conditions in NYC the late 60s and early 70s and another chapter to sound system culture in Jamaica which really set the scene what how and why hip hop emerged.
As a fan of early hip hop, I just want to stress that in 1970s in NYC the Caribbean influence was present in not only in rapping style, but in DJing style too, perhaps even more so. It was really the sound-system DJ culture of Jamaica that first made its way into the parks, streets and house parties in New York. It was the rapping that followed. This interview with DJ Kool Herc gives some indication of how one led to the other. The book “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life illuminates this further.
Lastly, while there is a strong Jamaican link to the origins of rapping, it is important to note that it was not only the source of influence. There were many other American artists from different backgrounds included raps and spoken word in their songs.
As a record collector, some of the more interesting examples that I have come across in my time include.
Also, rap made some appearances in country music too.
P.s. the first rap record is generally regarded to be
Personality Jock by King Tim III and the Fatback Band not Rappers Delight, which was released a couple of months later.
EDIT: I Just noticed you mentioned you were from the UK. You might be interested in checking out this website and articles by DJ Greg Wilson. He gives a good overview of the musical landscape in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s when hip hop was first being made. Of particular interest to you might be how US hip hop made it to the UK, and the role that of Caribbean kids in that movement, and subsequently dance music in the UK. He doesn't go into this in detail, but does allude to it. You should give him call, I'm sure he'd be happy to discuss.
Simon Reynolds' "Generation Ecstasy" is the big one about 90's dance music. It was like required raver reading back in the day. Big focus on UK hardcore/early jungle.
http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Ecstasy-World-Techno-Culture/dp/0415923735/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Co-sign "Last Night a DJ saved my life" also a really good one.
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421350101&sr=1-1&keywords=last+night+a+dj+saved+my+life
Dan Sicko's "Techno Rebels" is great one with a big focus on the early detroit techno scene
http://www.amazon.com/Techno-Rebels-Renegades-Electronic-Painted/dp/0814334385/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421350046&sr=1-1&keywords=techno+rebels
Kai Fikentscher "You better work" is a great one about the early NYC dance scene. The loft, the paradise garage etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Work-Underground-Dance-Music/dp/0819564044/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421350247&sr=1-1&keywords=you+better+work
Mireille Silcott "Rave America" is an awesome one about the 90's US rave scene. Big focus on Midwest hardcore/hard techno. Also has a super early interview with Tommie Sunshine before he became a DJ.
http://www.amazon.com/Rave-America-New-School-Dancescapes/dp/1550223836/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421350330&sr=1-1&keywords=rave+america
Brian Belle-Fortune "All Crews" is a good one about the UK 90's D&B
scene.
http://www.amazon.com/All-Crews-Journeys-Through-Culture-ebook/dp/B00HJ6SPPU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421350448&sr=1-1&keywords=all+crews
If you're into digging for old dance records. There's a series of books called "the rough guide" that was distributed by Penguin that are basically little mini-encyclopedias of 90's dance artists/releases. I found them REALLY helpful back in the day before the internet was a thing.
I've got the rough guides to house, techno & d&b. Here's a link to the house one. http://www.amazon.com/Rough-Guide-House-Music/dp/1858284325/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421350616&sr=1-1&keywords=the+rough+guide+to+house
EDIT. Forgot to add. THE MANUAL by the KLF is fucking hilarious read & kind of an amazing historical artifact. It's like a $100 on amazon (Ugh, a friend borrowed my copy back in the day and never gave it back) but there's text/pdf versions floating around the web
http://www.amazon.com/Manual-How-Have-Number-Easy/dp/1899858652/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421350795&sr=1-1&keywords=KLF+the+manual
Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick released a book called "Here There and Everywhere: My Life Recording The Music of The Beatles." I read this while listening to the songs he was talking about recording, and the stories behind the sessions made the songs that much more powerful to my ears.
http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690
If you ever run across the 33^1/3 books anywhere and they have the Pauls Boutique edition then you should definitely grab it. Has some great insight into the hilarious behind the scenes events that help shape the album as well as some great chapters on the impact and the reception when the album dropped.
For those who don't listen to metal, the book he holds up is a book called "Lords of Chaos", a book about a string of church burnings in Norway in the early 1990's by band members from black metal bands.
Edit: Link
Look at Geoff Emerick’s Here, There, and Everywhere, My Life Recording The Music of The Beatles. Emerick was the engineer on many Beatles albums.
The 33 & 1/3rd of Paul's Boutique is worthwhile: https://www.amazon.com/Beastie-Boys-Pauls-Boutique-33/dp/0826417418
I second the recommendation of reading his book, an easy, fun read for both anyone involved in audio, as well as engineering. Might be the best $15 bucks you ever spend! I am reading it slowly, as I just don't want it to end. As I stated in an earlier post, while working with the Beatles, they discovered loops. In fact each Beatle got themselves a two track recorder (Studer, I believe) and, especially paul at first, were bringing in bags of loops. During Revolution # 9, they had every tech, who wore lab coats then, using pencils as spindles with loops going around them, Now, looping is it's own music form. Geoff Emerick broke EMI's (abbey road) strict rules - he got away with it because the Beatles got anything they wanted; they brought in more money than anyone else EMI, or anyone, had. They always wanted to outdo themselves in writing and relied on Geoff (though George Martin took the credit), to make them sound different as possible on each recording. Sometimes, in outlandish ways.
He suggests that Revolver, Pepper and others of that era, where best mixed in Mono and recommended it you wanted to hear the best mixes, get the mono versions of the album. The Beatles generally attended the Mono Mixing but hardly the stereo mixing sessions, for the most part, as Stereo was new and there weren't too many Stereo Players out there. Therefore the mixing techniques you described were actually just a quick mix with not nearly as much care, not extreme for they were trying new sounds; they were just getting it over with quickly, for they didn't even know, at that time, if Stereo was a fad or not.
Geoff went as far as taking really expensive mikes, where the prescribed edict in EMI was X feet away minimum ( to protect the mic, mostly) and putting them up close and limiting them greatly, for an in your face sound. Listen to the horns on "Got He would record strings, which up until Geoff where recorded with overheads, with mics inches from their instruments. One of the stuffy orchestral musicians said to him, "You can't do that, you know!", but, yes he could, and did. The musicians were afraid that ANY slight mistake would stick out, and they would, as you can hear the bow and resin on the strings, not just the sound emanating from the F holes! Now, it's common micing practice with mics and bridges to accomplish it. Even Violins without ANY sound holes, just relying on close mixing of the strings.
Same with Brass. He stuffed mikes right into the horns. He very easily could have blown out the condensers in those really expensive mics, due to the pressure, but he did it, heavily limited the signal. First heard on "Got to Get You Into My Life" and again, that's standard Brass micing techniques we do today.
As Paul got into the practice of adding the bass lines in as the last, or almost last overdub, He would bring the amp into the middle of this huge, plain vanilla studio to take advantage of the cavern like space (as in overly large, not as in the club, The Cavern). He also figured out that, since a mic and headphone are both fundamentally transducers, he would use a large speaker in front of the Kick and an inefficient mic, but with a signature sound that a mic would have trouble reproducing. Look up a Side Kick, not a bunch of google data on it, but it's essentially a speaker being used as a mic and are really common. You've probably seen it, it looks like a snare drum slapped onto a kick. . Quality aside , basically a transducer is a transducer. You can make a recording plugging your headphones into your mic jack, without any harm, to prove it. Please don't plug your mic in to use as a speaker. Though it wold work, your mic might never be the same :"
Geoff has his biases in his book, he couldn't be more pro Paul (almost always nice, reasonable and diplomatic ), or anti John (angry young man) or paint George as stand-off-ish and suspicious of so many things, and repeatedly pointed out that George had difficultly playing his leads and they were often pieced together. I have respect to George's playing, personally. Paul and John always rolled their eyes when Geroge presented a song he wrote and generally treated him like a tag-along little brother. And Ringo was just being Ringo. Quiet, but when he had an opinion, he spoke it and they paid attention. They always wrote a song for Ringo, one brilliantly, with only five notes (help from my friends) to accommodate his vocal limits. but did Gorges songs because they had to. Fun Fact, at the end of, I believe it's Helter Skelter, it is Ringo yelling about Blisters on My Fingers - Everyone I spoke to, as well as I, always thought it was John.
Geoff is also quite frank in the book, sadly describing the implosion of the Beatles, the changes they went through, the constant fighting that got so bad, he couldn't take anymore and quit as their engineer. Even as they looked to the ground in shame, and John nicely and sincerely pleaded for him to remain, he couldn't take it anymore. Though he did help out on problematic technical issues, as a favor to not only the Beatles, but producer George Martin (who I once had the pleasure of meeting). He would later be hired by Paul for Apple and things got somewhat better.
Too, he described how Pepper was mostly Paul and the White Albume as mostly John. Fun Fact: as he was hired by Apple, he took part in the White Album. When they decided to continue recording at EMI/Abby Road, Geoff was looked at, and treated as an intruder, though he gave EMI many years of Blood, Sweat, Tears and sleepless nights. Some of the other assistants refused to work with the Beatles too (can you imagine!) so they brought in a young assistant by the name of Alan Parsons. Wiki him, amongst other things, such as the Alan Parson's Project ( Listen to I Robot), he is responsible for the sound of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
​
I could go on about Geoff Emerik forever, as you see. Geoff influenced, significantly influenced, the art of recording, the way Hendrix influenced guitar playing (Hendrix had everyone saying, "I have a guitar, but it don't do those things"). At 19, you've heard Hendrix's influences both in and out of Rock Genre, for the sounds are available at the push of a button for us now. PLEASE: listen to 'Machine Gun' on the Band of Gypsies Album, where he protests the Vietnam war by making the theater a sonic battlefield, live! Listen to Little Wing on Axis Bold As Love album, the most beautiful progression the guitar ever kissed. That along with other songs on that album: you can't find a line dividing lead and rhythm.
They both stood their art on it's head, changed it forever and did so without the equipment available, which now replicates much of their sounds, in a pedal or plugin, many which are standard stuff, without anything depicting its lineage to Geoff or Jimi.
Get the book!
Celebrate his life, as you see fit,
Get the book
Be grateful for the passed down knowledge, techniques and technology created so we may utilize his discoveries.
And, if I didn't mention it, GET THE BOOK
​
Warmly,
Mr-Mud
​
​
Those sounds on "O&O" may have been due to the fact that the Abbey Road studio equipment used on an early Pink Floyd album ("Piper at the Gates of Dawn") as well as the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. Yes, SGT. PEPPER.
Plus, they had Geoff Emerick as an engineer, who did amazing work for many of the Beatles' albums.
Edit: Now I have to listen to "O&O" this evening. "Care of Cell 44", "Brief Candles", "Maybe After He's Gone"....all so brilliant.
interesting. I recently put together an huge list of Jazz books oriented towards non-musicians. After putting together the list I organized it into courses like a university might. I called it my "Masters Degree in Jazz Studies for Non-Musicians." The first two courses I think would be perfect for you.
<br /> <br /> **Course 1: Jazz Appreciation**<br /> This course is meant to give you a solid grounding in how to listen to jazz music without delving too deeply in music theory or requiring the student to be a musician. It is also meant to expose you to the core body of work of jazz. <br /> <br /> [Enjoying Jazz - Henry Martin](http://www.amazon.com/Enjoying-Schirmer-Books-Henry-Martin/dp/0028731301/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)<br /> <br /> [How To Listen To Jazz - Jerry Coker](http://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Jazz-Jerry-Coker/dp/1562240005/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1420760894&amp;sr=1-9)<br /> <br /> [Jazz Standards - Ted Gioia](http://www.amazon.com/The-Jazz-Standards-Guide-Repertoire/dp/0199937397/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=0DX94W5SY4BM04GD6W5J)<br /> <br /> <br />Course 2: Jazz History 101
This is a basic course in jazz history. it is not meant to be an in depth coverage of every style. It is meant to give the student a broad overview of the general progression of jazz from it's inception into the modern era. Other courses in the program go much further in depth into specific styles and the major players of those styles.
Ken Burns Jazz
Jazz 101 - John F Szwed
History of Jazz - Ted Gioia
Visions of Jazz - Gary Giddins
`
so far the program I developed has 10 courses. If anyone is interested I could share the content of the other courses. and I am considering developing a syllabus for each course and possibly even more courses, but the time and effort needed to complete the 10 courses would already be more than the effort I put in to obtaining an actual master's degree from a university so I'm not sure how much more effort I would want to put into this right now.
I get where you're coming from because I started in a very similar place, but what you want is really not compatible with the study of music theory. Music theory attempts to break down the structure of music to explain why it works by using other works as an example. It's not really about explaining cause and effect relationships or mathematics. (though there's certainly some of that)
Music theory has much more to do with pointing out similarities between pieces of music so you can say, "Well, these pieces of music are effective because they share these things in common, and you can use these techniques to similar effect."
It also has to do with auditory perception and psychology. "These notes are harmonically similar, so they will mask each other." "The change in harmonic relationships between these notes over time imply that something is going to change." Etc... It sounds like those are concepts you are already familiar with.
It's not that these things aren't science-adjacent, but it's not a formal science. It just integrates bits and pieces of science, history, convention, etc... Trying to reduce anything but specific subsections of music theory down to something adequately explainable by science or mathematics is not going to be helpful or satisfying.
The best recommendation I could give you is to find a good music history text that starts out somewhere around 570BCE or earlier and leads into modern day. I've found that for myself, the only satisfying way to understand modern music terminology and convention is to observe how it evolved. I think that's the most scientific approach you could take.
There are also a few extremely talented polymaths that have attempted to represent musical relationships in novel and useful ways using mathematics/geometry. Dmitri Tymoczko immediately comes to mind.
I also think you would enjoy reading this book and this book, as one explores some really fascinating and practical mathematical representations of musical ideas, and the other explores the tension/release mechanics that dictate/relate to much of the theory surrounding modern musical structure, rhythm, and harmonic progression.
Other than that, if you see a term that you don't understand, look it up. If you see a term in that term's definition that you don't understand, look that up. Follow that rabbit hole to the bottom. Draw a graph if you have to.
Diving down hierarchies of terms I don't understand in order to gradually pick apart texts is a skill I've had to develop as a software developer and DIYer, and training that muscle has been invaluable. It's the reason I don't kill plants anymore, how I was able to write a raycasting engine without prior 3D graphics experience, and how I taught myself music theory.
I'll play Devil's Advocate.
To begin, I agree with everything you wrote. African Americans have arguably been the most innovative and important musical creative geniuses in shaping American music culture and identity. Two of the largest genres of music in the 20th century (jazz and rock 'n' roll) are both owed to the African tradition of music that emerged from the deep south. I highly recommend Ted Gioia's The History of Jazz which delves deeply into this topic and extensively covers the integration and experimentation of traditional African music with the traditional and folk music of Europe. African Americans have also spearheaded genres such as Gospel and Samba (there are dozens of latin american genres that are mixes of African and other cultural traditions). Even today with the emergence of hip-hop and R&B, African Americans have shown an adeptness in crafting music.
The real argument is whether or not delegating a month to such ideas and concepts is an adequate or even progressive means of advancing those ideals. I think there is validity to an argument that such honors can actively be divisive rather than inclusionary. I think if any American child were to sincerely learn about American music, especially in any collegiate setting, the emphasis of the importance of African American participation and leadership in crafting and exporting these genres is unquestionable and absolutely emphasized. Now, I don't think making June 2016 "African-American Music Appreciation Month” is a bad thing, but I do question the underlying notion that African American music is not already appreciated. I would honestly argue that it is one of the most cherished gifts this country has ever bestowed upon the world, and the amount of academia, journalism, and knowledge concerning these genres pales in comparison to whatever pop websites or music blogs post on a daily basis.
Just thought I'd give my two cents! I'm honestly not too terribly opinionated on this topic one way or another, but I thought it would be worthwhile to offer a varying perspective. Furthermore, I've seen a few comments sort of criticizing the political and volatile nature of the subject, but most of the conversation thus far has been very civil and I think it is a good thing that serious conversations can happen in this sub.
If you're interested in a great book about early hip hop, check this one out-
https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0312425791
The author Jeff Chang was a founder of the Solesides collective/label in 1991, along with DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, and Blackalicious.
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation Really enjoyable and exhaustive history of hip-hop from its roots through 2005
The ultimate source for these types of texts is of course, Nicolas Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time - it's one of my favorite books!
A History of Western Music
Norton Anthology of Western Music
It appears to be out of stock everywhere.
Anyway, you're now in a world where Burzum exists...a better world. Go buy a book called Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground.
http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Chaos-Satanic-Underground-Edition/dp/0922915946
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil. I went through a phase of being a "hardcore punk" as an early adolescent - this book made me appreciate the music a lot more but the "culture" a lot less.
Also, much later, I read Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning". I always hated philosophy and was miserable when I was forced to take it in college, but this is the one book I did not sell after the end of the course, and reread multiple times. It is overwhelming and sad but really gives a touching and life-changing account of the beauty of the human spirit, even in situations of utter horror.
A book, not a documentary, but if you haven't already read Lords of Chaos, I highly suggest it.
There is a pretty nice book he wrote about his whole beatles experience you may want to check out..
after reading Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang, I can counter with the fact that in 1978 there were just as many antagonist cops looking to put black kids into jail for having stereos and being associated with 'gangs' and that decisions were made in the police administration to both (1) let the Bronx burn and (2) instigate violence between gangs in Harlem.
Probably the most accessible mathematical approach to the basics of music theory that is still really solid scholarship would be Dimitri Tymoczko's A Geometry of Music. About the only downside is that Tymoczko has several bones to pick and he makes sure to pick them! http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-Practice/dp/0195336674
Another classic is David Lewin's Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations. http://www.amazon.com/Generalized-Musical-Intervals-Transformations-David/dp/0199759944
If I were you, I'd start with Tymoczko and then move to Lewin after.
Here are few I've read and would recommend:
Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the XXth Century. Covers modern music from the end of the XIXth to now. Most interesting and put in relation to the historical context. A must, although you do not have to agree with all the author's views.
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/0312427719/ref=mp_s_a_3?qid=1323456660&amp;sr=8-3
THIS book is entirely composers bashing other composers in the press
Books:
Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture
The Underground is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America
Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk
Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House
All Crews: Journeys Through Jungle / Drum and Bass Culture
Keyboard Presents the Evolution of Electronic Dance Music
Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany
Last Night a DJ Saved my Life
Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco
The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and The Culture of the Night
"Lords Of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground" is a phenomenal book on the history of the black metal scene
thats a large portion of the premise of this excellent book about the album. a very interesting read, i highly recommend the 33 1/3 book series in general (there are also books about illmatic and MBDTF, among others)
There was a brilliant pocket sized book about the creation of the album released a while ago, I think on it's 20th anniversary. Loads of history into what the BB's were back then and the trials and tribulaitons of all of the sampling clearance dramas...here are the UK and US Amazon links to it, sorry everyone else! But I'm sure you can find it through those. :)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Beastie-Boys-Pauls-Boutique/dp/0826417418
http://www.amazon.com/The-Beastie-Boys-Pauls-Boutique/dp/0826417418
Until the Light Takes Us
Lords of Chaos
There's a good book that details most of what Manziel does for his preparation. Interesting insight.
Basso Continuo (Figured Bass)-You do not need to learn how to read it fluently or anything, but it is the building block of the composers of that time. This is especially prevalent in the Baroque period. Study it, play it, listen for it. This helps to truly understand and write good cadences and tropes of that time.
Bach - Bach is king when it comes to tonal harmony and modulation.
Study his Harmonized Chorales and learn how he constructs his harmonic phrasing and cadences.
Counterpoint - I used this book by Kent Kennan. Learn the basics of good voice leading. This is a huge subject and requires study and practice, but it is crucial to replicating the music. This will help you develop the tools needed to construct the forms and sounds of that time.
This is a good starting place. Keep in mind people spend entire lifetimes learning this stuff. God speed.
Yeah... I really don't condone self-teaching for many reasons, but obviously you don't want to hear that right now, so this is just a bit of a disclaimer.
Personally, I think if you're going to study on your own, it's really worth it to get a good background in the "bookwork" elements of singing, like vocal anatomy and pedagogy, as well as language work.
On that end, I would recommend books like Doscher's The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, McKinney's The Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults, Miller's The Structure of Singing, and McCoy's Your Voice: An Inside View. These are really not easy reads, per se, but they should give you a really good foundation in understanding what's going on physically, and being aware of potential problems in vocal health and hygiene, which is arguably the biggest reason to study with a teacher. (In other words, a good understanding of the physical vocal structure can help prevent unknowingly contorting it in an unhealthy way).
I would also strongly recommend some study in language, diction, and text. Even for non-classical singers, it's worth it to know about how diction and articulation works. Diction for Singers, A Handbook of Diction for Singers, and International Phonetic Alphabet for Singers would be a good start. (And in general, a working understanding of IPA is crucial).
You can also work on text analysis - I'm not really a poetry/text specialist so I can't recommend any specific books, but I'm sure there are many out there.
Marchesi's Bel Canto: A Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method is another resource to look into, as it contains many exercises designed for technical practice - I liken it to the Hanon exercises commonly found in piano curricula. However, I will definitely warn that these exercises can be easily done incorrectly and can lead to the development of very bad habits, so please proceed with caution and be aware that there are many ways to execute the exercises, some of which are not healthy.
In addition, I would recommend a broad study in music theory, music history, and ear training. [Musictheory.net](http://www.musictheory.net] and Teoria.com are well-respected websites that offer lessons and exercises to learn beginner to intermediate level music theory concepts. Good-ear.com is another website I often recommend that focuses more on ear training. I would also recommend checking out the sidebar and FAQs over at /r/musictheory for more details.
In addition to these websites, some books worth mentioning include Berkowitz's A New Approach to Sight Singing, Music for Analysis, Caplin's Classical Form, Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music, Grout's A History of Western Music, and Schoenberg's Structural Functions of Harmony. While of course you don't need to have a doctorate in music theory to begin singing, I think it can only be helpful to have a really broad basis of understanding in various parts of music, as they directly affect your ability to read, understand, and interpret music.
Anyway, that should give you a pretty decent start. Please feel free to post if you have any additional questions.
seconding the miles bio. very entertaining.
ted gioia's history of jazz is very comprehensive, and probably "the standard history", but a bit boring (imho). i guess what i really want to read is a history of european jazz in the last 40 years, say, and that is perhaps half a chapter of that book (understandably...).
a better history, for me, was why jazz happened by marc myers. while gioia explains who learnt from whom, and how all the music inter-relates, myers focuses on the politics, sociology, technology, economics, etc., of the time(s), and how all that shaped the music (each chapter is a separate theme - for example, the availability of LPs was probably one chapter, another was the rise in popularity of rock music, if i remember correctly). i found that much more interesting - it really explained some of the broad changes while gioia felt a lot more like genealogy.
would love to hear other suggestions. those are the only "jazz only" books i've read. [though i think this has been asked before...]
That's the Joint is a good academic anthology: https://www.amazon.com/Thats-Joint-Hip-Hop-Studies-Reader/dp/0415873266
Can't Stop, Won't Stop is a very good popular history:
https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0312425791/
Who the hell told you counterpoint was easy to learn?
No, my friend, counterpoint is the pinnacle of composition. It's dreaded by every music major and even the theory/composition majors have a healthy fear of it.
I don't really know of any online source that can teach you what you need to know, either. Maybe some theory, but not counterpoint. You need to get a book and diligently work through the exercises. I recommend Study of Counterpoint: From Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus Ad Parnassum, Kennan's Counterpoint and Mann's The Study of Fugue for this. Check out both the Fux and the Kennan first and decide on one, then if you find that you want to go deeper go ahead and get the book on fugue study.
They're absolutely anything but arbitrary.
Although we can't really be said to have created them ourselves, each one is intricately constructed to allow such things we take for granted like tonality. You change the system just a tiny bit and none of it works. Consider the five features of tonality:
These 5 features mean that harmony and counterpoint (the movement of 2 voices against each other) constrain each other. And this means that compared with all the possible combinations of scale and harmony (a number beyond imagination), the amount of options that work ("work" meaning here that it displays the five features above), is only a small amount. And although you think it might be arbitrary then to write tonal music, it's not, as it corresponds very finely to how human's perceive sound (such as how humans group together sonic events that are close in pitch = conjunct melodic motion.)
So no, they're not arbitrary. I recommend this book for more: Geometry of Music
edit: Of course, this is only for tonality. However, it is much, much harder to write completely non-tonal music than one would think. And even non-tonality is often explained in its relationship to tonality.
Can't Stop Won't Stop: http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0312425791
Proto: The Sonics - psycho-sonic
Punk: the stranglers-no more heroes, the buzzcocks-another music in a different kitchen
Seconded:
The monks, television, the stooges, velvet underground, mc5
I'd also recommend delving into post punk though that's probably pretty inevitable when you're already interested in the transition from proto to punk
if you're looking to really get into the nitty gritty I'd recommend the book please kill me: the uncensored oral history of punk by Legs McNeil
Yes, Dust Brothers made the beats, but it's not like they had all these tracks and then the Beasties just rapped over it. The Beasties were there throughout the whole process and had input on tracks. And their verses on those tracks are great.
Read this, it's great and insightful:
http://www.amazon.com/Beastie-Boys-Pauls-Boutique-33/dp/0826417418
This book is a pretty good summary of the whole story of Black Metal, if you're interested.
Books Books Books.
Lords of Chaos -- Alright, there is a lot of crticism of this book in terms of balanced journalism but aside from all of that, this is a entertaining book for someone who hasn't heard about the Norwegian black metal scene / murders. This may get her into bands like Burzum, Emperor, and Darkthrone. Godspeed.
Precious Metal -- interviews about 25 decent extreme metal milestones. It makes you want to listen to each record whilereading the book.
Two other books I havent read but heard good reviews on is Swedish Death Metal and Black Metal Evolution
the reason why I am suggesting books is that some of these metal genres beyond what Black Dahlia Murder do is somewhat complex and interesting not just in terms of music but history, philosophy, and aesthetics. I feel that diving into weird scenes with books is fascinating. If your girlfriend is not the type to like reading, buy her more books and force her to read.
Sweden was the bastion of Death metal in the 90s.
There's a really great book about the scene.
Theres a book from their sound engineer Geoff Emerick that is really good. It's his auto-biography, but it's really cool if you're into the behind the scenes recording aspect. http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690
> Therefore, the creation of music by these groups was not centered on live performance and the studio was the safest space to create music. So this has resulted in rock music generally favoring "authentic" sounds that mimic live performance, while pop sounds "synthetic" and often uses electronic instruments and many effects.
> I would argue that Disco, House, Techno, Hip Hop, etc... all were created under similar conditions.
Except, they weren't created for the conditions of domesticity. Disco came out of Philly Soul which was a live music. Add a drum machine to a soul band and you have Disco. Disco led to Garage, which was the name for what Larry Levan played at his club, the Paradise Garage -- diverse stuff, and the man Levan as the DJ was the driving force behind it.
A bunch of guys from Chicago, notably Frankie Knuckles, took Garage back to the clubs in Chicago, the most popular being called The Warehouse. When people were looking for dance cuts from the Warehouse, they'd eventually just start asking for "House" music.
Techno came from the affluent Detroit suburbs as a consciously-futuristic style of music inspired by Kraftwerk, etc.
Hip-Hop came about from a unique mixture of Caribbean "Dub" mobile sound system culture and "breaking" to the raw drum beats on funk/soul/disco tracks -- have a DJ loop the breakbeats back to back, toss on a dub/reggae MC, and you have hiphop.
I'd recommend a book called Last Night A DJ Saved My Life for more detail on the origins and development of these styles into contemporary dance music.
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The only one of these styles created as a conscious studio effort designed for domestic listening was Techno. The other styles are all specifically styles of dance music which doesn't even interact with the public/domestic dichotomy.
In fact, I'd suggest these styles of music were created for the third space of the nightclub -- fundamentally distinct from the first space of domesticity and the second space of the workplace i.e. public sphere. Similar to the idea of a "safe space" today but considerably broader, though often serving the same function.
> Disco, in all of it's joy and frivolity, was favored by those who had to navigate oppressive systems that sidelined lgbtq people, ethnic and racial minorities, and women.
This is a point I can potentially agree with. When I listen to tracks like Dreaming A Dream by the Crown Heights Affair, especially in the context of a mix, I feel a palpable desparation alongside the joy and exhileration -- almost like "this is your only chance to dance, make it count". This seems to agree with the ethos of Northern Soul, a very working-class style from the UK that would pillage American soul and r'n'b records and dance all night to them.
On the other hand, it could just be the tension inherent in good dance music: build, and release. This was very popular with Larry Levan -- tracks like Put Your Body In It seem to dragggg onn... until the euphoric chorus hits. And Levan was known for doing tricks like playing two copies of the same record offset, so when the audience expects the chorus to hit, he can cut away to a verse again and keep the tension building.
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We could also view this as a technological development in one area: drugs. My pet theory is that the history of popular music (in the broad sense of not-art-music rather than top 40) can be traced to the development and popularity of various drugs.
During the late 70s, MDA became popular in the clubs -- a drug similar to MDMA, but stimmier and less euphoric. Just as dope fueled jazz, speed fueled skiffle, and LSD fueled psychedelia, we can view MDA (or coke, if you could afford it) as fueling disco. You can see dance music change further in the late 80s when MDMA enters Ibiza and the UK (rave culture?).
When disco failed, two music genres rose from it's ashes, House music in Chicago and Techno in Detroit. These were the fore-fathers of EDM. Source.
Don't have much time or nearly enough knowledge to answer but you must read this book - there's a massive chapter on Northern Soul and a great deal before and after covered in the meat of this book. Fascinating stuff and definitely helps shed a lot of light on why some of the peculiar parts of the genre are embedded in both DJ culture and also seem so strange to us now.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104
tl;dr Ball bearings tossed in a bowl will behave
exactlypretty much the same.The shape of the magnets may be particularly suited to trap the bearings in a flat plane, butnothing crazy is going on, it's just how numbers and geometry work.edit: after checking the source video, I see they're resting on a sheet of acrylic, but hopefully the rest of this comment still helps to simplify the topic and make sense of the often misleading conjecture.
_
Clap along!
"I didn't do anything fancy to make these balloons take this shape, I just tied them together at the base; they naturally form this shape because they can't overlap with each other." - I linked to that part because it captures the essence of the topic: nothing fancy or mysterious is happening with the ball bearings, geometry is simply how numbers as forces manifest in space.
People who like to mystify these phenomena are missing the forest for the trees. They are right to observe that certain structures are recurring in the universe and that it has everything to do with numbers in space, but I get the impression that many new age types like to anthropomorphize everything and make it about numerology or interpret it as the result of an intentional design... Nope, it's all just cold numbers. Two points make a line regardless of whether anyone is there to witness it or invent a word to describe it.
The structure of the universe simply emerges from the fact that competing forces in 3D space inherently balance out in a way that produces certain shapes.
So yes, in fact these ball bearings are reflecting the fundamental mechanism of the cosmos... but it's a rather straightforward explanation and we've already expanded on it's foundation into entire fields of study like quantum mechanics and chemistry.
Emergence is a key part of understanding everything. Complex forms and behavior emerge from the repetition of simple rules.
Reaction-Diffusion equations (aka Turing patterns) and diffusion-limited aggregation and cellular growth all share similar emergent properties based on randomness, probability, reaching equilibrium, etc.
Others in this thread suggest this is related to cymatics... This is what I mean by missing the forest for the trees. Much like geometry is about the patterns of numbers balanced in space, cymatics is about the patterns that emerge from the inherent harmonic resonance of a medium given its dimensions. They're only related in the sense that the inherent rules of numbers are the basis of all physics and reality.
If a square of metal is vibrated at such a frequency that its wave length divides evenly into the length of the square, then that frequency is said to be a resonant frequency of that material. It's the same at every other harmonic (the colored nodes). In physical terms, this means the nodes of a standing wave are the places where the plate is not moving as is nicely illustrated here. This is why Chladni patterns (LOUD AUDIO!) appear to "snap" into place; the particles only accumulate during standing waves so the frequency has to reach the next harmonic for that to occur.
The patterns are a result of the edge shape of the resonating material because the vibration emanates in ripples from edge to edge to edge until the energy is completely dissipated. The frequency determines the resonant points along the edge, and everything just keeps overlapping harmoniously. This is why liquid cymatics tends to appear more dynamic, essentially representing the reaction-diffusion equations from earlier-- because the medium enables you to see the flux of the harmony patterns that arises from the interfering reflections of the partially cycled waves between resonant points.
In other words, if you travel along the edge of that circle a quarter of the way towards the next resonant point, a wave is hitting that point a quarter of the way through it's cycle, and thus is reflected back out at a quarter offset. And there's one an 8th of the way with an 8th offset, and a 16th, etc, contiguously in all directions. The interaction of these offsets creates a harmony field that appears to move because the medium is constantly renegotiating it's shape between infinitely intersecting phases of waves.
__
Here's more cool emergent shit.
Also, /u/Novusod, /u/The_Prize, and /u/Darth_Venath, this comment was partially in response to your exchange. I don't mean to shit on anyone who chooses to emphasize the interconnectedness of everything, but I'm constantly bothered when people taint something simple with unnecessary mysticism.
For everyone who read this whole comment, you should seriously order yourself a copy of Quadrivium! It may indulge in a bit of mysticism, but it's more in the sense of it being an anthology of the history of this knowledge. Pretty much every book they publish is chock full of the beautiful simplicity of the big picture- would highly recommend.
Check out the Quadrivium. It contains a nice breakdown of the theoretical and practical aspects of music and marries these topics with geometry, cosmology, and numerology. Bonus: trippy illustrations.
Yeah---it actually gets even more complicated than that, too. At various points between '89 and '98, the band either existed or it didn't, or Jeff was deeply involved in another project (Synthetic Flying Machine, for instance, which after Jeff left became known as The Olivia Tremor Control), or Jeff would move to New York, or Seattle, or Denver and record a cassette or an EP or something under the Neutral Milk Hotel moniker, often with whoever was nearby.
I'd still say Athens is the place that it's formed, mostly because at this point if you heard that Neutral Milk Hotel was going on another tour, you'd expect Jeff Mangum, Scott Spillane, Julian Koster, and Jeremy Barnes at the very least. And that group of people got together in Athens for the recording of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.
If you want to learn a bit more about what happened, I highly recommend this book. It basically tells the story of how In The Aeroplane Over The Sea came to be.
I can’t urge people enough to read Dan LeRoy’s book. It is a definitive time capsule of the making of the best album of all time IMO m
I have a few recommendations for you:
http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1396194521&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=geoff+emerick.+here.+there+and+everywhere+my+life+recording+the+music+of+the+beatles
Learn how to write invertible counterpoint. It's an extremely difficult form. I used this book in school
IV. Voice-Leading Parsimony
("Parsimony" means "thriftiness, frugality; unwillingness to spend money.")
One interesting fact about P, L, and R: they leave 2 notes untouched, and the voice that does move only moves by a step. P and L only move one note by a half step, and R is a little more extravagant by moving a voice by a whole step. So these transformations are "parsimonious" (frugal) in the sense that they can get you new chords for very little effort (motion). It turns out that the triad is pretty cool for being able to do this: very few other chord types in the world can. (For example, you can't get from one French 6th chord or fully diminished 7th to another just by moving one voice a tiny amount.)
The next thing that Neo-Riemannian theory asks is "What happens if I chain a bunch of transformations together?" For example, what happens if I make a sequence by alternating P's and L's? Each step along the way changes only 1 half-step, but how many different notes does it use total? How long before I get back to my starting chord? (Will I go through all 12 major and all 12 minor triads? Or do I only use a fraction of the total?) Neo-Riemannian theory maps out the possibilities and describes them using a concept from modern algebra known as an algebraic "group." The transformations P, L, and R form a "group" of things that you can combine to make new things (e.g. imagine considering L-then-R to be a single transformation of its own). Group theory is used to explore the structure of the possibilities there.
V. Enharmonic Equivalence
(That is, the assumption that there are only 12 notes and that spelling doesn't matter, so G# = Ab.)
This doesn't sound very exciting, because we're pretty used to it by now. But it was a radical notion early in the Romantic period, and composers like Schubert got some cool effects out of exploiting it.
Earlier I asked "What happens if I make a sequence out of alternating P's and L's?" Well, it turns out that I go through 6 different chords, like this: CM - Cm - AbM - Abm - EM - Em (then back to CM). Every L takes me to a chord with a root a M3 lower, so that after 6 steps I've gone down by 3 major thirds and end up back where I started. This needs enharmonic equivalence to work, because without it I'd go C - Ab - Fb - Dbb... so that, in some weird conceptual world I'm actually not where I started. We're used to making that enharmonic shift, but it was relatively unfamiliar at the time. Partially that had to do with tuning, but also it had to do with the fundamental role of the diatonic scale at the time. Every interval had a meaning within a major or minor scale, and there were some combinations of intervals (like 3 M3's in a row) that couldn't be accomplished in any single scale. So shoving them all together like that, and forcing enharmonic equivalence on you, came very close to being a moment of atonality within tonal music!
This, again, is why the Neo-Riemannian approach of ignoring tonality and diatonic scales is useful: because there are pieces that do just that, in order to combine triads in weird ways (like the P-L sequence) that require enharmonic equivalence to make sense.
VI. The Tonnetz
In order to visualize the universe of possibilities that we've opened up with all this theorizing, Neo-Riemannian theory likes to create visual maps of the chord layouts that are possible. This kind of map is called a Tonnetz (German for "tone network"). Here's an example of a Tonnetz. Each letter represents a note (not a chord). Horizontal lines connect notes by perfect 5ths; diagonals that go up-right (or down-left) connect minor thirds; diagonals that go up-left (or down-right) connect major thirds.
The triangles that are formed in this picture represent triads: triangles pointing up are minor triads and triangles pointing down are major triads. So you can see the triangle framed by C, Eb, and G bolded in the picture, which of course is a C minor triad. Below it is the C,E,G of C major.
The nice thing about a Tonnetz like this is that it can also show our transformations. Consider the C major triad (just below the bolded triangle). Now look for the triangles that share a side with C major: they turn out to be exactly the 3 triangles that I can transform C major into via P, L, or R. So we can imagine those transformations as ways of flipping one triangle onto another inside the Tonnetz; we can make analyses of pieces by tracing out their chord progressions as if on a map.
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That's pretty much all I've got stamina for, tonight. I've left a bunch out, so I'd be happy to get corrections/additions (or questions!), but I hope this has been a plausible overview of the basics of Neo-Riemannian theory.
If this stuff piques your interest, here are two books that are very much worth taking a look at:
Audacious Euphony by Richard Cohn, who is one of the founders of the theory, and who explores its possibilities through many nice analyses in this book.
A Geometry of Music by Dmitri Tymoczko, who is critical of standard Neo-Riemannian theory in many ways. His book (which builds two articles he helped write for Science in, I think, 2006 and 2008) offers another perspective on some of the same issues, drawing on geometry rather than algebra for his underlying mathematics.
Can't Stop Won't Stop by David Chang. A GREAT look at hip hop's first years and cultural context. Highly recommended.
a lot of this is covered in the phenomenal Can't Stop, Won't Stop by Jeff Chang. i highly recommend it
If you haven't read this you really really should. It's eminently readable, entertaining, and comprehensive and I like it a lot.
Most of them, I imagine.
Lucky for you, there is a book called The Lexicon of Musical Invective that chronicles scathing reviews of works of composers from Beethoven onward. Although I don't remember any off the top of my head, I remember a few bringing up the death of classical music.
https://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Musical-Invective-Composers-Beethovens/dp/039332009X
I'd recommend the Norton History of Western Music; it's a fantastic textbook that covers just about everything you could ever need.
I started reading The Dirt which is the autobiography of Motley Crue. I don't listen to the band but it's a VERY interesting book to read.
EDIT: Oops thought it said "band origin" not "band name origin". But still check out the book.
Well, you can use broken chords/arpeggios. Use whatever variations you can think of. Maybe you can start by copying composers you like. Brahms wrote some really fantastic piano parts in his chamber music. Having a good sense of counterpoint might help too. An accompaniment part can be melodic while supporting other instruments. Try checking out Kent Kennan's book on counterpoint. It's a great resource and the main ideas can be used and developed so that you don't end up writing in a strict Baroque style (unless that's what you're going for).
There 's [a beautiful book out there by Dmitri Tymoczko] (https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-Practice/dp/0195336674) about this
Perhaps this?
You should check out Leonard Bernstein's "Young People's Concerts". They encompass more than just history, but they do cover a wide range of historical topics... not to mention, they're told by one of the 20th Century's most important composer/conductors. Someone took the liberty of putting them all up on YouTube; here are a few of the better history(ish) themed ones:
Also, I can't say enough good things about this book. It only covers from about 1880 on, though.
Alex Ross of the New Yorker wrote a pretty comprehensive and interesting book, The Rest is Noise, on the history of modern music. It's not violin-centric, but it's still a good read. It's written like a narrative, and has nuggets of good stories about composers and performers.
Louder Than Bombs is in my Top 25 albums of all time. Marr is kind of an afterthought (in some ways) as the guitar stuff sounds pretty straight forward, but the shit he's doing on guitar is incredibly complex.
I'm the jackass that thought DinoJr was coming to Pier 6. Oh, hey, you a reader? This is one of the best music books I've ever read.
I'd also recommend the book [Please Kill Me] (http://www.amazon.com/Please-Kill-Me-Uncensored-History/dp/0802142648) . It really put an insiders view on everything more than I'd ever heard.
If you're interested in that kind of stuff check out the book Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. Covers a crazy amount of history, from Jamaica soundsystem parties and dub plates, the rise of disco and house, Herc/Bambaataa/Flash, northern soul. From the first dude who set up two turntables so he could cue up a second record in advance up to modern day (the original leaves off around the era of Oakenfold, looks like this revised version covers more recent stuff).
save ur time and read this, it'll open ur mind to the history and you'll be able to hold a conversation with any DJ from the last 50 years
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1522111040&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=last+night+a+dj+saved+my+life
its called Lords of Chaos. Mayhem is the greatest metal band ever and de misteriis dom sathanas is fucking genius
Nathan Rabin wrote a book on getting into the phish and juggalo communities
I was originally going to post this as a reply to a comment, but it might be more appropriate as a top level post...
If y'all are interested in reading more about history of the lgbt / outsider side of dance music, check out this piece from Luis-Manuel Garcia, and hosted by RA. It's really well done.
Last Night A DJ Saved My Life is also pretty good if you're hungry for more. It's a weighty tome that covers DJing more generally from like... the 1920s or so up to the present.
House music stands for love. :-)
ed.: also if anyone has suggestions for more pieces about the roots of the music we love, I'd like to hear them. :)
Check out
Techno Rebels
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life' has always been one of my favorites. Less of an electronic music history and more of a history on DJing, but still makes for a very interesting read.
FACT has an article on this though.
a good book, though not necessarily occult in nature is The Quadrivium.
Not intentionally Masonic books per se, but I recently picked up the Trivium and Quadrivium.
Unfortunately, I've had a lot fall into my lap lately, so I haven't yet been able to dive into them, but I can say that they are beautiful books. Anyone familiar with the FC lecture should understand why they piqued my Masonic interest.
CONT:
The idea of heavenly spheres being an authentic feature of the world is evident in the universality of the idea of the seven planetary (Luna and Sol, the sun and moon, are included in this classical definition of a planet- it's not a "wrong" definition- just a different classification system) heavens throughout the world's cultures. They even tend to be associated with the same days of the week and interrelated in intriguing ways with the musical concept of tuning by fifths.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2012/06/tuned-cosmos/
Moreover, there are very interesting mathematical relations ordering the seven heavenly spheres (and yes, I do believe NASA is real, I am not a flat earther- I am saying that a "symbol" is an intrinsic aspect of the world and that the ancients and medievals understood this) in their classical associations. Luna and Saturn are the first and last of the seven heavenly spheres. Luna has a 29 day cycle. Saturn has a 29 year cycle in its revolution around the sun. The correspondence, day to year, is actually 99.5%. Yes, we've had a closer look at the moon, the sun, and Saturn. So? I don't think that we have discovered anything which would actually undermine the classical world-picture. It's like seeing a picture in 144k vs 4k. We see a great deal more in ultra-HD than we would in old-style SD. We notice lots of new things. But it's perfectly recognizable as what it is. For more on these mathematically ordered relations among the spheres, see this excellent book, especially the last section:
https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135
Unfortunately, most of the people talking about the beauty and symbolic craftsmanship in the Heavens are associated with the occult. But the Bible and tradition speak about these subjects. It's not magic. It's part of the world-design God made through the Logos. "The Heavens declare the Glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day to day they pour out speech, night to night they speak knowledge." (Ps. 19:1-2) For more on the reality undergirding classical and medieval cosmology, see Wolfgang Smith's excellent The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology:
He is a professional physicist and possesses immense philosophical and metaphysical skill. An excellent thinker if you want to rework your conceptual world.
https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Ancient-Cosmology-Contemporary-Tradition/dp/6602883925/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Wisdom+of+Ancient+cosmology&qid=1557417059&s=books&sr=1-1
You mean this gallon of milk grandma?
Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology (Wooden Books) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802778135/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_XzWQDb18BHEKB
amazon?
https://www.amazon.com/Neutral-Milk-Hotels-Aeroplane-Over/dp/082641690X/
Very good. In the event my Santa needs some inspiration: books are great. I don't have any denim related reading, and /u/KingOCarrotFlowers informed me of a cool music series, so these books are on the wishlist to pick and choose from: 1 2 3 4 5 6. There's always the Steam wishlist and the winter sale is coming up.
http://www.amazon.com/Neutral-Milk-Hotels-Aeroplane-Over/dp/082641690X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1413252669&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Neutral+Milk+Hotel+book
Check out this book. It's under $10 and really goes into each song in as best depth as you will get from a somewhat reputable source
Kind of a funny feeling to see facts I uncovered for my little 33 1/3 series book about "In The Aeroplane Over the Sea" in cartoon form.
Link to the book he mentions. I highly recommend it.
There's an interesting site that lists the samples by song...here. I'm not sure how complete it is, but it does a good job. Also, this book is an awesome read and talks a lot about the sampling issues with the album.
Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal
Swedish Death Metal
Yeah I fucking love Shea he's the man.
Also The Rap Yearbook by him is really great.
"'Rocky Top' is one of Tennessee’s eight official state songs, which suggests the state is both enthusiastic to a fault and has a lot of difficulty making up its goddamn mind."
From "You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me" by Nathan Rabin
http://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Know-Like-Misadventures/dp/1451626886
http://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Know-Like-Misadventures/dp/1451626886
As a huge Phish fan, I found this pretty interesting
It's not as easy like a direct answer, but you can look for books like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690
In this case, the sound engineer of many The Beatles recordings narrates all the process. For example, sometimes he explains how many hours took to record a song, how many people worked on it, what equipment they used... Maybe you can extract a lot of data.
Oh, and the book is amazing hehe.
Hope it helps and excuse my english.
Seconded on this one, probably the best resource on what you're looking for. Another one that I enjoyed was Geoff Emerick's Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles.
I think an important question you need to ask yourself (or at least clarify for us) is what kind of counterpoint would you like to write? Renaissance-style counterpoint or tonal counterpoint a la Bach? If the former, I would suggest something like Peter Schubert's Modal Counterpoint; if the latter, perhaps something like Kent Kennan's Counterpoint or Robert Gauldin's A Practical Guide to 18th Century Counterpoint
In either case, these books will present the basics of counterpoint, such as the consonances and proper voice leading, and then walk you through gradually more advanced techniques, elaborations, etc. to be able to write things in the style and give you a better understanding of what's going on in order to be able to analyze music.
Do you know this book? https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-Practice/dp/0195336674
It is intended for musicians and uses topology to descrive music theory.
Sure thing! This is going to be a bit of a doozy length wise because there's some background I should give first. You'll find some pictures in this link that will help you visualize some of the stuff I'm talking about here.
So let's start with the three basic transformations of Neo-Riemannian theory. We can use these transformations to turn some triads into others. A parallel transformation (P) will preserve a chord's root and fifth while swapping the quality of the third. So P applied to a C major triad will create a C minor triad and applied to an E minor triad will create an E major triad.
Then there's the leading tone transformation (L). When L is applied to a major chord, it moves the root down by half step to the leading tone (e.g. C major becomes E minor) and when applied to a minor chord, it moves the chordal fifth up a half step as if that chordal fifth was a leading tone (e.g. Bb minor becomes Gb major).
Finally, there's the relative transformation (R) which moves the chordal fifth of a major chord up by whole step (e.g. C major becomes A minor) or the root of a minor chord down by whole step (e.g. E minor becomes G major). This transformation relates relative major and minor keys.
Now notice, that the transformations all have something in common; no matter what triad we apply them to, we get a triad of opposing modality. If we use them on a major chord, we know a minor chord is the result and vice versa. Also notice that each transformation requires very minimal voice leading; the "biggest" transformation moves only one triad member by a whole step.
We can actually map all twelve chromatic pitches so that any equilateral triangle formed by immediately adjacent pitches is a triad. When we do this, we can arrange our map such that any two triangles that share an edge are related by one of our three transformations. Look at the first image here to see what I'm talking about. Technically, however, this pitch space is better thought of as a torus (Image 2) but I'm not trying to go too left field here.
Alternatively, we can just map all major and minor triads such that any two adjacent triads are related by one of our three transformations. Doing so gives us this hexagonal, chicken-wire fence shape that charts paths between chords via our transformations (Image 3).
Either/both of these representations help us visualize musical geometry, tonal relations, and voice leading in a very clear way. Before going on though, I should say that other maps are possible. For example, Allen Forte, in his Structure of Atonal Music, creates a neat map for trichordal set space. And tangentially, Klumpenhower and his networks operate like spiritual siblings to the same idea. But let's just worry about triadic and tonal spaces for now.
We can play around with these transformations and spaces a bit to see if we can't create a cycle. Cycles are any pattern of repeated transformations that (eventually) start and end with the same chord. Let's see what I mean. For this, you'll probably want to follow along on either the Neo-Riemannian pitch space or triad space maps.
Start with an E minor chord. Apply the P operation and get an E major chord. Apply the R transformation to get a C# minor chord. Apply P again, C# major. Apply R, Bb minor. Apply P, Bb major. Apply R, G minor. Apply P, G major. Apply, R, E minor.
So by just chaining P and R transformations back to back, we've managed to wind up back where we started. Hey, wait a minute! All of the pitches of these eight chords fit neatly into an octatonic scale!!! Because of this, we can call this P-R cycle an octatonic cycle because this chain of transformations produces an octatonic collection. You can see this more clearly in Images 4-6.
We can do the same thing to create the hexatonic collection, just by using a different set of operations. If we instead chain P and L operations together applied to any triad, we'll end up with a hexatonic cycle because again, we'll end on the same chord where we began. I'll leave it to you to map out all the changes for yourself but check out Images 7-9 to see what I mean.
I'm naturally skipping over a lot of juicy stuff in this discussion but I hope it at least sheds light on the basics of what I mean when I say crazy sh%t like "hexatonic cycles." There's this really nifty youtube video here that does a nice job of introducing plenty of the same concepts; please watch it! One of our Eternally Luminous Theory Monarchs has collected some resources for Neo-Riemannian theory that you can check out here and here.
There's also tons of lovely books and articles on the topic. Here are links to three; I would start with the Mason because it's designed to be a beginner's textbook in the field.
Cohn's Audacious Euphony
Tymoczko's A Geometry of Music
Mason's Essential Neo-Riemannian Theory for Today's Musician
Finally, there are some sweet videos on youtube that model chord progressions from real music on the tonnetz as the music plays. It shows just how audible this stuff is and it's also just cool to look at and listen to.
Adams: https://youtu.be/edyM_iH0jJc
Satie: https://youtu.be/nidHgLA2UB0
Chopin: https://youtu.be/c-HDDiWWWTU
I hope this helps and take care!
You're very welcome. I found the chart online via scaletrainer as I mentioned. I've also come across a reference to this printed book that sounds great in terms of a visual approach to chord theory using geometry.
One of the best papers I've read on this topic that gives a comprehensive review on the policy, history, and urbanization of racial ghettos is this one (its really really dense and goes in depth on a lot of material but its extremely comprehensive).
On general matters of race and civil rights, you can't go wrong with The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
If you want a more hip hop based approach, I recommend Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop . This one is more of a history on the hip hop generation in general but gives a great background on how hip hop rose out of racial conflict.
Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:
Amazon Smile Link: Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation
|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|
To help donate money to charity, please have a look at this thread.
This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.
For a book about hip hop culture, you might want to check out Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang.
Only one book is necessary to get you pointed in the right direction: Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang
There's a book about indie bands in the time period surrounding the Smells Like Teen Spirit music video debut that includes a lot of material on Dinosaur Jr. Read it.
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991
It's a book by Michael Azerrad that chronicles 13 different indie bands from the 1980's including the Surfers, Minutemen, Fugazi, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, etc. Hey, and it's only 12 bucks at Amazon!
If you enjoy this, you should check out Nicolas Slominsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time
Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell
Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age - Duncan Watts
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means - Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks - Mark Buchanan
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles - Robin Baker
Motley Crue: The Dirt - Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band - Neil Strauss
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell
The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster - Jon Krakauer
The Climb - Anatoli Boukreev
Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner - Dean Karnazes
This book.
Also, all of Bach.
I disagree with /u/vornska about Kostka and Schoenberg. They both have great perspectives and I think they are both good tools.
But I TOTALLY agree when it comes to counterpoint. Counterpoint is like the capstone of music theory (from my perspective). It really brings theory all together, at least for me. Still, I'd say that in order to study counterpoint it helps to have a background in basic theory first, which is why I characterize it as a capstone.
But it sounds like you have that basic theory knowledge (I think), so counterpoint might be awesome for you. If learning counterpoint is your endgame, I would go with neither Kostka nor Schoenberg. My counterpoint textbook was by Kent Kennan. Now, I only have experience with that one counterpoint book, so while I do recommend it, there could definitely be some better books on counterpoint out there. I just wanted to say that counterpoint is amazing to learn for any musician, no matter what books you read on it. (Well, unless the book is objectively bad.)
The book: https://www.amazon.com/Counterpoint-4th-Kent-Kennan/dp/013080746X
Thnx for the composers you mentioned. I'll check out your channel!
>And honestly, I think it's great that you've developed such a career with something you are good at, and very passionate about.
Actually I work as a software engineer. But music is my passion. And occasionally my 2nd profession.
>Same genre, same methods of writing, but once you hear those solemn strings and brass, we know it's Zimmer.
Yeah, I don't disagree with that. For example Allan Holdsworth played fusion. But you can tell it's him and not just another "fusion guy". "Film music" is just an umbrella term covering many genres. My point was that Baroque is somewhat limited (compared to other approaches) to what you can do stylistically and it has been done. But maybe the composers you mention will change my mind.
>I too am working on developing mine.
Good luck!
If you're interested in Sonata form (and form in general), I'd also recommend Elements of Sonata Form by Hepokoski and Darcy, and William Caplin's Classical Form.
All of these works are highly technical, though, and probably won't be of much interest unless you really want to get crunchy with the theory. It's also important to know that all of these authors differ on the specifics of their theory, so even though they're describing the same musical structures, they do so in different ways and have different conceptions of how and why things work the way they do.
http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Form-Functions-Instrumental-Beethoven/dp/019514399X
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Sonata-Theory-Deformations-Late-Eighteenth-Century/dp/0199773912/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=41kEvM8h4GL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL320_SR222%2C320_&amp;refRID=0TNPE9A46S86HNNVY1PS
those two are a good start
The A section ('refrain') can be cast in several different forms, from something as simple as a period to a small-part form in itself. Check out William Caplin's book on form in the classical era. There's a whole chapter on rondo form.
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https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Form-Functions-Instrumental-Beethoven/dp/019514399X
The part of theory that made composition most accessible to me was studying form. By that I mean the high-level organizational structure. For example, Sonata form, verse-chorus form, 12-bar blues form, etc. It's not just about those specific templates, but rather why they actually work. For example, what is it about verse-chorus form that makes it so universal for most of pop music. Once you feel comfortable analyzing form, it's easier to start composing with that sort of road-map ahead of you. For example, with a song, if you know you'll want to use verse-chorus form, it's a lot easier to proceed with writing music with those pieces in mind (the chorus should be catchy, the verse should properly showcase the lyrics, maybe I want a really unexpected bridge to build up tension before the final chorus, etc). Without having form in mind, writing music ends up being sort of free-form and doesn't have a sense of direction or "journey" (which of course can be intentional).
If you're ok with learning from a very classical point of view, I highly recommend "Classical Form" by William E Caplin. (There's also a workbook version). This book has nothing to do with teaching composition directly, but it really opened my eyes in terms of understanding how a piece of music is structured so that it "makes sense." Simple things we might take for granted but actually make a big difference in keeping music sound coherent, like how do you introduce a melody but highlight its importance? How do you develop a melodic idea so that the listener can follow along with your thought process? etc.
It does require a decent amount of theory background though. There is a classroom workbook version that goes over a some of it, but you'll need to feel comfortable at least with reading sheet music and analyzing chords. I would say at the very least, you want to be familiar with everything past a college Music Theory 1 course.
textbook:
https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Form-Functions-Instrumental-Beethoven/dp/019514399X
workbook version:
https://www.amazon.com/Analyzing-Classical-Form-Approach-Classroom/dp/0199987297
Note: All the books I recommend are expensive and I suggest you torrent them before buying them to make sure you like their style. Then if you decide to use them buy them of course. The vocabulary used in the book can be a real bitch too, but if you stick with it and google the words you don't know, it'll be worth it.
I've self studied classical and pop music, even composed a few rondos and sonatas in my time. The easiest book you can read is Harmony for Computer Musician http://www.amazon.ca/Harmony-Computer-Musicians-Michael-Hewitt/dp/1435456726
It explains everything in piano roll. It's one of the first book I read and the only thing I didn't like about it is that it left me with so many unanswered questions. It will teach you how to form and use all chords.
It takes probably about 20 hours to go through the book with no prior knowledge. I don't recommend this book unless the only time you want to invest is 20 hours. Knowing only 50% of theory can really restrict and fuck with your mind.
The other books I'll recommend are written in music notation, but the thing with music theory books is that you don't need to know music notation, just look at the examples you want, and slowly transcribe them into pianoroll. It takes me like 5 minutes to read an 8 bars music notation (slow as fuck) and it didnt prevent me form learning all my classical knowledge from theory textbooks with music notation.
So if you want a real and full unrestricted understanding of western music, from classical to pop to EDM, I'd recommend this book http://www.amazon.ca/Harmony-Voice-Leading-Edward-Aldwell/dp/0495189758/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1381010907&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=harmony+and+voice+leading
The difference with this books and the other one, is that it goes through all exceptions you will see in western music, so you see that almost anything is possible in music, and after you've finished the book you won't really have any questions per say regarding theory. Looking at a midi from a beatles song or a mozart's song won't really puzzle you.
The book probably takes about 200 hours to go through from start to end with no prior knowledge. I highly recommend it. Even if you start now and it takes you 10 years to finish it.
Now that you know everything about harmony, you might want to end your learning here, and that would be fine. This would allow you to create your own style.
But you also might to be able to analyze and imitate a composer or style that you like. You might still be confused about why a composer decided to use which harmony in the verse and which harmony in the chorus, and which harmony in the bridge, and which harmony before the chorus, etc. You might also be confused about how to create your melodic motives, how long should they be? how many times should they repeat? Why should my bridge be 12 bars or 8 bars? Why should my chorus be in a different key? Why did he use the same melodic motif (pattern) twice and then then the harmonic rhytmn accelerated before the chorus?
For this I recommend this book http://www.amazon.ca/Classical-Form-Functions-Instrumental-Beethoven/dp/019514399X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1381011568&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=classical+form+caplin
It also takes about 200 hours to go through (and that is if you have prior knowledge of harmony). After that composition of classical music won't have much secret to you. You'll know how to write a sonata and rondo, which most pop music is a simplified version of. I highly recommend this if you really want to be able to compose highly musical pieces, maybe something similar to video game music, or film score. I highly recommend reading at least the few chapters, where they talk about how to form 8 bars sections and ABA' sections (which most pop is based on).
Keep in mind that those 2 books are timeless and their information takes you from complete beginner to advanced. They are like bibles. So even if you buy them are read 1 chapter per month for 10 years, it will be invaluable to your musicianship. Like I'm sure you all know, music is an endless learning experience, so don't be intimiated with their size and complexity.
Now after reading that you want to get back to pop music but your brain is all about classical now (which is like western pop but on steroids). Don't worry, now that you know how to analyze classical, you will be able to understand and analyze most type of music. I would go with the classics and read those analysis of the beatles songs to come back full circle and write pop/EDM music with simple form. http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-notes_on.shtml
You can try reading the beatles analysis without prior knowledge, but a lot of the vocabulary you won't understand. You could also skip the Classical Form book and skip strait to the beatles analysis but then again, you might not fully understand what you're reading.
If anyone is interested I've made some video tutorial on the topic (it doesn't go in depth like the books) http://www.youtube.com/user/DaveCoutureMusic
And here's some examples of classical pieces I've composed (I dont play any instrument and learned everything from books by myself):
https://soundcloud.com/dave-couture/rondo-for-strings
https://soundcloud.com/dave-couture/creepy-piano-piece
Also anyone that wants to PM for tips or get me on facebook if you have questions, I'm always glad to help.
There are entire fields of study in this area. I've done a fair bit of work looking at harmonic theory, where the main focus point is in coming up with mathematical abstractions, i.e. structures, that capture various things we care about in harmonic theory.
For example, the set of integers is a mathematical structure, and the traditional thing we get taught is to put scale notes in correspondence with ordered integers. All this really does is capture our intuition that notes come in a particular order (low to high).
In practice, we don't just play notes in order of low to high, instead our melodies tend to jump around between notes, tending to prefer certain intervals. So a more elaborate example would be to use a graph structure that connects each note to other notes that are fundamentally related, by an octave, or a fifth, or a third, and so on.
Yet another example would be to connect chords to other chords that differ by only a single changed semi-tone. In this case, the act of moving a note to form a new chord could be described as a group operation. In fact, most mathematical approaches to music tend to rely on group theory, and other areas of abstract algebra.
Structures like these definitely can be used as tools for composition, or even can be used to build programmed composers. The core idea is to formalise our discovered or intuited knowledge of what makes good music sound good.
See:
You could try Dmitri Tymoczko's book: https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Music-Counterpoint-Extended-Practice/dp/0195336674/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1Y38JQAS2RAO8&keywords=tymoczko&qid=1574569471&sprefix=Tymoc%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-1
The History of Jazz. Link here...
https://www.amazon.com/History-Jazz-Ted-Gioia/dp/0195399706/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=S7ZN28FT8BN1TV51B7X9
These books are (left to right):
Notes And Tones: Musician to Musician Interviews (Arthur Taylor): http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Tones-Musician---Musician-Interviews/dp/030680526X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419879383&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=notes+and+tones
The Jazz Standards: A Guide To The Repertoire (Ted Gioia): http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Standards-Guide-Repertoire/dp/0199937397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419879452&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+jazz+standards
DownBeat - The Great Jazz Interviews (a 75th Anniversary Anthology) (Frank Alkyer): http://www.amazon.com/DownBeat-Great-Interviews-Anniversary-Anthology/dp/1423463846/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419879539&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+great+jazz+interviews
The History Of Jazz (Ted Gioia): http://www.amazon.com/History-Jazz-Ted-Gioia/dp/0195399706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419879629&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+history+of+jazz+ted+gioia
Another great one is Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation. Basically starts in Jamaica with Herc and ends in the late 90s/early 2000s. A bit lengthy but a great read.
I highly recommend this book; lots of historic Hip Hop related photos, interviews etc. Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop might be a good place to start http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0312425791
There is actually a decent amount of academic literature on hip-hop culture here in the States
Here's some other stuff for people interested:
Joe Straus' Introduction to Post Tonal Theory
Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music by Barry Schrader
Samuel Solomon's How to Write for Percussion
Rothenberg and Ulvaeus' Book of Music and Nature
Cope's Techniques of the Contemporary Composer is okay.
My favorite orchestration book is actually the Blatter
Composing Electronic Music by Curtis Roads is a very good new electronic book
The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
On Sonic Art by Trevor Wishart
Some of my favorites:
Messaien - The Techniques of my Musical Language
Straus - Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory
Ross - The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Chinen - Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century
Gottschalk - Experimental Music Since 1970
Perle - Serial Composition and Atonality
Xenakis - Formalized Music: Thought a d Mathematics in Music
Mann - The Study of Fugue
I have a substantial library of music-related literature and reading about/studying music is my favorite pastime.
Generally I queue up a lengthy session of music intended for passive-listening when I set out to read critical/analytical texts. Any sample from one of the ambient subgenres, or modern classical, or field recordings of study-friendly atmospheres will do.
There is much more to music lit than just texts describing how music sounds. I have a strong affinity for socio-cultural criticism, particularly as it relates to sound art. And there is certainly no shortage of these texts available which explore music and society in various ranges of depth.
But to directly address the scenario you've posed - words about music - I can cite a wonderful example which I am reading at present.
Ethan Hayden is a linguistics expert, composer and performer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in music at the University at Buffalo, US. I had the pleasure of attending one of his performances of his work, "…ce dangereux supplément…" in 2015. The work is a set of phonetic studies for voice, video, and electronics in which Hayden makes a wide range of vocal sounds, none of which are coherent expressions of any known language.
This made Hayden a fitting author to tackle Sigur Ros' ( ) album for an edition of the popular 33 1/3 book series. The parenthetical album is sung entirely in the nonsense Hopelandic language created by the members of Sigur Ros.
So what does one write about an album with no discernible theme or statement? And how would one begin to describe the nonsense sounds of the Hopelandic language? Over the course of 150 pages, Hayden expertly addresses these questions, and presents both a critical analysis of Hopelandic and a philosophical perspective on the recording itself. The book adds a fascinating critical dimension to the album and aims to help listeners approach the recording with a greater sense of understanding.
I hope that this (somewhat extreme) example suffices to justify the task of writing about music. I'll offer a few other exceptional examples of music lit for further exploration:
Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music edited by Christoph Cox
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
and for an example of musio-cultural analysis, read
The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds by John Higgs.
You make a nice point here, and I'd like to clarify it a bit.
Goth was more of an offshoot from Post-Punk. Joy Division and Killing Joke (along with Wire (my favorite band of all time), Pere Ubu, Bauhaus, Gang Of Four, Magazine, etc., etc., etc.) set the ground work for Goth, Industrial, American Independent Rock (thinking here of bands profiled in Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life), and many others, in wonderful and profound ways.
They — along with bands like Fear, Minor Threat, Mission of Burma, Minutemen, The Replacements, and other late 70s/early 80s DIY-era acts—had a massive impact on the industry and indie artists. It's really where the idea of the independent label and the indie artist really picked up and became perceived as viable.
OP and anyone else interested in this topic, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It's a must read if you'd like to learn everything you can about this topic. And extremely entertaining I might add. I've read it over a dozen times and have "noted" it to hell and back, haha.
I would look for something like a coffee table book, maybe if there's a "pictorial history of the bass guitar" or something like that. Or a biography of his favorite bass player or band. I remember I got a book years ago called Our Band Could Be Your Life about the punk/indie scene in the 80's that was a really great read; I was a little kid in the 80's and teenager in the 90's, so this book profiled all the bands that set the stage for the grunge & alternative music I listened to in the 90's. Something like that for his favorite genre of music would be a great gift.
You'd also likely find a couple negative reviews in this book.
dude, i'm not defending the telescopes. i've never even heard of them. this is a discussion about an artists supposed "responsibility" and how that relates to reactions to their work.
>People who actually knew anything about music didn't slam those guys, only idiots did.
disagree. citation needed. here's mine:
I went on a trip with my university's band and my backpack got stolen from the hotel during a game. All my textbooks and my laptop were gone. This book was the worst part of the theft. But it's a textbook so it's not cheap. Yay.
Burkholder/Grout/Palisca
You most definitely can get away with an earlier edition (6th is probably the earliest I'd go. Get the anthologies with it if you can.)
Online, they have some study outlines and practice quizzes too, which helps you get the basics down for a grad school exam. I was able to pass mine just reviewing this for 30-60 minutes a day for a few weeks.
Tip: Focus on concepts. Learn style. If you can associate styles with dates and composers with styles, you're going to get a rough idea when composers were alive and writing. It's far easier than memorizing composer's dates.
I can imagine that seeing that live on TV at age 10 would be a very formative experience. I started buying Stooges demos and reissues on vinyl and there are just so amazing songs that never had a proper recording.
Have you read Please Kill Me? Great Iggy and The Stooges stories in there.
I also highly recommend watching the Henry Rollins story about Iggy that's linked in the comments.
Read:
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104/ref=sr_1_1
I hardly thought that expecting people to know the biggest name in the biggest genre of dance music was being snobby, but hey maybe you're right.
If you (or anyone else) would like further education on the history of house, be sure to check out Pump up the Volume, and for history of the craft, recommended reading is Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and The Record Players.
edit: bad grammars
For Jamie XX and Four Tet at least, going into dance music history could help. Going deep and trying to find inspiration from all over, in that nerdy/connoisseur way, can help. In Colour always struck me as kind of love letter to dance music. Not just listening, but reading more and researching dance music in an academic way, might bring you a similar vibe.
Try this book, Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, if you're looking for some more detailed material. I haven't read it in a long time but I remember enjoying it.
How did I get into it? I started as a DJ. Next logical step I suppose.
Advice/tips?
Read up. Here are some of my favorites, and I do recommend buying them as you will probably refer to them often.
This would be my top pick: http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Music-Manual-Tools-Techniques/dp/0240521072
This is one on psychoacoustics, which I've found had some helpful knowledge: http://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Works-David-Byrne/dp/1938073533
And this is one on the history of electronic music, which I personally LOVED reading. Great information, and if you truly respect the scene as a whole, you should 100% read this: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419810859&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=last+night+a+dj+saved+my+life
As far as software goes, they are all kind of a personal thing. Some offer things that others don't. My recommendation is to try before you buy, especially considering production software is expensive.
In addition, there is also a large choice of hardware you can use for production. You should look into getting a keyboard and some good monitor speakers at a bare minimum. If you stick with it, I would suggest you buy yourself a drum machine/step sequencer. My personal recommendation is Native Instruments 'Maschine.'
EDIT: A word.
This book is really good for the early days of dance music:
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104
In terms of hip hop, this is a good one: https://www.amazon.com/Groove-Music-Art-Culture-Hip-Hop/dp/0195331125
Lots of movies to check out - Scratch is one of my favourites for a primer on hip hop djing and its roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp-5BBxeMWw
This is an excellent documentary about house music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogspER2e7h0
That should get you started.
Think about it like this: you're job is a writer covering dance music and you HAVE to produce articles on a weekly basis sometimes daily so what do you do? Write up on a "new" genre and hope the term would catch on. According to Frank Broughton's essential book "Last Night DJ Saved My Life" Techno was a term created to differentiated the new proto-disco sounds of Chicago called House music so to sell CDs some labels focused on the industrial history of Detroit and the fact that the local producers relied more on sampling p funk rather than disco.
I'm not totally shitting on the American public though, Europe is certainly ahead on its musical knowledge but they too can make mistakes for example in the U.K. Vocal House was called "Garage" because many believed House music started at the Paradise Garage in NYC and that genre begat Speed Garage, another subsect that branched from Drum N Bass with house music. We didn't even touch upon Italio Disco! Lol
It is SUPER interesting. And the publisher did a GORGEOUS job of printing it and absolutely the kind of thing this community would like - each of the six sections are printed in different colors of ink.
It is basically a very interesting and enjoyable summary of "The Quadrivium" which forms the basic foundation of knowledge that someone with a good education would have learned in antiquity - the renaissance.
I bought it because I kind of wanted to expand beyond my modern mindset as I continued work on my novel and I really have enjoyed it.
https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2/143-9757225-2246932?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0802778135&pd_rd_r=3efa8e5b-2de1-11e9-9c23-7dae46bfe87d&pd_rd_w=fERSt&pd_rd_wg=chOqa&pf_rd_p=6725dbd6-9917-451d-beba-16af7874e407&pf_rd_r=QDSH5R8ZXEP4MWC6RW87&psc=1&refRID=QDSH5R8ZXEP4MWC6RW87
If you find that TED talk fascinating then you should check out this book. Everything is laid out in a very simple way.
Yep.
Great book:
http://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135
You know what? I just realized I was thinking of this book, which is co-written by the same author. I found a promotional video for the one you posted and it does seem like a good resource for rhythms!
And by "popular", I really meant "popular and folk styles" (i.e. not art/classical idioms).
Hi, I hope your day is going well! Thanks for connecting. Related to these topics, I would recommend the book Quadrivium, an article about the 'Octave of Energy', a collection of experiences by Stan Grof, titled "When the Impossible Happens" , and for online material you can tune into /r/holofractal, which has aggregated lots of material relevant to the quantum nature of reality.
This is the 'dry' approach. A stylistic and heartfelt seed can be sprouted by planting your attention in the gardens of Sufi mystic poetry, or say, by reading the stories of the Vedas and Upanishads.
Stephen Mitchell has done amazing work translating the Tao te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita.
"Deluded by identification with the ego, a person
thinks, 'I am the doer.'"
Krishna; Chapter 3, verse 27
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802778135?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=0802778135&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;tag=worldli-20
-here's an interesting book that's relevant
You guys might like this book:
Quadrivium
Also anything by Cliff Pickover
Glad I helped convince you to give it another go. Hopefully with new ears. If you do find yourself gaining interest, especially the Anne Frank bit, this was a good, quick read that discusses it more.
http://www.amazon.com/Neutral-Milk-Hotels-Aeroplane-Over/dp/082641690X
This is a book about the creation of the album and it has a lot of information about the influence of Anne Frank's diary on Mangum and the songs on the record. I have it, and it is fantastic.
I completely agree, absolutely brilliant, and I encourage everyone here to go ahead and grab a copy of the 33 1/3 book that details the making of In the Airplane Over the Sea album. Anyone who is a fan of Mangum and his music, and really that of the Elephant 6 collective as a whole, really owes it to themselves to take an afternoon to read through it.
Here's a link for those who might be interested.
If she is into reading then maybe this?
No problem! It's a pretty cool series. I also recommend the Public Enemy , Beastie Boys , and Slayer editions. Good stuff.
The story behind Paul's Boutique is just as interesting as the album itself. Coming off the huge success and massive pressure to repeat Licensed to Ill led to some pretty shitty contract conflicts with Def Jam. Stratospheric 80s fame + a move to Los Angeles + drugs + the Dust Brothers became the ingredients for one of the richest, unrecreatable musical mindfucks that still holds up decades later.
It's a relatively quick read, but the 33 1/3 series book covering the album does an awesome job of telling the tale of the conditions and scenarios that led to its creation: http://www.amazon.com/The-Beastie-Boys-Pauls-Boutique/dp/0826417418
There is a really good book that talks about what happened between Varg and Euronymous called Lords of Chaos. They talk about the Meyhem story as well as Bard Faust from Emperor who killed a gay man. There are a good amount of interviews in the book. I definitely recommend it.
Also, there’s a book called Lords of Chaos. I’m not even what you’d call super into black metal and I still found it interesting as hell. I started out just looking into Wikipedia and stuff, too. You’d probably love this book.
Amazon link
A book! It's a great and exhaustively researched read with a ton of great pictures including a whole section of old flyers and fanzines. Check it out if you can.
Are you still with their mom?
Have you ever read the book "Swedish Death Metal" http://www.amazon.com/Swedish-Death-Metal-Daniel-Ekeroth/dp/097961631X ?
My personal bible
You might give this a read. It's more of coffee table material than anything else, but its insightful and fun to read through.
Lol well I'm sure he'd love to hear that. He's an author and what you said there sounds like something he'd say on Twitter. Plus he's Mexican and ya know... your username.
He wrote these two books:
Rap Year Book
Basketball (and Other Things)
The second of the two Obama put on his list of favorite things he read in 2017 (I also read it and it's great but I'm not quite as noteworthy as Obama)
Something worth mentioning is a book by Shea Serrano called The Rap Year Book. It takes the most important song from each year and talks about it a bunch. It mirrors this list a lot which is cool. Also good art.
You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes
&#x200B;
Check this one out. Haven't read it, but seems applicable
Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles
Have a read of,
https://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473871458&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=geoff+emerick
and
Have a read of,
https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Man-Recording-Rolling-Zeppelin/dp/0147516579/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473871458&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=geoff+emerick
When I was in school I read "A History of Western Music" which is a great text book
http://www.amazon.com/History-Western-Music-Eighth/dp/0393931250/ref=pd_sim_b_1
but im sure that your local library has a few books that would be good too.
update:
Tokyo Vice wasn't as yakuza-centered as I hoped it would be, but was still worth reading. Apparently it's being made into a movie. Most books by journalists lose something in the translation to celluloid (The Men Who Stare at Goats comes to mind), but hopefully there's enough of a narrative here so that it will work out OK.
Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. by Rob Delaney - Most comedians' debut books are just autobiographies with a prevailing theme. This one's an ex-alcoholic memoir. Some pretty funny stories, but if you're not a fan of his comedy I wouldn't expect this to convert you. If you like his comedy, you'll like this book.
I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids, by Jen Kirkman - similar to the above in that it's a comedian's first book with the prevailing theme that's explained in the title. But unlike Delaney's book, this confronts outdated taboos in a refreshing way.
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain - I'm not quite halfway through this and already wish it were ten times longer. Lots of great stories told from multiple points of view so as to expose biases, which makes the stories that much richer. I got this as an ebook but kinda wish I had a hard copy since it's the kind of book I imagine you can pick up at pretty much any point and become engrossed quickly. That is, if you're a fan of music.
A couple of great sources on the birth of punk are are these two:
(USA) Please Kill Me
(UK) England's Dreaming
I just finished reading Please Kill Me and it gave me a totally renewed respect for The Stooges. The Clash, Dead Kennedys, the Sex Pistols, etc., but Iggy & the Stooges are my new favorites.
You should read the book Please Kill Me.
[Jonathan Richman] (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Richman) (lead of the Modern Lovers) went on into a solo career. Fun fact: He is the guitar player in [There's Something About Mary] (http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0129387/)
Have you ever read [Please Kill Me] (http://www.amazon.com/Please-Kill-Me-Uncensored-History/dp/0802142648)?
Not so much as techno but required dj reading is Last Night a DJ Saved my Life:
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104/ref=pd_sbs_14_2/131-6196188-9715469?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0802146104&pd_rd_r=36be3542-a4e2-11e9-ba92-bb067f05f30f&pd_rd_w=xzGkE&pd_rd_wg=DfBiy&pf_rd_p=588939de-d3f8-42f1-a3d8-d556eae5797d&pf_rd_r=EM131RAQ39E6B2665JTR&psc=1&refRID=EM131RAQ39E6B2665JTR
&#x200B;
The Rough Guide to Techno music is a nice pocket read too:
https://www.amazon.com/Rough-Guide-Techno-Tim-Barr/dp/1858284341
Last Night A DJ Saved My Life
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104
&#x200B;
How To DJ Right
https://www.amazon.com/How-DJ-Right-Science-Playing/dp/0802139957/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541779724&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+dj+right
Last Night a Dj Saved My Life http://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1458188909&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=last+night+a+dj+saved+my+life
Bass Culture http://www.amazon.com/Bass-Culture-When-Reggae-King-ebook/dp/B002RI94PA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1458188872&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=bass+culture
Jamaica is an amazing country.
One of the most influential Berlin night clubs of the past 2 decades, which holds similar ideals today much like most of the well known clubs that were born around techno music in Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berghain
The birthplace of House music in Chicago "The Warehouse was patronized primarily by gay black and Latino men":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warehouse_(nightclub)
Recommended books you can read to learn about the history of music:
https://www.amazon.com/Klang-Familie-Felix-Denk/dp/3738604294
https://www.amazon.com/Techno-Rebels-Renegades-Electronic-Painted/dp/0814334385
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-DJ-Saved-Life/dp/0802146104/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Flash-Journey-Through-Culture/dp/1593764073/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1593764073&amp;pd_rd_r=S1TWN7HDAJJY3Z2QN4BG&amp;pd_rd_w=Zk210&amp;pd_rd_wg=Dqe5r&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=S1TWN7HDAJJY3Z2QN4BG
https://www.amazon.com/Electrochoc-Laurent-Garnier/dp/1906615918
A snippet from the above book by Laurent Garnier regarding Detroit, the birthplace of Techno music:
"Like Manchester in the early 1800s, during the golden age of the British Industrial Revolution, Detroit also became the great American city of industry. Several thousand blue-collar workers came from all over the US to work at the Ford automobile plant, while the black workers were confined to the foundries.
In 1959 Motor Town gave birth to Motown, the cultural pride of the black community. Then the battle for civil rights broke out in the US, and in July 1967 Detroit experienced three days of bloody rioting. The white community fled to the suburbs and the ghetto grew bigger and bigger. And finally, in the 1980s, there was an explosion in drug abuse, especially of crack, in these same ghettos.
Detroit techno music tells the story of all of this hardship. And within this music one can feel the life force that refuses to be put down. Words are of no importance. Everything is expressed within a few notes, repeated ad infinitum. Detroit techno is made of metal, glass and steel. When you close your eyes you can hear, far off in the distance, then closer and closer, the echo of crying. Like in jazz and blues, Detroit techno transfigures suffering. This authenticity of spirit has no price.
'In 1981, a record – "Sharevari" – was released that would play a pivotal role in the history of Detroit techno. "Sharevari" is the very first techno record from Detroit, but as yet nobody had used the term "techno," it simply didn't exist.
Mike Banks, alias Mad Mike, is the true soul of Detroit techno. He is an urban guerrilla, a man haunted by the suffering of his city. Mike has chosen music to fight against the problems of daily life and takes his inspiration from the Afro-American struggle of the 1960s
Through his record label Underground Resistance, Mike Banks spreads a guerrilla philosophy whose targets are the major record labels, the American segregationist system, and despair in the ghetto.
Mad Mike pursues his causes – to get young people away from crime and drugs, to rally against the economic disaster that is Detroit – and music.
UR is the continuation of a long struggle and we chose existing technologies to make this struggle move forward. Through UR, we wanted to express everything through sound; no need for pictures. We were against everything you have to accept in order to be famous.
We were just coming out of the 80s, a time when many black artists had had their noses done or their skin whitened. Fuck that! If a guy doesn't know what you look like, he won't care, as long as he likes your music. It's Detroit and the whole black experience in America that gave birth to Underground Resistance.
We both had experience of deals with majors in which we had been swindled. That is where the name Underground Resistance came from. Literally, to create a resistance to the "overground."
What's really remarkable is that I have to go out of my way to explain and showcase all of this to you, when this is something that is known amongst most fanatics of electronic music.
Much like Germany had its own sub-culture tied to political movement, so did Chicago and Detroit.
It's like I'm talking to a person saying "The sky is blue" while said person refuses to look up and constantly spews things like "No! Wrong! Wrong! It's green! Prove it!"
Why do you think Punk Rock is named after a whole sub-culture, just out of pure coincidence? It's laughable that I have to explain such a simple concept to someone so ignorant. It's like you talk about things that are 100% obvious and make yourself the clown of the room while genuinely refusing to acknowledge it, it's very cringeworthy.
I'm going to block you now because you're a prime example of the kind of people /r/edm is filled with and why no electronic music fanatic actually wants to remotely even deal with people of your kind, you've demonstrated that point very well. It's laughable how you refuse to educate yourself in any way and then you come on these boards with a hostile attitude dismissing things that have been known for multiple decades because of how dense and ignorant you are, from people who have a much better understanding of what they are saying. Electronic music is 40 years old now, do you genuinely think that nobody has touched on these subjects beforehand? Have a look at the list I linked to you and do yourself a favor and stop being hostile with your replies as long as you remain ignorant, you're really embarrassing yourself and most other EDM listeners with your example.
Last night a Dj saved my life
hey buddy, a couple years ago i took a whole bunch of LSA and then couldnt eat or sleep for 3 days ( lsa in the form of morning glory seeds which i did not properly clean :( ).
during the night into the second day, while i tried to sleep, i went into my minds eye, passing dots that turned to shapes that turned to fractals that turned to galaxies and then constellations. i just kept on going and going and going.
So I put on a Deep Sleep binaural beat, to try and help me sleep. It didn't. It woke me up. or my soul or whatever you'd like to call it (i'm not very good with human words lol)
Every thing came rushing back to me. All those "weird" experiences during a trip. all those "coincidences". everything just seemed to click. the universe started spiraling, or so it felt. it felt like a cosmic or spiritual baton was being passed to me, and then i passed it back to whoever, and then so on until the end of time lol (or whatever. again, bad with words lol).
then i went outside. there was snow on the porch, and i was feeling like a weirdo. so I made a triangle, and made a circle touching the points of the triangle. i then went into the triangle and meditated, and i had the most wild feeling. whether it was in my head or not, i don't know. but it felt like i was doing something i shouldnt be doing. the universe was getting mad or concerned or something lol. (ps i might have gotten inspired somehow by the book "quadrivium" https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135 )
I dont exactly remember the thoughts I was having. It was more of this feeling of pure light/energy/whatever the universe is made of.
Before I say more, what exactly is it that you need help with? or is it just a strange feeling and thought process so you're kinda freaking out?
OH yeah the predictions. On the second day, I was with my girlfriend, who was sober, and she started getting annoyed and freaked out because i was saying and doing weird things that had to do with what was going to happen next. whatever that might have been.
I thought I had this prediction that there is this world/universe wide conspiracy meant to keep people/souls in the dark about certain things that would benefit them. and only certain people can notice. or perhaps everyone can, but they're blind for some reason.
but yes to calm down just remember you're human and everything that is going on in your head is a human thing. heavy foods and meat can bring you back down to earth if you're done chilling up there lol
but i may or may not know what im talking about at all. this is all from experience
It looked like it could be this:
https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=54743277103&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwvo_qBRDQARIsAE-bsH8K8faPNXHYoPOEA4J9BZ0SaS3LEs6jvN5EMFNBWgwbqTfNT80AQ9IaAhm8EALw_wcB&amp;hvadid=274734433918&amp;hvdev=m&amp;hvlocphy=9005109&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvpos=1t1&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=18076968320986255187&amp;hvtargid=kwd-297341386281&amp;hydadcr=29919_10734888&amp;keywords=quadrivium+book&amp;qid=1564807527&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1
If not that, perhaps Trivium, which has a similar appearance.
I got my little brother these two books for Christmas.
Sciencia
Quadrivium
They're pretty awesome at outlining the basic concepts of these kinds of topics, and they are both small, well-bound and very detailed.
Thank you! And, Quadrivium is only $17 on Amazon! Quadrivium. Amazon Quadrivium
Q U A D R I V I U M
It's really hard to explain, but basically it's a book with a lot of really cool ideas and patterns found in numbers and nature. It talks about Sacred Geometry and alternative music theory. I like to have it because it's a good table piece and starts conversations. Found it on Amazon, it's called The Quadrivium :)
Aeroplane is obviously a great record, this book from the 33 1/3 series is one of the best from that series. I'll be online Friday morning!
http://www.amazon.com/Neutral-Milk-Hotels-Aeroplane-Over/dp/082641690X
Root For The Villain: Rap, Bull$hit, and a Celebration of Failure by J-Zone (who, if you're familiar with his music, is equally funny in his book)
Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor (it's a graphic novel focusing on the early days of hip hop done in the style of 90s Image comics)
How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC by Paul Edwards (this is full of interviews with some of the greatest of all time discussing every single aspect of rapping)
There's also The Wu-Tang Manual and The Tao of Wu, both by RZA and both very good for Wu-Tang fans.
If you think she may be interested in books on specific albums, the 33 1/3 series has quite a few on some of the genres greatest albums: Illmatic, Paul's Boutique, Donuts, People's Instinctive Travels And the Paths of Rhythm, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. She may enjoy Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic, which is a more scholarly approach to Illmatic, although admittedly not for everyone (if critical theory isn't her thing probably pass on this one).
Read this.
Lords of Chaos does the same and is a great read.
About that: I remember reading Lords Of Chaos and how there were people from the Black Metal scene who were in jail for murders and they were allowed to play music together in jail because they ended up in the same prison. It just blew my mind because I couldn't imagine anything like that happening in the States.
American Hardcore (http://www.americanhardcorebook.com/) is really interesting. Even if it's not your kind of music, I think hardcore punk is the most important musical movement since rock in the 50s. It freed the power chord from blues based music, it opened doors for everything from thrash metal, to shoe gaze, to noise rock, to indie, to grunge etc etc etc.
Also Lords of Chaos (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lords-Chaos-Bloody-Satanic-Underground/dp/0922915946) is thoroughly interesting musically and sociologically.
https://www.amazon.com/Swedish-Death-Metal-Daniel-Ekeroth/dp/097961631X
That book?
Jay Z - Decoded
The Rap Year Book
Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists
/u/sheaserrano is a bit of an asshole, but his The Rap Year Book has some phenomenal reviews, and I think it really does a good job of giving credence to the early history of the genre.
This might not be as detailed as you'd like but I super highly recommend it to anyone who's asking about hip hop history (and likes books): http://www.amazon.com/Rap-Year-Book-Important-Deconstructed/dp/1419718185/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1463667021&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=hip+hop+yearbook
The rap yearbook by Shea Serrano
I know you've gotten a bunch of suggestions, but I would recommend Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. The beatboxing/rapping duo was creative, Slick Rick is maybe rap's greatest storyteller, and Rick has two classic songs (Children's Story and La Di Da Di, which has been sampled by just about everybody.
Also I would check out Shea Serrano's Rap Yearbook. Nice little reference for some of rap's most influential songs.
There's a couple Hip Hop History books out there already for anyone interested
https://www.amazon.com/Hip-Hop-Raised-Me-Semtex/dp/0500518947/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539640654&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=hip+hop+raised+me+book&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=61SNyHlj2%2BL&amp;ref=plSrch
https://www.amazon.com/Rap-Year-Book-Important-Deconstructed/dp/1419718185/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539640799&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=rap+yearbook&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=51iWiCedZwL&amp;ref=plSrch
obligatory link
https://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Know-Like-Misadventures/dp/1451626886
I'm not gonna debate but here's the book.. good read and quite a few parallels with both scenes
I haven't read it yet, but I'm looking forward to this book, in which the author spends an extended amount of time with Juggalos and Phrends (Phish fans).
http://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Know-Like-Misadventures/dp/1451626886
Ken Caillat's Book
Glyn Johns' Book
Slyvia Massey's book
Michael Beinhorn's book
Ken Scott's Book
Geoff Emerick's Book
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592402690/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_NKXrxb4EHPW44
Geoffrey Emerick, who would go on to win the Grammy award for engineering for Abbey Road wrote an enjoyable book called,
Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles
Good read if you're a Beatles fan.
Dood - love Megadeth
also Judas Priest, Pantera, Dokken, Dio, Maiden, Motorhead - Motley Crue
Before you say anything about Motley Crue, have you read their biography? The Dirt - holy shit, I knew bands did 'rock and roll lifestyle', but that was an eye-opener
*EDIT - about Megadeth vs. Metallica - Metallica, as a whole, has produced music that is much more intricate and has more depth - Megadeth just fukkin rawks - and that's what many give a shit about - I don't disagree
Motley Crue: The Dirt
If you're a fan of the band I highly recommend it. It can be difficult at times to wade through Tommy's dude-talk and Nikki's incessant whining but overall it's a very interesting read.
Whiskey bottle on the cover, but this Motley Crue tour memoir goes pretty heavy on Nikki Sixx’s heroin addiction.
The Dirt.
I read the book "The Dirt" which is about Mötley Crüe. The description of Axl Rose was not so kind.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Dirt-Confessions-Worlds-Notorious/dp/0060989157
John McEnroe - You Cannot Be Serious. I picked this up in a duty free before a flight. I didn't know anything bout tennis when I grabbed it but it still stands as one of my favourite autobiographies.
Also:
Motley Crue - The Dirt. If your into the 80's rock scene.
I really enjoyed the Keith Moon biography - not the most talented writer, but the story is so incredible that you can't help getting sucked in.
I can also recommend the Motley Crue autobiography. Absolutely unbelievable what they got up to, and it's nice reading the same stories from four different perspectives.
Lastly, I haven't read it but Slash's biography is supposed to be worth a look.
There is no one size fits all bible of music theory. To be extremely well rounded you need to look at a few different books:
For just starting out in the sense that you don't know how to build chords or intervals, Carl Fischer's grimoire books are excellent.
For classical harmony this is the book I used in my classes:
http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Introduction-Twentieth-Century/dp/0073401358/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465247193&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=tonal+harmony
For jazz harmony:
http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465247235&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=jazz+theory
For deeper classical/counterpoint:
http://www.amazon.com/Counterpoint-4th-Kent-Kennan/dp/013080746X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465247274&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=counterpoint
Also, try to get lessons with a university teacher because none of these books are comprehensive or perfect.
I remember in one of my beginning classes we went over the omnibus, and the deepest the book went was "this is an omnibus".
It wouldn't be until college where a professor ACTUALLY explained to me what the omnibus is and how to make one.
Also, the mark levine book can probably be condensed into 20 pages of meaningful material. He uses a lot of filler/examples...
I'm a composer by trade (now working toward a PhD in Composition) and I don't know one book that introduces composing well, or at all. I got started in high school, just writing little pieces for myself and friends to play. I just kept at it all these years, through college, grad school and now.
What I found helpful along the way was to learn and be the pro at music theory. After all, music theory is a bunch of rules formulated based on what other people people from long long before have written. One thing to work hard on is counterpoint. It's a step by step on how to write good lines, good secondary lines and basically gives you a very rough idea of what works and what doesn't work. Of course, this is based in the tonal tradition. This is my recommended book. It's written in the socratic style, so just beware. Otherwise, this is what people use in school today.
Again, orchestration is important if you want to write for acoustic instruments. See my comment below~
My advice would be to JUST START WRITING! If its bad, you will know it is and why it's bad. Sometimes, you need a little help. PM me if you want me to look at some things you've done.
bad advice so far imo. You shouldn't try to learn something by randomly messing about until you eventual 'learn' it. Learn theory by reading books written on theory. Start with the basic conceptual stuff like what melody and harmony is and why it works the way it does. Learn your ABCs: major and minor scales, modes. How to build chords, Scale degrees and intervals. the cycle of fifths. The consonant < > Dissonant spectrum and how it relates to melody and harmony e.t.c.
THEN you can 'mess about', but in a structured way and explore the stuff you're learning as you learn it. Simply knowing scales is the equivalent of being able to say "hello" "yes" "no" "my name is" e.t.c. You've really got to get into the underlying relationships of intervals and harmony to begin getting a grasp of how to apply meaning (emotion/rhetoric/feeling) to your music.
the books by Michael Hewitt are a decent start as they apply this stuff in a computer music context. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Theory-Computer-Musicians-Michael-Hewitt/dp/1598635034
later down the line you can get into more complicated stuff like diatonic harmony, classical form, post tonal theory e.t.c.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Classical-Form-Functions-Instrumental-Beethoven/dp/019514399X
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195336674/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=masschairevio-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399369&amp;creativeASIN=0195336674
It all depends on how far you want to go with it and ultimately how much control and scope you want to have. A lot of EDM producers are relatively theoretically mute. But it doesn't stop them from making decent music within the practice/genre they're versed in (but that's a different conversation a little outside the scope of your question ;) )
Also, study your favorite tracks, use what knowledge you have to deconstruct music you like, copy the chord progressions, arrangements, mimic timbre, vibe and theme e.t.c. Get familiar with the nuts and bolts of what makes the music you like sound so good to you, and then apply that general orientation in a creative manner to your own workflow.
Hope this helped!
Thanks for the reference. Although his ideas are interesting, from the amazon page it seems he is just presenting a theory he came up with. There doesn't seem to be any mention of experiments or testing his ideas.
I think theory as a whole has reached a very comfortable spot. Sure, we might still not have a tuning with perfect ratios of its harmonics on the octave, perfect fifth, mayor third, etc etc. But humanity knew how to adapt to what was already available and theory has gone beyond music to blend itself with non-functional sounds very useful for movies, video games or theater.
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I think the guinea pigs are the people themselves: we collectively decide what we like and the people who write for the big names take note.
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With that said there's a lot of experimentation with microtonality in both music (king gizzard & jacob collier are the first to come to my mind) and we have books that look to implement math into theory and expand whats possible:
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a geometry of music: a study in counterpoint: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195336674/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
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The geometry of rhythm
https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Musical-Rhythm-Godfried-Toussaint/dp/1466512024/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=geometry+of+rhythm&qid=1563542715&s=books&sr=1-1
Ted Gioia has a bunch of great books on Jazz. His History of Jazz is a must read.
Jan Swaffords Language of the Spirit is an excellent overview of classical music.
I tend to avoid mindless rock god memoirs. I'd highly recommend these...
I used Ted Gioia's book when I took History of Jazz in college. It was easy to read, and very informative.
I'd also check out the Ken Burns Jazz documentary on Netflix. It's really long, but very thorough and interesting.
Yeah
I want to recommend Jeff Chang's "Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation". It's about the origin of hip hop https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Wont-History-Generation/dp/0312425791
Ca mi-am amintit, recomand asta, are ditamai capitolul despre PE. Bine, continutul e la fel ca documentarul bun despre rap de pe Netflix dar care nu mai stiu cum se cheama...
Plugging Can't Stop Won't Stop as it's one of the best chronicles of the origins of the movement/music/culture. DJ Kool Herc was definitely the father of it all.
The book even traces the exact day he took to the turntables at a dance hall for his sisters birthday. Hip Hop history is truly amazing.
I'll check it out, thanks. I'm reading this right now and really enjoying it.
I know this is a somewhat outside of what you asked for, but "The Rest is Noise" by Alex Ross is great. It's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", but for music. It certainly made me appreciate music much more.
It's about a period just before NOFX came along but this is a brilliant book, Our Band Could Be Your Life about bands like Minutemen, Mudhoney, Butthole Surfers, The Replacements. Might be worth thinking of if you've a bit of money left at the end.
I was going to suggest a framed gig poster too but there's not too much choice of NOFX ones. Have a look at Richard Goodall Gallery based in Manchester and see if they've any other bands he likes
No, they definitely formed in St. Paul ( https://www.allmusic.com/artist/h%C3%BCsker-d%C3%BC-mn0000639053 )
If you want some insight on Husker Du (and the Replacements), check out, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981 - 1991. It's a great read.
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Band-Could-Your-Life/dp/0316787531
A while ago someone compiled the most famous negative reviews of classical composers into a book called The Lexicon of Musical Invective:
https://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Musical-Invective-Composers-Beethovens/dp/039332009X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1480200364&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=musical+invective
http://www.amazon.ca/Motley-Crue-Confessions-Worlds-Notorious/dp/0060989157
Why are people so shocked by this, this is nothing. Has anyone ever heard, read or watched any of the bazillion stories of rock n rollers doing crazy shit.
I'll leave this here and recommend it to everyone. Then you'll realize that Biebs is a huge bitch compared to almost every other musician.
http://www.amazon.com/Motley-Crue-Confessions-Worlds-Notorious/dp/0060989157
I haven't read it so I can't really speak to it's contents but A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice seems like it would fit the mathematics + music theory bit nicely.
If anyone wants to learn more about hip hop being created in the South Bronx in the 70s and 80s, check out this fantastic book-
Amazon Link
I like ICP, too, but I don't really care for their music outside this song, which I think is amazing. I will have to give that record a listen. What I really like about them is how their fans tend to come from the more downtrodden parts of society, and how open they are to letting outsiders in. All you have to do to be a juggalo, I think, is call yourself a juggalo. Have you read this book? Very highly recommended.
Record a full album. A lot of press won't cover EP's. I look at this way, at this level you don't know if you'll ever record again due to many factors. Why not just go for broke?
Buy this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690
It'll really expand your mind on what you can do when recording and how there are no rules by the guy who helped break all the rules when recording.
> John was certainly every bit as talented as Paul
I disagree with this statement. Lennon may have been a better lyricist (I think so, anyway), but McCartney's ear for arranging horns and strings was (and still is) truly otherworldly.
EDIT: It helped, obviously, that Paul had George Martin as a mentor. This is a great book on the topic, if anyone's interested.