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Showing posts from November, 2020

SAMPLING: CROSS AGE AND GENRE

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Sampling has always been used in music, but it’s only in recent years when people began to name this practice as sampling. The earliest sample I can think of is Saint Saens’s famous suite “Carnival of the Animals IV. Tortoises,” which used Offenbach’s “Galop infernal” (also more widely known as the Can-can) melody for the basis of the entire song. It’s been around for a long time in classical music, seen in Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini or Casella’s Variations sur une Chaconne. Music has always been as much of a collaboration between other artists as it has been with the instruments and sounds that are used. Sampling is when a portion of a sound recording is reused in another recording. Elements like rhythm, melody, speech can be used and layered, equalized, sped up/slowed down, repitched, looped or manipulated. Sampling is especially popular in the hip hop industry but has influenced almost all genres of music, most notably electronic music, pop, and house music. Some

POV of For Free? (Interlude)

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In preparation for the POV power paragraph tomorrow, I thought I would take a second and analyze POV in a song. Yes, I guess this basically turned into a music blog where I desperately try to relate something in music to class. It looks like there’ll be a lot of stretches this year yikes. Anyways, the song in question I’m looking at is “For Free? (Interlude)” from To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar. Before you start reading this, go listen to “For Free? (Interlude) and appreciate that C minor scale from that saxophone, it’s gorgeous and bright. And the sustained C minor chord where the drums begin to move the beat along, wow! I may have chosen this song because I think everyone should appreciate the production (I’m looking at you Nate, I will make you relisten to Kendrick)      “For Free? (Interlude)” is primarily in 1st Person Subjective, though each of the characters utilizes many instances of “you” and “me”, seemingly talking both to the audience and the other character. The aud

Deep sea oil rig BOW BOW CLICK NOW FOR A GREAT TIME (Suffering Builds Character...But It Can't Feed Your Family)

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              Yesterday, we lost a beloved up and coming Chicago drill rapper, King Von, in a fatal shooting. Sadly, he’s not the only one fallen to petty crime. Nine months back, we lost Pop Smoke, a breakout Brooklyn drill star. Though drill has been gradually gaining traction in the mainstream through the unfortunate passings of these young stars, it’s always been a predominant part of the hip hop scene, splitting into regional subgenres such as Chicago drill, Brooklyn drill, and even UK drill. Three slices of Drill pie (Chief Keef and Lil Durk, Headie One and SL, Pop Smoke and Fivio Foreign) Drill is a subgenre of trap revolving predominantly around dark gritty beats and violent and nihilistic lyrics. It first grew popularity around the 2010s, when the most popular artists out of Chicago were poetic and reflective stars like Common, Lupe Fiasco, and Kanye West (AT THE TIME!). They didn’t reflect the city’s violent reality, full of criminal and gang activity. But drill did, and the