Content tagged with “music”

“Taylor Swift made a pretty decent spy-ish movie with her video for I Can See You back in 2023. In it, Joey King and Taylor Lautner break into some compound to free a captive Swift while Presley Cash handles electronics back in the van. Supposedly the story is a metaphor for how Swift ‘rescued’ her…”

“ Just before starting in on the James Bond theme, the Danish Symphony Orchestra had their conductor ‘assassinated’ live on stage . That visual, followed immediately by the opening bars of the Bond theme is just legendary. ”

“ Supposedly, Radiohead’s ‘Man of War’ was submitted to be a James Bond theme, but since it wasn’t written just for the movie, it wouldn’t have been eligible to win an Oscar, so it was declined. I get it though — it has the right vibe. ”

“The Spy Lounge is a YouTube channel that publishes AI generated ‘spy music.’ It’s exactly what the title promises: jazzy tunes with a classic espionage vibe. I can’t really explain it too well, so just listen to it. It’s good background music while you’re working. Plus, I love what they do with the…”

“I’m struggling with how much a really like AI-generated music. A lot of time, I just have music on in the background while I work., Instrumentals are great for this. Lately, I’ve been listening to ‘Spy Jazz’ which is some moody stuff that sounds like it’s from the 60s. It’s… mindless. It just plays…”

“ A humorous rap video about how a cartoon is animated turns out to be quite informative. ”

“ This is a general term to refer to a category of music. ”

“ This is a musical term which means playing the notes that comprise a chord, individually and in order. As a noun, it’s ‘arpeggio.’ ”

“This is a colloquial name for the shiny, baggy pants made popular by MC Hammer in the early 1990s, typified by his U Can’t Touch This music video. I searched for ‘hammer pants’ on Amazon , and several results were labeled ‘Harem Pants.’ The chief characteristic was both bagginess, and a crotch that…”

“This is written notation used to explain how a poem (or other text) should be read out loud. It’s kind of like a pronunciation guide, but for a block of text – how to ‘pronounce’ an entire paragraph, for example. Clearly, this only matters when the text is meant to sound a particular way. A…”

“ A professional drummer hears a song for the very first time – with the drums removed – and invents up a drum part on the spot. ”

“In narrative story-telling, diegesis refers to things that are experienced by the characters within the story. Non-diegesis refers to things that are experienced by the audience, not the characters. Example, if watching a movie: Background music coming from a band playing in a bar as part of the…”

“This is a legendary a capella singing group at Yale University. The group is comprised of 14 seniors, both men and women. It’s claimed to be the oldest a capella group in the country. They refer to themselves as ‘The Yale Whiffenpoofs of XXXX’ (insert year of graduation). In addition to George H.W….”

“This is a colloquial expression referring to a musical track not normally heard on the radio. The track might not have been released as a single, so it’s not in normal rotation, and the deejay (assuming there was one) ‘cut deep’ through the album track list to select it. I’m wondering how the…”

“ Humans have a natural instinct for music, and a musician demonstrates this by making music using an unwitting audience. ”

“ In 1972, an Italian singer recorded a song which lyrics that were meant to sound like English, but were in fact nonsense. He sought to prove that Italians would love anything that sounded like English. ”

“ This is an accordion-like musical instrument, meant to be played between the hands. It has buttons on either side, but, unlike an accordion, it does not have a keyboard. ”

“The Grammys have confusing award names. They’re named in a way that might have made sense 50 years ago, but doesn’t make sense today. There are four ‘general’ Grammy Awards, meaning those open to any genre of music. One of them is ‘Best New Artist,’ which is self-explanatory and appropriately…”

“This is a weird one, because it’s an invented form of the name of John Cage , who was an experimental composer in the 20th century. Cage was known for using strange and unique musical instruments and styles. He might be most known for 4′33″ , which is a 1952 musical ‘composition’ consisting of four…”

“It’s an actual genre. The ‘outlaw’ part comes from the fact that it was pioneered by artists that worked outside of Nashville, mainly in the 70s. From an article at Holler : The term was potentially coined in an article by music critic Dave Hickey, to describe artists who opposed the commercial and…”

“This is sort of a biography, but more of a coffee table book. It’s a collection of photos of the life of Marshall Mathers (Eminem), interspersed with recollections of his life. It’s actually quite good. He starts by talking about the death of Proof in 2006, who is a rapper I had never heard of. His…”

“ Twenty years ago, the way the sound systems at outdoor music concepts was completely changed. This changed how the music sounds, but also how the stages were designed. ”

“ The word comes from ‘lute,’ which was an early guitar. ”

“This is a style of music that originated in Brazil in the 1950s. The phrase literally means ‘new talent’ or ‘new way’ in Brazilian Portuguese. It’s a variation of samba, which is a musical style which originated in Brazil. Musical styles are hard to explain, but – to me – this feels like a laid…”

“It’s simple French – ‘chanter’ is ‘to sing’ and ‘-euse’ is the feminine suffix. In many definitions its specifically stated to mean a ‘concert’ singer or a ‘nightclub’ singer. I think it generally refers to a female singer that is not part of a group or a background singer – so, a singer who is the…”

“ A look into why a pop song probably wasn’t plagiarized which becomes a lesson on music history and the creative process itself. ”

“I liked this book because it’s obvious Dave Grohl wrote it. It clearly wasn’t ghost-written, because the writing can be a little cliched and breathless sometimes, and there’s an authenticity to that. This is not a pure autobiography. It starts off that way, but then drifts into a series of, well,…”

“Richard Wagner was a German composer in the 1800s. (In English, his last name is pronounced ‘vog-ner.’) He’s most well-known for his epic opera cycle The Ring and specifically one of its musical numbers, The Ride of the Valkyries This was the music played through the helicopter speakers in the…”

“ This is a brass instrument that looks a lot like a French horn (to me, someone with no musical instrument experience). ”

“ The backstory of how one of the most recognizable people in the world went out for an anonymous beer. ”

“ It turns out that ‘macaroni’ was a state of mind. ”

“ Exactly who gets credit for writing a song is a complicated process and fraught with mild fraud and, occasionally, quasi-extortion. ”

“ This is the first image ever posted to the web. It has been at this same web address since 1992. The image depicts a comedy musical group formed at CERN, where the web was invented. ”

“ Streaming pays the artist by the song, not by the minute. So two shorter songs pay more than one longer song. ”

“ A ‘full orchestral’ music box from the late 1800s that plays all instruments for a piece of music from an interchangeable cylinder. ”

“ An oddly haunting performance art piece consisting of people acting on a spinning platform, set to Frank Sinatra. ”

“For the last few years, my brother has gotten in the habit of buying me a biography of an 80s music star for Christmas. First it was Motley Crue, then Billy Idol, then Phil Collins, and now Elton John. Good book. Easy to read. Flows nicely. Lots of neat recollections of famous people you know….”

“ A cellist plays a single part of the Inspector Gadget theme, records herself, then plays another part against the recording of the first part, until she has all eight parts played by herself. ”

“ A time-lapse of a Rammstein stadium show being set up over the course of a week. The logistics of this are just incredible. ”

“ A screencast history of the Wikipedia page for the heavy metal umlaut which traces how the page was developed and changed over time. ”

“ I didn’t even know it was possible for trombones to do this. ”

“ The opening number of the 2013 Tony awards with Neil Patrick Harris as host which will probably remain unequaled for sheer spectacle and tongue-in-cheek self-references. ”

“ Wonderful documentary about the history and heyday of Studio 54, a disco in late 70s NYC that took the genre to new heights, before it all came crashing down. Told by Ian Schaeger, one of the two men behind the club. ”

“ Some guy takes the normally-upbeat theme from Friends and turns it into a moody power-ballad. ”

“ The now-legendary acoustic performance at the 1989 MTV Music Awards which gave birth to MTV Unplugged. After the over-the-top glam rock of the 80s, this was nothing my generation had seen before. As a bonus, you get the see the strength of Sambora’s vocals, which are remarkable. ”

“ Detailed dissection of the recent court case against Katy Perry, with lots of counter-examples and explanations of why this has broader implications to the world of art, and why the expert witness in the case might have done damage to musicians everywhere. ”

“ Two kids out of college get a musical all the way to Broadway where it flops spectacularly. This is how it happened, and what happens after you flame out. ”

“ A boogie woogie pianist sits down at a public piano in a train station and performs. The dexterity and complexity of this style of music is amazing. (I’ve never understood the muted response of the crowd in this video. I would be going nuts…) ”

“ An amazing performance of a classic George Harrison song on ukulele. The finger speed at the climax has to be seen to be believed. ”

“My brother gave this to me as a gift. I had forgotten how much exposure I had to Phil Collins as a teenager. Looking back, he was seemingly everywhere. Turns out, I missed most of his career in the first incantation of Genesis (with Peter Gabriel). I only stumbled on the scene when Genesis was a…”

“I got this book as a gift. I would have never purchased it for myself, yet I loved I it, which makes it the best kind of gift you can get. This is the story of Motley Crue, a band I grew up with in the 80s. It’s raw and uncensored – that sounds like a cliche, but it’s apt when describing this book….”