Month: March 2023

So I thought this would be a good blog post to set for what is coming next. I currently have around 7 weeks until my hand-in is due. I’ve spent a lot of time on this first project and also working 3 days a week. It’s been difficult to output the same amount of work that I previously have been doing.

I believe I am at a point now where I’ve done enough reading and reflecting. I have created ten instrumentals, tested techniques and really pushed myself as far as I can. I want to now being project 2 which will be a piece of work that is reflecting my Dissertation title, using the same sources and a few more.

So I had a session with my friend barns, he needed to record 5 tracks for his EP he wants to drop, as I have been learning about recording and will soon record vocals on all the instrumentals I thought it would be good to use him as practice for what is to come and refine my process.

I was lucky enough to receive this Aston Halo vocal shield for untreated rooms during my PRS Funding to help with recording in bedroom home studios. We set up the mic shield and new mic stand I bought that could hold it. And a pop shield. I then recorded it into my UAD Apollo Twin X. Setting Levels correctly and making sure the take was good, like how I read in the recording secrets for the home studio book.

Next, I organised the session and exported the tracks as stems for him to mix. It helped a lot to do this.

So the next step is to rap, mix, artwork. Finished. I can do this slowly over the next two months, record features and then it’s done. For now, it’s time to switch focus to the number two project to submit.

After reading about the Amen Break and the ideas around that sampling and copyright ownership, I found a book called The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies. Which piqued my interest. I saw it had a few short essays that caught my attention. Here is the reflection and quotes.

An Oral history of sampling From turntables to mashups Kembrew Mcleod

Artists have traditionally borrowed from each other and have been directly inspired by the world that surrounds them.  

I think this idea that someone can own an idea, a drum break or a melody is completely taking away from the facts of existence and knowledge sharing.

During the 1970s, hip hop Djs in the south bronx reimagined the record player or turntables as a device that could appropriate and create music, by manipulating vinyl records with their hands, rather than simply replaying complete songs.

This vinyl record manipulation really was the start of sampling, Djs found a perfect spot they loved or enjoyed and looped it up. They were remixing and recreating the song for the crowd.

Today it would simply be too expensive to clear copyright licenses for albums such as Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back—a record considered so culturally important that The New York Times included it on its list of the 25 “most significant albums for eh last century” and Fear of a Black Planet, which the library of congress included in its 2004 national recording registry. 

It’s ironic to think such an important part of the culture within the entire world. Would not be viable to release at a professional industry level. Goes to show the importance within the music industry and society is not artistic endeavours but more so control and financial gain.

The end of an aura 

Nostalgia, Memory, And the Haunting of Hip Hop

Mining for past samples and sounds, hip hop hacks technology for self-expression, and, like cyberpunk, hip hop has a global range, Both are part of a globalised network culture that decentralised the human subjects stability in space and time and in which the technologically mediated subject reforms and remixes idea of body normativity.

I think this idea of decentralising the human subjects’ stability in space and time is something I consider to be true. I think humans, ideas and our existence is not stable. To flip a record and sample it, take it and rehash it, we are playing with the ideas of fact and fiction, truth and lies, appropriation and development.

Sampling… is a uniquely post-modern twist, turning folk heritage into a living being, something that transfers more than just DNA. Through sampling, hip hop producers can literally borrow the song that influenced them, replay it, ruse it, rethink it, repeat it, re contextualise it.

This is it, we are making a sound or expression that was sampled from the past a collaborator, bringing it into a living breathing thing. Not a non-malleable listening experience.

McLuhan once declared that an individual is a “montage of loosely assembled parts,” and furthermore that when “you are on the phone or on the air you have no body.” Technology dismembers the body. Our media might be “extensions of ourselves in McLuhan’s terms, but they’re also prosthetics, amputating parts as they extend them.

media being a prosthetic is also interesting to the ideas of hip-hop. When sampling and creating the ideas become on longer human, and when creating and flipping records the tools and media become an extension of ourselves, these machines can become part of the representation of the creatives, such as J Dilla and his MPC 3000.

Weingarten draws a lengthy and effective analogy between records and the body, using samples as organ transplants. Tales of transplanted organs causing their recipients to adopt the tastes and behaviours of their dead donors read like the “meatspace” anxieties of cyberpunk: Can the essence of a hip-hop record be found in the motives, emotions and energies of the artists it samples?

So when we sample, are we being inspired by the motives, emotions and energies of the artist within the record. I THINK YES! what a great quote, completely true.

After speaking to Milo in a feedback session he advised that I read Eco Sonic Media. I read through the first chapter as I felt the green vinyl section was really relevant to my portfolio 1 project. Here are some reflections and quotes.

Can an ecological critique be brought to sound media in a way that still allows us to hear them? Can we have a sound media that is ecologically sound? 

It’s interesting to think that perhaps eco-sonic media can mean a silence of sorts. but I think this quote makes a great point that perhaps there is a good middle balance, where electronic amplified media is still eco-friendly.

The fact that sound media can be an energy-efficient alternative to screens is the beginning, not the end of the discussion.

This constant battle between ocularcentrism and sound is funny to me. But also seriously, I think it makes a great point that I never thought of, speakers take less energy than screens.

this book is guided by a few central questions: How can we evaluate sound- media technologies and practices from an eco-critical perspective? What might a sustainable sound-media culture look and sound like? How can sound media be mobilized to increase environmental awareness? In short, how can sound media become eco-sonic media? 

I completely agree that there needs to be a reformed structure to sonic media, how its built, distributed and recorded. I think that fact that the canon of sonic media is dictated by the users, and the users are dictated almost I’d say by the manufacturers who create the sound objects and then the music industry. Commodification means that eco products won’t succeed unless they are profitable.

Historians also distinguish between an era when discs were made out of shellac and spun at the rate of 78 rotations per minute (rpm) and the era when long-playing records (LPs) were made of the synthetic plastic polyvinyl chloride (popularly known as PVC or vinyl) and rotated at either 331⁄3 or 45 rpm. The period when phonography was acoustic and when discs were made with shellac is what I call the “Green Disc” era, green to the extent that its media infrastructure was “unplugged,” incorporated human and nonhuman industry, and facilitated a culture of resource conservation.

I never knew that shellac discs came from bugs. Really interesting to think about this process of a green disc, that it was acoustic and unplugged, spun through a handle that gave the players the power to spin. I’m curious to see if a modern version of that would work, I don’t see why not.

Vinyl is notoriously difficult to recycle, with the result being that vinyl records are “hyperobjects”: a term Timothy Morton uses to describe substances such as Styrofoam and plutonium that exist on an “almost  unthinkable” timescale. 

This idea of hyperobjects, something Timothy Morton describes is correct. I never considered that it could not be recycled or reused as such, a record is created and never destroyed in a way that it takes hundreds of years to decompose, unlike the shellac disc.

Eco-Sonic Media aims to make sound media negotiable in a way that hears a future in the sustainable media practices of the past, that listens to more of the world with less environmentally harmful technology, and that orchestrates an ecologically sound media that is also a feast for the ears. 

To listen to the environmental practices of the past and reconsider them for the 21st century is correctly assumed as a good practice I’d say. Just how we can create a better product is a good way of thinking also. To really make a difference one would have to convince the consumers that it’s better and just as good as the Vinyl record.

vinyl is generally made from petroleum, which is a nonrenewable resource. Nonrenewable resources like minerals and mineral fuels can only be used once, and the geological processes that form them are too slow to be sustainable. By contrast, shellac is a potentially renewable resource, given that the forest ecology that supports it is allowed to regenerate faster than the rate at which it is consumed. The shift from shellac to vinyl records thus speeds the depletion of nonrenewable fossil fuels.

The contrast between these two vinyl records or shellac and vinyl is disturbing to know, I now even consider the use of sampling to be good for the environment, we are putting these records to use. Instead of purchasing new records, typically only older records that are in second-hand stores are used.

This short Journal was really interesting with its ideas on sampling culture. The first line caught my attention. Anyway here are some quotes and reflections.

In 1956, John Cage predicted that “in the future, records will be made from records” (Duffel, 202).

John Cage really is a pioneer in his way of thinking, to understand or possibly consider that this would become an actuality is interesting. I wonder what was his ideas behind this and how he pictured this happening.

Similarly, Nirvana adapted the opening riff from Killing Jokes’ “Eighties” for their song “Come as You Are”. Musical “quotation” is actively encouraged in jazz, and contemporary hip-hop would not exist if the genre’s pioneers and progenitors had not plundered and adapted existing recorded music. Sampling technologies, however, have taken musical adaptation a step further and realised Cage’s prediction. Hardware and software samplers have developed to the stage where any piece of audio can be appropriated and adapted to suit the creative impulses of the sampling musician (or samplist). The practice of sampling challenges established notions of creativity, with whole albums created with no original musical input as most would understand it—literally “records made from records.”

I read this in another journal that Milo sent me, that in jazz quotation is actively encouraged and the same thing with jazz standards, pushing for the performance to be your own version. Again further pushes the idea of what cage predicted, records made from records.

Sampling is frequently defined as “the process of converting an analog signal to a digital format.” While this definition remains true, it does not acknowledge the prevalence of digital media. The “analogue to digital” method of sampling requires a microphone or instrument to be recorded directly into a sampler. Digital media, however, simplifies the process. For example, a samplist can download a video from YouTube and rip the audio track for editing, slicing, and manipulation, all using software within the noiseless digital environment of the computer.

I agree that the modern idea of sampling is from online or Youtube. Half of my major project was sampled from online sources and online crate digging as well as physical crate digging.

The extent of the sampling may range from subtle influence to dominating significance within the new work, but the constant principle remains: an existing work is appropriated and adapted to fit the needs of the secondary creator.

I never considered this to be true but I can agree, it’s always to the needs of the secondary creator. To the person who is sampling, often it does not matter what the first creator did or how they used the audio. Once sampled the secondary creator can do a lot.

Dangermouse’s approach is symptomatic of what Schütze refers to as remix culture:

an open challenge to a culture predicated on exclusive ownership, authorship, and controlled distribution … . Against ownership it upholds an ethic of creative borrowing and sharing. Against the original it holds out an open process of recombination and creative transformation. It equally calls into question the categories, rifts and borders between high and low cultures, pop and elitist art practices, as well as blurring lines between artistic disciplines.

Schütze and his ideas are interesting towards my portfolio project 1. it’s interesting to consider the ideas between artists and disciplines. Ownership authorship and controller distribution.

The “Amen break” is so ubiquitous that, much like the twelve bar blues structure, it has become a foundational element of an entire genre and has been adapted to satisfy a plethora of creative impulses. The sheer prevalence of the “Amen break” simultaneously illustrates the creative nature of music adaptation as well as the potentials for adaptation stemming from digital technology such as the sampler. The cut-up and rearrangement aspect of creative sampling technology at once suggests the original but also something new and different. Sampling in general, and the phenomenon of the “Amen break” in particular, ensures the longevity of the original sources; sampled-based music exhibits characteristics acquired from the source materials, yet the illegitimate offspring are not their parents.

Music adaptation and the success of the amen break showcase the ability of sound to form a whole genre and adapt to other means. It suggests the original and offers something new and different. It brings longevity to the original records and sources.

 Individuals such as DJ Dangermouse, Gregg Gillis and Tom Compagnoni appropriate, reshape and re-present the surrounding soundscape to suit diverse creative urges, thereby adapting the passive medium of recorded sound into an active production tool.

I never considered the medium of recorded sound to be passive but it is true. Once sampled it becomes this active production tool that we can mould and sculpt. Really interesting points.

I kept trying to find a book or text that resonated with me to help explain my feelings about how modern hip hop/rap culture has been commodified and changed by the media and its showcasing. I found this small book and began reading it, I really enjoyed it. It has a foreword by David Toop, and DJ Fingers the writer who studied the MA sound arts at LCC when writing this book, it was his Masters’s Dissertation. It’s been really good to reflect and read about how he believes rap and hip hop have been taken away from their original context, knowledge of self, and spiritual connection to others. Here are some quotes.

For too long we have been force fed a mongrelisation of what the record industry wants the youth to believe is Hip-Hop (and for a lack of a beer word “Rap”), which in turn has our young men thinking that it’s cool to be a Pimp or a Drug dealer and our young women thinking they should portray themselves as Hoes.

We’ve been shown and fed through media what we think rap and hip hop should be, the representations of young black people as either hoes or pimps.

Expose the corporate media as the chief instigators of turning a pure art form into a hybrid of its’ former self.

Couldn’t agree more, the media has a monopoly over what they showcase and I disagree with the representations.

And so, with Hip-Hop apparently in crisis, its no wonder such a devoted practitioner should come to consider some of the issues facing his muse at this particular crossroads

I also liked this, as it helped further push the idea that Hip-hop is in a crisis.

 The first edition of rap attacked was published in 1984, coinciding with the sudden, quite unexpected rise of Hip-Hop into mainstream awareness. Immediately there was controversy, with the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC blamed for pretty much everting that was wrong with society at that point.

I had read the first rap attack by David Toop, it’s interesting to see how certain artists were blamed for issues in society at the time.

How exactly did it grow from an almost secret street corner activity, played out in school gymnasiums, run-down harlem clubs and south bronx parks, to a massively successful international lifestyle movement, headed up by ultra  rich entrepreneur celebrities like Jayz-z and 50 Cent?

The rise of hip-hop in such a small amount of time is impressive, it has given a rise to huge artists such as these two.

To an extent, it was escapist, aspirational and combative, because that was the landscape, but it was also highly innovative, inventive and original but it was also highly innovative, inventive and original and its energy was infectious. 

This side of rap and hip hop is what interested me, escapism, aspirational and combative, fighting with art and creativity against the wrongdoings of society. Having a voice in a way you feel might be noticed.

Hip-hop in its early days reflected both the idea of striving for something better, along with the reality of what held its practitioners back from the public image of what was expected from American society: a full education, a decent job, a safe neighbourhood, and a fulfilled life. 

It’s interesting to see that hip-hop at the time was standing out away from the norms of society. It stood against what the American dream was.

Throughout televisions history. Black/latinos have struggled both with blatant and subtle stereotyping. 

Its no doubt that Latinos/blacks have had a terrible stereotype shown throughout history on public media, only pushing the negative stereotypes of these people.

Not only have this gangster image come to dominate hip hop as a genre but also arguably conned youth subculture into taking on this persona. 

It’s true to say this, the modern rap music industry and culture are centred around this. there are exceptions but only slightly. This image sells sadly.

Afrika Bambaataa;s youth movement, the universal Zulu nation profoundly influenced the original hip hop culture of the mid 1970s. During this period, hip hop lyrics were essentially positive compared to the first commercialised gangster rap lyrics from the group NWA. 

I never knew about Afrika Bambaataa and what he did, that hip hop and rap were used in this way originally.

Well within the hip hop generation there is a lot that have to wake up form the spell of kings, the spell of sleep… We got to get people back to that fifth element of Hip-Hop. Get them back to the knowledge. Too many are caught up on the partying…they are not dealing with all the elements of Hip-Hop. We got to let them know that it’s a culture

Lost within the negative ideals of hip-hop culture is what a lot of artists still are to this day dealing with.

Importance of non violent competitive artistic expression. These resourceful rudiments, if understood and practiced correctly, can further teach the importance of self-development, family and community. 

Something I never considered either, I can relate to though. Hip-Hop has taught me self-development, family, community, hard work, discipline and other aspects.

The visionary pioneer Africa Bambaataa percoeved the misguided youth as having the potential to alter their circumstances and conditions – not through an external desire for material things, but in Ana internal self-development that would redefine their present and ultimately their future. 

Material desires do not push mental health well-being or success in life, but internal reflections do, working on ones self can develop their present and future.

Hip-Hop’s main intent can be the reminding of man’s purpose and potential for his/her self. And a recognition that we are all connected, not by material things like iPods and flat screen TV’s but by an unseens consciousness that can only be realised internally. 

Again, hip-hop is there to remind us of man’s purpose and our potential, whether artistically or through expression.

Illustrate how rap music which was once a subversive empowering form of self expression, has morphed into a mainstream commodity. 

Mainstream rap has just become something which people have commodified its not the raw self-expression anymore

It should be noted that in today’s world Hip-Hop’s rap participants have been taken out of their original cultural context and have become representative of something previously unanticipated. This is more apparent in the misplaced value for materialism over human spiritiuality. 

Materialism over human spirituality is a very powerful thing to say, I couldn’t agree more. The cultural context has been flipped.

With that said, since Hip-Hop’s commercialisation, the sounds, concepts and techniques that can be heard in today’s club contact have essentially become aligned with those of disco, is themes most often celebrating unattainable wealth, narcissism and hedonism.

Disco and hip-hop used to be enemies, when disco was rising up during the late 70s / early 80s Disco DJs would never play hip hop and now hip hop style of mixing and blending has become what modern Hip hop DJs use.

Dr Amos Wilson argues the image of the black male as a criminal is worth billions of dollars. According to Wilson, if you employ the image of the black adolescent as a criminal, you will fill movie theatres – and mostly with black people. Dr Wilson goes further to imply that corporate America does not wish to let these negative images disappear because of their commercial viability.

It’s interesting this, perhaps I don’t always agree but I think that our modern society or at least the media side of it does love the idea of ethnic minorities being criminals. It sells, the evidence is right in the popularity of this.

NWA were not solely responsible for the eminence of gangster rap. The gangster rap genre was widely featured in specialist rap music programs such as yo! MTV Raps (1988-1995) – which eventually became the barometer for how the music would be consumed more widely. Both Yo! MTV Raps and B.E.T’s rival show ‘Rap City’ were driven by audience ratings and advertising revenues, which reduced the importance of the art of the culture, replacing it with a whatever sells commercial pragmatism.

MTV Raps and these other rap shows also pushed this idea of gangster rap and pushed away other aspects of hip-hop culture.

However, in modern culture Hip-Hop has, in my view, been misappropriated into an art form, which is preoccupied by celebrity lifestyle, wealth and unconventional routes to status. This metamorphosis has been aggravated greatly by the mainstream media, which I contend has misappropriated Hip-Hop.

I always felt this, for me, it was never about status but to express myself. Now people get into this just for status and material gain.

In spite of this, the blame for what is or isn’t appropriate should not be placed with the media or any other such body, but the blame should be put on ourselves.

I liked that it ended with this, despite the conclusion blaming the media I think it is on us to change this.

I am really inspired after reading this, I think this will impact my lyrics a lot.

I decided to read through this book, it’s about an art exhibition of Basquiat’s work, and it also contains a few essays and photos/works from Basquiat.

It seems to draw the line between sound, music and Basquiat’s more visual work, and how his work has sonic elements within it. The book also becomes a history of his existence in new york during the infant years of hip-hop culture and his place within it.

It was interesting to know he was in a band, where he played the guitar with a file and synthesisers, as well as that he appreciated the Dada movement, anti-art, and using music as an expression towards bringing awareness to issues

.

Basquiat also explored graphic scores, through his notebooks writing ideas for songs or placements as shown above.

He was anti-consumerist and hated social conformity. Something I also relate with, I find my ideas sit within these places as well, art for me is an expression.

It was interesting to see the idea that his work is loaded with sonic charge, the signs, and symbols all showcase sounds and his work can easily reflect the studio ambience of the music he was listening to.

I find this all super interesting and completely related to my portfolio one project. I will now make some artwork for the project in a way to finalise it and start with the last section which is vocals, I’m currently ill so this is taking a back turn, and I have to finalise this and start the second project. In a way making the cover is my graphic score for the album, making the artwork first and then seeing what happens, if it can influence the lyrics in anyway.