On NPR an awesome article (with sound) about the Oramics machine by Daphne Oram. Daphne Oram was a composer and innovative electronic musician who worked at BBC Radiophonic Workshop (which among others worked on the sounds for Doctor Who) and later started her own workshop. One of the devices she created was the Oramics machine, [...]
This is the last Origin of Samples post for now. It gave me great pleasure digging through the history of sampling, even discovering a few new things myself. Hopefully I can pick it up some time in the future, but for now I’ll be focussing my energy on my own music. More about that next [...]
In 1980 Siouxsie and the Banshees released the song Happy House as a single. As irony has, a decade later it’s melody would be used to produce a big commercial house music hit. The distinguishing riff from the opening first pops up in the 1990 track Neue Dimensionen by Techno Bert. Despite the German title [...]
A few weeks back, Coldplay was in the news for yet again ‘borrowing’ some one else’s music for a song. This time though, they were honest about it and even secured the rights to do so. Their song Every Teardrop is a Waterfall takes its opening from Peter Allen’s song I go to Rio (1977). [...]
Last week I discussed Love’s Gonna Get You by Jocelyn Brown from 1985. One of the most famous tracks that sampled it is The Power from 1991 by Snap!. The song however is surrounded by controversy. First of all there’s the obvious use of Jocelyn Brown’s vocals. Jocelyn Brown’s sample was used without permission or [...]
A while back I was going to do a post about this, but there were so many links to other songs, I had to split it in three parts. Today part 1. In 1985 Jocelyn Brown released Love’s Gonna Get You, after being the backup singer for many other artists. The single itself went to [...]
Going to do an easy one this week, since I got lost in a swamp of sample connections yesterday. In 1991 Massive Attack was temporarily named just ‘Massive‘ due to the outbreak of the Gulf War. Under that name they released Unfinished Sympathy. While a lot of the budget of the album went into the [...]
I just did a practice run for a live gig. It lasted 45 minutes and as to be expect it did not so go as well as I hoped. But hey it was a first run. I took notes and now have something to work on. So does this mean I have a live gig [...]
Classical composer Edvar Grieg wrote In the Hall of the Mountain King for the play Peer Gynt which premiered in 1876. As such, it had a cinematic soundtrack quality to it, long before cinema became a broad popular pastime. Because of this it has long been a favorite background music for television and film. Most [...]
Last week I talked about Bernard Purdie’s song Soul Drums from 1968 which got sampled in Devil’s Haircut . The same track also got sampled in a Christmas track by Mansfield, entitled 2010.12.25 from 2000. Bernard Purdie is a session drummer who performed with people like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, BB King, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles [...]
