Tag: music

  • S.O.S. Band – Just Be Good To Me

    Recently on a popular music television station that mostly plays reality shows, I ran across the the song Just Be Good To Green by Professor Green featuring Lily Allen. It uses a familiar tactic of sampling part of the original and having the other part sung (in this case by Lily Allen) with slightly different lyrics.

    The sample and melody is lifted from the 1990 song Dub be Good to Me by Beats international. Norman Cook aka FatBoy Slimwas involved in producing the 1990 track Dub be Good to Me and that usually means samples come from all over the place. In this case the bass line from The Guns of Brixton by The Clash (1979), the harmonica tune from Once Upon a Time in the West, aka Man with a Harmonica (1969) and some of the rap vocals are directly taken from Johnny Dynell’s 1983 track Jam Hot. The Beats International version was subsequently also covered by Faithless featuring Dido in 2008.

    Dub be Good To Me however takes its melody and lyrics directly from yet another track. The S.O.S. Band‘s producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have been noted to popularise the sound of the 808. They also used it in the song which Norman Cook got this melody from: The S.O.S. Band – Just be Good to Me (1983). So is Lily Allen singing the tune of a song from 1990 or 1983?

  • Want a free EP?

    I need your help. I’m, considering putting extra time into making a digital download EP with a few of my songs to be released this month. But if I’m going to do that, I’d like to know I’m doing it for someone besides myself. Please send me a mail at b-sting at b-sting dot com and put in the subject “I’m waiting” to let me know you’re waiting for the EP. I’ll put you on the B-sting mailing list and let you know when it is done.

    As thanks, when it does come out, I’ll also send you a download code that will let you download it in the highest quality for free. Oh and about the mailing list, don’t worry, I won’t spam you daily or weekly with useless crap, promise. And obviously you’ll be able to unsubscribe at any time.

    I’ll keep the blog posted about the progress. Oh and Ineke, you were right. I need to make more time to make music. But I still love blogging, so I’m gonna keep doing that as well. I just a goal and deadlines for my music. And this, this is a deadline.

  • Is an algorithm better than a human DJ?

    Many radio stations play compulsory playlists of the same repetitive pop crap. The alternative is listening to your own custom playlist on your computer or mp3-player or if you want to be suprised, use shuffle. There are however still radio independent DJ’s that pride themselves in making perfect playlists for you to listen to. But are they better than the shuffle button, because they introduce you to new things?

    Music Machinery is having a semi-scientific study as to whether a radio DJ, a shuffled playlist or an algorithmically composed playlist is better, according to listeners. You can read more about it and participate here. Their study results so far: the algorithmic DJ is best, the human worst. The study is far from over, so please participate.

    The interesting notion of this Turing test is that maybe computers, machines, AI, call it what you like, can make music just a well as humans can. This scares many people. They believe it will put them out of business. But that inevitably pops up the question: are you in it for the money or for the love of music? Humans will keep making music for the love of music, even if machines make better/different music. In then end machines are an extension of ourselves, so I’d rather have a machine help me make better music, then me by myself making shitty music.

    It’s like complaining about people using electric guitars and effects to make impossible music. It’s like people complaining about synthesisers , arpeggiators and all sorts of electronic aids to make impossible sounds and music. In the end, it’s tools to make better music. And if even human creativity can be emulated, why not? Ask Emmy and Emily Howell

  • Audiotool

    Audiotool

    For those who want to get a bit more of a feel what it’s like to play with a studio set up, Audiotool.com provides a quick webbased music studio. In the 1.0 version there’s two basic drum machines, three synths, thirteen effect boxes and some gear needed to mix it all together. You set them up in the exact same way you would with it’s real world counterparts, except now you get to do it with just your browser for free.

    The problem is that Audiotool balances between what the starter might still have to learn about real hardware (how do you link all these things together) and what the pro demands (needs more gear). As such it might bridge a gap for quite a few new people  who are willing to learn and a great toy to play with for pro’s on a lazy weekend.The wait is for a new release with more gear.

  • The Original Music Pirates

    There’s a lot of fuss about pirated music on the internet, but there’s also the original pirates of music: pirate radio stations. There’s still a lot of them around in the London area, apparently. And like internet pirates they don’t see it as illegal, but as a community service, for the people, by the people. Here’s an interesting documentary by Palladium Boots about the perhaps dying phenomena:

    See the documentary here.

  • How to become famous without talent

    Meet Florence Foster Jenkins. The no-longer living proof that with enough money passion and persistence you can become famous despite having no talent at all. She really, REALLY wanted to become a classical singer, but her rich dad would not let her. However, when he father died and she inherited all her fathers money, she could kick off her singing career.  How little talent she had can be heard in this YouTube video. Despite all this, she went on to perform for audiences even in Carnegie Hall, deaf to the critics’ laughter.

    She may have been really awful, but she loved making music. You can’t blame her that. And in the end her lack of talent did bring her fame. Realistically though maybe she should have stuck with singing in the shower and spent her money otherwise. In that sense, not much has changed.