Random noise, incoherent thoughts, whatever.
I am a big fan of mashups. I am especially fond of songs that mix completely unrelated genres of music, like classical and hip hop.
I just stumbled on an awesome video of a violinist playing live over a hip hop beat mixed by a DJ on a turntable. The DJ on the turntable is inka one, and the violinist is Paul Dateh. Awesome stuff.
Just make sure you don’t call him The Hip Hop Violinist…
-TPP
A Washington Post journalist, Gene Weingarten, conducted a hilarious social experiment with world famous violinist Joshua Bell at one of the Washington, DC metro stations last January.
Joshua Bell, whose sell out concerts sell for $100 per ticket, or more, played his $3.5M Stradovarius violin during the morning rush hour at the top of the escalators in the L’Enfant Plaza metro stop. He received $52.17 in tips from appreciative commuters. $20 of that came from the only person who actually recognized him.
Also read the live discussion Washington Post held last Monday about the article.
-TPP
Rockstar Games, a controversial video games developer behind the Grand Theft Auto series of games, has teamed up with Timbaland to produce music for their upcoming PlayStation Portable game, Beaterator.
How cool is that!?
I wonder if Timbaland is going to use music he stole from others in this game?
-TPP
The New York Times has an excellent 6-page article about the arrest of DJ Drama earlier in the year.
I’ve written about DJ Drama’s arrest before:
RIAA bites the hand that feeds it
-TPP
When Janne Suni (aka Tempest) composed his Acidjazzed Evening song for Assembly 2000, one of the largest demo scene gatherings in the world, he probably didn’t think his contest winning tune would make even bigger news in 2006.
It appears Timbaland, a rather successful hip hop/rnb producer, thought Janne’s tune was kinda good as well, as he’s “borrowed” the melody and 16 bars of a Commodore 64 version of Janne’s tune in, at least, two songs that he’s produced.
Another demo scene composer, Glenn Rune Gallefoss (aka GRG) produced a Commodore 64 (Janne’s was made on an Amiga computer) version of Janne’s tune after the contest with permission from Janne. This is the version of the tune that’s blatantly copied into Timbaland’s songs. One of the songs, “Do It” by Nelly Furtado, is included in Nelly Furtado’s latest album that has sold 2.5M copies. The copyright belongs to Janne and Glenn.
Follow the original article to find out more about this blatant copyright violation by a RIAA recording artist. Not a word from Timbaland or his record label about this issue during the four months since the issue was uncovered.
Update 3/14/2007: Timbaland has since commented on his theft. An MTV reporter asks him about it at the end of an interview about other unrelated stuff, and Timbaland has the gall to completely dismiss the whole thing and make it sound like some sort of an ego trip thing:
“It makes me laugh,” he said. “The part I don’t understand, the dude is trying to act like I went to his house and took it from his computer. I don’t know him from a can of paint. I’m 15 years deep. That’s how you attack a king? You attack moi? Come on, man. You got to come correct. You the laughing stock. People are like, ‘You can’t be serious.’ “
He’s also calling the accusations “foolish”. Looks like all the fame and fortune has thoroughly gone to his head. Hypocrite thief. You got caught fair and square and your posturing and ego stroking is not gonna change that. Do the right thing and pay up, thief.
-TPP
In a very strange move RIAA has sent their stormtroopers to visit DJ Drama, a popular hip hop DJ specializing in producing mixtapes.
Mixtapes have been instrumental in promoting up and coming rap artists for decades. In fact, all the rap legends made their start in the business using mixtapes.
DJ Drama has been arrested and faces RICO charges in Atlanta, GA.
RIAA’s cluelessness is truly astounding. Here they have someone who’s promoting music of RIAA’s member organizations’ artists essentially for free, and they still attack him.
-TPP
Check out this awesome Virtual Air Guitar project that enhances the art of air guitaring by having a computer analyze the air guitaring in real time to add riffs and licks fed into a speaker system. Your air guitaring has never sounded so good!
The Air Guitar World Championships are held in Oulu, Finland every year.
Party on Wayne!
-TPP
My friend Jamie sent me the link. Rock on, dudes! Don’t go crazy with the solos.
-TPP
