July 2010
4 posts
Terrific NPR Profile on Guitar Whiz Steve Tibbetts →
WatchDirty Dubsters – swing it brother (NuFunk Mix)
Modern beats from old swing-era Jazz.
WatchGuilty Pleasure #486: Pop-candy from Robyn.
WatchElla Fitzgerald - Too Darn Hot
May 2010
1 post
Great remix of Nina Simone Classic →
April 2010
1 post
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
– Herbert Simon
March 2010
21 posts
WatchChristian Prommer - Oxygène (Part IV) - Drumlesson Version. Cool cover of the Jean Michel Jarre classic.
WatchImogen Heap - The Song That Never Was. Can’t get this remix out of my head.
Fats Waller - The Minor Drag (1929) . Listen!
Peter Gabriel- My Body Is A Cage.
“SW: What music have you been listening to today? Did you like it?
MC: Miles...”
– Writer Michael Chabon talks about music with the Seattle Weekly
Dave Brubeck - Autumn In Washington Square. A...
Ahmad Jamal - One. A classic from the 80’s....
“The greatest mystery of life, Father Powell explained, isn’t death. It’s life....”
– Father John Powell (via Doc Searls)
Hour Four - An amazing piece of ambient sound...
Together - Ray Barretto—laying down a big...
WatchNew remix from Royksopp. Taking samples from Gustavo Santoalalla. Cool.
Watch“Fish” by Mr. Scruff. One of the weirdest little ditties I’ve heard in a while.
Nat King Cole - It’s Kind of Lonesome Out...
January 2009
1 post
7 tags
Mashup in 5/4: Take Five Meets The River Man
Dave Brubeck vs. Nick Drake: Take Drake
There aren’t many tunes that have their rhythm is 5/4 time. These two are probably the most well-known—The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 1959 recording of Take Five; and River Man, from the late British sing-songwriter Nick Drake, recorded in 1969.
I’ve got a supplentary source for each tune as well—pianist Brad Mehldau’s...
December 2008
2 posts
7 tags
Seal vs. Dylan: Beginnings On The Watchtower
Beginnings On The Watchtower (Musicina Blender mashup)
These two songs are not only in the same key, their tempos are only a couple of bpm’s apart. I’ve been wanting to mix “Watchtower” because it is one of the few Dylan tunes that actually has a straight-hard beat through the entire tune. The Seal tune came to mind recently when my wife and I cut the rug on a Friday...
3 tags
This mashup is so damn good, I’m...
November 2008
2 posts
8 tags
A Marvin Gaye Samba
Marvin Gaye vs. Celso Fonseca - I Heard It Through The Samba (Musicina Blender mix)
I recently saw an amazing YouTube video of Marvin Gaye singing an acapella version of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”. I recorded the audio part of the video, and set out to find a way to put a different instrumental spin on the tune. And like my previous mix of Ryan Adams’s Wonderwall,...
8 tags
A Train Ride Into The Bowels Of Your Imagination
Simon & Garfunkel - A Sound-Poem On the Underground Wall (Musicina Blender Mix)
Here’s a tune that still grabs me after 40 years. (Like most Baby Boomers attending college in the late 60’s, S&G were in high rotation on the dormroom turntable). The song is a quick sketch, and portrays an introverted, aspiring graffiti artist, trying in the simplest way possible to...
October 2008
6 posts
St. Germain - Sure Thing.
This French producer...
9 tags
Rehab (Winehouse) vs Sidewinder (Sample)
Rehab (Musicina Blender Sidewinder Mashup)
Here’s Ms. Amy Winehouse, fronting Joe Sample’s “Soul Committee” band, layering her hooky hit on top of The Sidewinder, a classic jazz tune, originally done by Lee Morgan in 1965. Sample’s recording comes from the awesome 1994 disc Did You Feel That?, which was the most “Crusader-like” effort since the...
6 tags
Peter Gabriel vs. Derek Trucks
Lovetown/Volunteered Slavery (Musicina Blender mashup)
I was wallowing for a while with a bunch of song combinations that just didn’t seem to come together. It was nice to finally stumble into these two songs, which click together really well (for reasons all its own). Once I began the mix, I fell way deep into the rabbit hole.
This cool Peter Gabriel tune was initially released on the...
Daft Punk - Face To Face
Just came across this...
9 tags
Elvis the Queen
Elvis Presley / Queen / Louis Jordan - Crazy Little Cruel Thing Called Caldonia
I once won a karaoke contest a few years ago, singing Crazy Little Thing Called Love. I picked the tune because I had just visited Graceland in Memphis and was in a real “Elvis” mood. The tune by Queen always reminded me of something that Elvis would’ve done. And it also seems remarkably similar to...
8 tags
Finally Together - Steely Dan and Horace Silver
Song For My Father/Ricki Don’t Lose That Number (with guest star Rickie Lee Jones)
This remix has been on my mind for a while; I finally got down to it and “put it in the blender”. Steely Dan’s biggest hit single was a blatant “expropriation” of Horace Silver’s Song For My Father. Both songs are now classics in their respective genres. It just seemed...
September 2008
4 posts
8 tags
Brazilian Wonderwall - Ryan Adams vs. Baden Powell
Canto de Wonderwall (Musicina Blender Mashup)
I discovered the Oasis tune Wonderwall basically by osmosis many years ago, when it used to seep loudly out of my teenager’s closed-door bedroom stereo. A few years back while drifting around online, I heard a terrific acoustic version by Ryan Adams, from a 2003 EP called Love is Hell.
Recently while listening to Adams, the tune weirdly...
7 tags
Craig Armstrong Meets The Stones & Santana
Sympathy For The Devil/Inhaler/Soul Survivor (Musicina Blender Mashup)
I discovered Craig Armstrong a few years ago from his work with Britain’s Massive Attack. This Scotsman is a brilliant composer, producer, and pianist. And he can rock too. Here’s his Wikipedia entry. Here’s his MySpace page.
This is a cool three-way mashup, featuring Armstrong’s tune Inhaler, from...
5 tags
Michael Hedges (Guitar); Me (Bass); Myself...
Michael Hedges Trio - Aerial Boundaries
As an experiment, I wanted to see if I could create a credible rhythm section (bass and drums) with this tune. (Listen to the original in the post below). My goal was to propel the tune a bit and give it some pop without taking away the essence of the guitar work. All the drums and bass parts were constructed from scratch, from various drum samples and...
3 tags
August 2008
6 posts
7 tags
Peggy Lee vs. Bob Marley
Reggae Fever
Peggy Lee’s original recording is about as simple and bare as can be—just a single voice, with bass, finger snaps, and minimalist percussion. I decided to fill the musical space w/cool ambient sounds from Bill Laswell’s dub/remix of Marley, a disc called Dreams Of Freedom. This tune sounds cool on headphones. And the Marley tune, of course, is Exodus.
5 tags
Sly Stone / Family Affair remix
Fam Affair
I assembled my first DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) in late 1999. My two favorite pieces of software at the time were the amazing ACID from Sonic Foundry (now owned by Sony) and a sweet little program called ReBirth from a Swedish software company called Propellerheads. (This company later created the very popular program REASON and has since discontinued with ReBirth. You can...
4 tags
Lemon Jelly - Soft
Originally released on a...
7 tags
Remixing and Mashing Up John Coltrane's "A Love...
A Loop Supreme
Actually, this piece is a mashup of Coltrane, Don Braden’s tune “Cousin Esau” (from a 1995 recording called Organic), and percussionist/electronica artist Karsh Kale’s “Break Of Dawn” (from the CD Liberation). Coltrane’s tune is a true looper’s delight; the four beat bass line is a constant. From the get-go I realized that remixing...
4 tags
Mocean Worker - Shake Ya Boogie
This guy is...
8 tags
Bob Dylan Meets The Beatles
Positively Fifth Beatle
Wouldn’t this be the ultimate bootleg? Legend has it that Dylan turned the Beatles on to weed, but conversely, the Beatles turned Dylan on to the possibilities of rock. Imagine them in the studio together, circa 1964. Could this have been the moment when Dylan truly went electric?
Note that the visual mashup of the album cover syncs perfectly with the audio...