Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vintage Recording from 1913

in Music | August 11th, 2017

A cen­tu­ry ago, the great French com­pos­er Claude Debussy sat down at a con­trap­tion called a Welte-Mignon repro­duc­ing piano and record­ed a series of per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty.  The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s play­ing, includ­ing ped­al­ing and dynam­ics, onto piano rolls for lat­er repro­duc­tion, like the one above.

Debussy record­ed 14 pieces onto six rolls in Paris on or before Novem­ber 1, 1913. Accord­ing to Debussy enthu­si­ast Steve Bryson’s Web site, the com­pos­er was delight­ed with the repro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, say­ing in a let­ter to Edwin Welte: “It is impos­si­ble to attain a greater per­fec­tion of repro­duc­tion than that of the Welte appa­ra­tus. I am hap­py to assure you in these lines of my aston­ish­ment and admi­ra­tion of what I heard. I am, Dear Sir, Yours Faith­ful­ly, Claude Debussy.”

The selec­tion above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Grena­da in the evening”), from Debussy’s 1903 trio of com­po­si­tions titled Estam­pes, or “Prints.” Debussy was inspired by the Sym­bol­ist poets and Impres­sion­ist painters who strove to go beyond the sur­face of a sub­ject to evoke the feel­ing it gave off. “La soirée dans Grenade” is described by Chris­tine Steven­son at Notes From a Pianist as a “sound pic­ture” of Moor­ish Spain:

Debussy’s first-hand expe­ri­ence of Spain was neg­li­gi­ble at that time, but he imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up the coun­try by using the per­sua­sive Haben­era dance rhythm to open the piece–softly and sub­tly. It insin­u­ates itself into our con­scious­ness with its qui­et insis­tence on a repeat­ed C sharp in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters; around it cir­cles a lan­guid, Moor­ish arabesque, with nasal aug­ment­ed 2nds, and a nag­ging semi­tone pulling against the tonal cen­tre, occa­sion­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by mut­ter­ing semi­qua­vers [16th notes] and a whole-tone based pas­sage. Debussy writes Com­mencer lente­ment dans un rythme non­cha­la­m­ment gra­cieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] at the begin­ning, but lat­er Tres ryth­mé [Very ryth­mic] in a bright­ly lit A major as the dance comes out of the shad­ows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly], with the click of cas­tanets and the stamp­ing of feet.

Debussy was 52-years-old and suf­fer­ing from can­cer when he made his piano roll record­ings. He died less than five years lat­er, on March 25, 1918. Since then his beau­ti­ful and evoca­tive music has secured a place for him as one of the most influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. As Roger Hecht writes at Clas­si­cal Net, “Debussy was a dream­er whose music dreamed with him.”

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2013.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rare 1946 Film: Sergei Prokofiev Plays the Piano and Dis­cuss­es His Music

Hear a 1930 Record­ing of Boléro, Con­duct­ed by Rav­el Him­self

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

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Ray Bradbury Reveals the True Meaning of Fahrenheit 451: It’s Not About Censorship, But People “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

in Books | August 10th, 2017

Even those of us who’ve nev­er read Ray Brad­bury’s Fahren­heit 451 know it as a sear­ing indict­ment of gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship. Or at least we think we know it, and besides, what else could the sto­ry of a dystopi­an future where Amer­i­ca has out­lawed books whose main char­ac­ter burns the few remain­ing, secret­ed-away vol­umes to earn his liv­ing be about? It turns out that Brad­bury him­self had oth­er ideas about the mean­ing of his best-known nov­el, and in the last years of his life he tried pub­licly to cor­rect the pre­vail­ing inter­pre­ta­tion — and to his mind, the incor­rect one.

“Fahren­heit 451 is not, he says firm­ly, a sto­ry about gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship,” wrote the Los Ange­les Week­ly’s Amy E. Boyle John­son in 2007. “Nor was it a response to Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy, whose inves­ti­ga­tions had already instilled fear and sti­fled the cre­ativ­i­ty of thou­sands.” Rather, he meant his 1953 nov­el as “a sto­ry about how tele­vi­sion destroys inter­est in read­ing lit­er­a­ture.” It’s about, as he puts it above, peo­ple “being turned into morons by TV.” John­son quotes Brad­bury describ­ing tele­vi­sion as a medi­um that “gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” spread­ing “fac­toids” instead of knowl­edge. “They stuff you with so much use­less infor­ma­tion, you feel full.”

He did­n’t much like radio either: just two years before Fahren­heit 451, Brad­bury wrote to his sci-fi col­league Richard Math­e­son bemoan­ing its con­tri­bu­tion to “our grow­ing lack of atten­tion,” and its cre­ation of a “hop­scotch­ing exis­tence” that “makes it almost impos­si­ble for peo­ple, myself includ­ed, to sit down and get into a nov­el again.” For the aban­don­ment of read­ing he saw in soci­ety, and from which he extrap­o­lat­ed in his book, he blamed not the state but the peo­ple, an enter­tai­ment-as-opi­ate-addict­ed “demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety whose diverse pop­u­la­tion turns against books: Whites reject Uncle Tom’s Cab­in and blacks dis­ap­prove of Lit­tle Black Sam­bo,” lead­ing to wide­spread cen­sor­ship and even­tu­al­ly the burn­ing of all read­ing mate­r­i­al.

But books still do face chal­lenges (and the FBI even had its eye on Brad­bury and his genre), chal­lenges only an intel­li­gent, non-numbed pub­lic can beat back. “I get let­ters from teach­ers all the time say­ing my books have been banned tem­porar­i­ly,” says Brad­bury in the clip above. “I say, don’t wor­ry about it, put ’em back on the shelves. You keep putting them back and they keep tak­ing them off, and you final­ly win.” The authors, even Brad­bury, can’t help, but he would always tell these lit­er­ar­i­ly-mind­ed peo­ple who wrote to him in dis­tress the same thing: “You do the job. You’re the librar­i­an. You’re the teacher. Stand firm and you’ll win. And they always do.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Father Writes a Great Let­ter About Cen­sor­ship When Son Brings Home Per­mis­sion Slip to Read Ray Bradbury’s Cen­sored Book, Fahren­heit 451

Who Was Afraid of Ray Brad­bury & Sci­ence Fic­tion? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

Ray Brad­bury: “I Am Not Afraid of Robots. I Am Afraid of Peo­ple” (1974)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Sto­ry Fahren­heit 451 as a Radio Dra­ma

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Century of Global Warming Visualized in a 35 Second Video

in Environment | August 10th, 2017

Antti Lip­po­nen, a researcher at the Finnish Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Insti­tute, gath­ered his­tor­i­cal data from NASA and pro­duced a short video effec­tive­ly show­ing that, from 1900 through 2016, the tem­per­a­ture has steadi­ly got­ten warmer world­wide. Each spoke of the wheel rep­re­sents one of 191 dif­fer­ent coun­tries. And the hot­ter the col­or (e.g. oranges and reds), the warmer the tem­per­a­ture. You can get a clos­er look at the his­tor­i­cal pro­gres­sion here. The mate­ri­als have been released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license on Flickr.

Note: If you want to bet­ter under­stand the sci­ence of Glob­al Warm­ing, we’d rec­om­mend watch­ing the lec­tures from this free Glob­al Warm­ing course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go:

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Yale Envi­ron­ment 360

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Ani­ma­tions Show the Melt­ing Arc­tic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Frank Capra’s Sci­ence Film The Unchained God­dess Warns of Cli­mate Change in 1958

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Rebecca Solnit Picks 13 Songs That Will Remind Us of Our Power to Change the World, Even in Seemingly Dark Times

in Books, Music, Politics | August 10th, 2017

Image by Shawn, via Flickr Com­mons

Apoc­a­lypses have always been pop­u­lar as mass belief and enter­tain­ment. Maybe it’s a col­lec­tive desire for ret­ri­bu­tion or redemp­tion, or a kind of ver­ti­go humans expe­ri­ence when star­ing into the abyss of the unknown. Bet­ter to end it all than live in neu­rot­ic uncer­tain­ty. Maybe we find it impos­si­ble to think of a future world exist­ing hun­dreds, thou­sands, mil­lions of years after our deaths. As Rebec­ca Sol­nit observes in Hope in the Dark: Untold His­to­ries, Wild Pos­si­bil­i­ties, “peo­ple have always been good at imag­in­ing the end of the world, which is much eas­i­er to pic­ture than the strange side­long paths of change in a world with­out end.” What if the world nev­er ends, but goes on for­ev­er, chang­ing and evolv­ing in unimag­in­able ways?

This is the baili­wick of sci­ence fic­tion, but also the domain of his­to­ry, a hind­sight view of cen­turies past when wars, tyran­ni­cal con­quests, famines, and dis­eases near­ly wiped out entire populations—when it seemed to them a near cer­tain­ty that noth­ing would or could sur­vive the present hor­ror. And yet it did.

This may be no con­so­la­tion to the vic­tims of vio­lence and plague, but the world has gone on for the liv­ing, peo­ple have adapt­ed and sur­vived, even under the cur­rent, very real threats of nuclear war and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. And through­out his­to­ry, both small and large groups of peo­ple have changed the world for the bet­ter, though it hard­ly seemed pos­si­ble at the time. Sol­nit’s book chron­i­cles these his­to­ries, and last year, she released a playlist as a com­pan­ion for the book.

Hope in the Dark makes good on its title through a col­lec­tion of essays about “every­thing,” writes Alice Gre­go­ry at The New York Times, “from the Zap­atis­tas to weath­er fore­cast­ing to the fall of the Berlin Wall.” The book is “part his­to­ry of pro­gres­sive suc­cess sto­ries, part extend­ed argu­ment for hope as a cat­a­lyst for action.” Sol­nit wrote the book in 2004, dur­ing the reelec­tion of George W. Bush—a time when pro­gres­sives despaired of ever see­ing the end of chick­en­hawk sabre-rat­tling, wars for prof­it, pri­va­ti­za­tion of the pub­lic sphere, envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, theo­crat­ic polit­i­cal projects, cur­tail­ing of civ­il rights, or the dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism the admin­is­tra­tion whole­heart­ed­ly embraced (as Nao­mi Klein’s The Shock Doc­trine detailed). Plus ça change.…

In March of last year, Hay­mar­ket Books reis­sued Hope in the Dark, and on Novem­ber 10th, Sol­nit post­ed a link to a free down­load of the book on Face­book. It was down­loaded over 30,000 times in one week. Along with oth­er pro­gres­sive intel­lec­tu­als like Klein and Richard Rorty, Solnit—who became inter­na­tion­al­ly known for the term “mansplain­ing” in her essay, then book, Men Explain Things to Me—has now been cast as a “Cas­san­dra fig­ure of the left,” Gre­go­ry writes. But she rejects the dis­as­trous futil­i­ty inher­ent in that anal­o­gy:

If you think of a kind of ecol­o­gy of ideas, there are more than enough peo­ple telling us how hor­rif­ic and ter­ri­ble and bad every­thing is, and I don’t real­ly need to join that project. There’s a whole oth­er project of try­ing to coun­ter­bal­ance that — some­times we do win and this is how it worked in the past. Change is often unpre­dictable and indi­rect. We don’t know the future. We’ve changed the world many times, and remem­ber­ing that, that his­to­ry, is real­ly a source of pow­er to con­tin­ue and it doesn’t get talked about near­ly enough.

If we don’t hear enough talk about hope, maybe we need to hear more hope­ful music, Sol­nit sug­gests in her Hope in the Dark playlist. Thir­teen songs long, it moves between Bey­on­cé and The Clash, Iggy Pop and Ste­vie Nicks, Black Flag and Big Free­dia.

While the selec­tions speak for them­selves, she offers brief com­men­tary on each of her choic­es in a post at Powell’s. Beyoncé’s “For­ma­tion,” Sol­nit writes, “refor­mu­lates, dig­ging deep into the past of sor­row and suf­fer­ing and injus­tice and pulling us all with her into a future that could be dif­fer­ent.” Pat­ti Smith’s anthem “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” feels like hope, Sol­nit says: “it’s right about the pow­er we have, which oblig­es us to act, and which many duck by pre­tend­ing we’re help­less.” Maybe that’s what apoc­a­lypses are all about—making us feel small and pow­er­less in the face of impend­ing doom. But there are oth­er kinds of reli­gion, like that of Lee Williams’ “Steal My Joy.” It’s a “gor­geous gospel song,” writes Sol­nit. “Joys­teal­ers are every­where. Nev­er sur­ren­der to them.” That sounds like an ide­al exhor­ta­tion to imag­ine and fight for a bet­ter future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

89 Essen­tial Songs from The Sum­mer of Love: A 50th Anniver­sary Playlist

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

Langston Hugh­es Cre­ates a List of His 100 Favorite Jazz Record­ings: Hear 80+ of Them in a Big Playlist

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Secret Rhythm Behind Radiohead’s “Videotape” Now Finally Revealed

in Music | August 10th, 2017

“Video­tape” ends Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rain­bows, and like many of their albums, it tends towards the fune­re­al. (Think of the drunk­en “Life in a Glasshouse” from Amne­si­ac or “Motion Pic­ture Sound­track” from Kid A). And at first, it does sound very sim­ple, four plain­tive descend­ing chords and Thom Yorke’s high melody over the top of it.

But in this 10 minute video essay from Vox Pop: Ear­worm, the song’s struc­ture is peeled back to reveal a secret–that the chord sequence is not on the down­beat, but shift­ed a half-beat ear­li­er. Hence, it is a heav­i­ly syn­co­pat­ed song that removes all clues to its syn­co­pa­tion.

Advanced musi­cians out there might not be blown away by any of this, but for fans of Radio­head and those just com­ing to music the­o­ry, the video is a good intro­duc­tion to com­plex rhythm ideas. The fun comes from the back­wards way in which Vox and War­ren Lain–who devot­ed a whole 30 min­utes to explor­ing the song–came across the secret.

It starts with video of Thom Yorke try­ing to play a live ver­sion along to a click track, and then to Phil Selway’s drums. For some rea­son Yorke can’t do it. And that’s because his brain is want­i­ng to put the chords on the down­beat, the most nat­ur­al, obvi­ous choice. To play off beat, with­out fur­ther rhyth­mic infor­ma­tion, shows the band “fight­ing against not just their own musi­cal instincts, but their own brain­waves” as the Vox host explains.

There is much dis­cus­sion in the YouTube com­ments over whether these 10 min­utes are worth the analy­sis. It’s not that Radio­head invent­ed any­thing new here–check out the off-beat open­ing of some­thing like XTC’s “Wake Up”–but more that the band goes through the whole song (at least in the record­ed ver­sion) with­out reveal­ing the real rhythm, like play­ing in a cer­tain key and nev­er touch­ing the root note.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oiyn0_m2LZQ

To sum up: Radio­head push them­selves in the stu­dio and take those exper­i­ments into the live expe­ri­ence and chal­lenge them­selves. Which is way more than the major­i­ty of rock bands ever do. And bless ‘em, Yorke and co., for doing so.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

The Hid­den Secrets in “Day­dream­ing,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s New Radio­head Music Video

Eight Radio­head Albums Reimag­ined as Vin­tage Paper­back Books

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Free: A Crash Course in Design Thinking from Stanford’s Design School

in Design, Stanford | August 9th, 2017

If you ask a few of today’s young­sters what they want to do when they grow up, the word “design” will almost cer­tain­ly come up more than once. Ask them what design itself means to them, and you’ll get a vari­ety of answers from the vague­ly gen­er­al to the ultra-spe­cial­ized. The con­cept of design — and of design­ing, and of being a design­er — clear­ly holds a strong appeal, but how to define it in a use­ful way that still applies in as many cas­es as pos­si­ble?

One set of answers comes from the 90-minute “Crash Course in Design Think­ing” above, a pro­duc­tion of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s Has­so Plat­tner Insti­tute of Design, or d.school. The Inter­ac­tion Design Foun­da­tion defines design think­ing as “an iter­a­tive process in which we seek to under­stand the user, chal­lenge assump­tions we might have, and rede­fine prob­lems in an attempt to iden­ti­fy alter­na­tive strate­gies and solu­tions that might not be instant­ly appar­ent with our ini­tial lev­el of under­stand­ing.” In a brief his­to­ry of the sub­ject there, Rikke Dam and Teo Siang write that “busi­ness ana­lysts, engi­neers, sci­en­tists and cre­ative indi­vid­u­als have been focused on the meth­ods and process­es of inno­va­tion for decades.”

Stan­ford comes into the pic­ture in the ear­ly 1990s, with the for­ma­tion of the Design Think­ing-ori­ent­ed firm IDEO and its ” design process mod­elled on the work devel­oped at the Stan­ford Design School.” In oth­er words, some­one using design think­ing, on the job at IDEO or else­where, knows how to approach new, vague, or oth­er­wise tricky prob­lems in var­i­ous sec­tors and work step-by-step toward solu­tions. D.school, with their mis­sion to “build on meth­ods from across the field of design to cre­ate learn­ing expe­ri­ences that help peo­ple unlock their cre­ative poten­tial and apply it to the world,” aims to instill the prin­ci­ples of design think­ing in its stu­dents. And this crash course, through an activ­i­ty called “The Gift-Giv­ing Project,” offers a glimpse of how they do it.

You can just watch the video and get a sense of the “design cycle” as d.school teach­es it, or you can get hands-on by assem­bling the sim­ple required mate­ri­als and a group of your fel­low design enthu­si­asts (make sure you add up to an even num­ber). Young­ster or oth­er­wise, you may well emerge from the expe­ri­ence, a mere hour and a half lat­er, with not just new prob­lem-solv­ing habits of mind but a new­found zeal for design, how­ev­er you define it.

“Crash Course in Design Think­ing” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. You can find a num­ber of MOOCS on design think­ing and design at Cours­era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 20 Free eBooks on Design from O’Reilly Media

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

Abstract: Netflix’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series About “the Art of Design” Pre­mieres Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Roland TR-808, the Drum Machine That Changed Music Forever, Is Back! And It’s Now Affordable & Compact

in Music | August 9th, 2017

You don’t have to be a gear­head to instant­ly rec­og­nize the sound of the Roland TR-808. Intro­duced in 1980, the leg­endary drum machine is all over the 80s, 90s, and the retro 2000s, from dance prog­en­i­tors like Afri­ka Bambaataa’s “Plan­et Rock” to for­ma­tive Def Jam releas­es like Run DMC’s debut and the Beast­ie Boy’s Licensed to Ill (one of the orig­i­nal machines used on such clas­sics recent­ly went on sale). The 808 pro­vides the back­beat for Mar­vin Gaye’s “Sex­u­al Heal­ing,” New Order’s “Shell­shock,” and LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali”… track after era-defin­ing track puls­es with the icon­ic drum machine’s deep, thud­ding kick drum and com­i­cal­ly syn­thet­ic con­gas, claves, mara­cas, hand­claps, and cow­bells.

The 808 inspired a trib­ute cel­e­bra­tion around the world on August 8th (8/08) and stars in its own full-length doc­u­men­tary, “a nerdy love let­ter” to the elec­tric instru­ment, writes Slate. You can buy 808 Adi­das that actu­al­ly play beats, play with a vir­tu­al TR-808 in your brows­er, and enjoy the sounds of Kanye West’s odd­ly influ­en­tial 2008 album 808s and Heart­break. With all this renewed atten­tion, you might think it’s a good time for Japan’s Roland to bring the device back into pro­duc­tion, just as Moog briefly reis­sued its Min­i­moog Mod­el D (since dis­con­tin­ued) amidst a swirl of renewed main­stream inter­est in ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

Roland has obvi­ous­ly felt the pop cul­tur­al winds blow­ing its way. Yes­ter­day, on 808 Day, the com­pa­ny announced a new iter­a­tion, now called the TR-08, as part of its Bou­tique line. (A pre­vi­ous revival, the TR‑8, saw Roland com­bine the 808 with the clas­sic 909, renowned in rave cir­cles.) The video at the top fea­tures some of the 808’s orig­i­nal adopters—producer Jim­my Jam, rap­per Mar­ley Marl, and DJs Jazzy Jeff and Juan Atkins—marveling over the new prod­uct. Just above, in case you’ve some­how for­got­ten, we have a demon­stra­tion of famous TR-808 beats from tracks like “Plan­et Rock” and Cybotron’s “Clear,” songs that made inno­v­a­tive use of sam­ples and which them­selves became choice mate­r­i­al for dozens of sam­ple-based pro­duc­tions.

The 808 was the choice of drum machine for tin­ker­ers. Its sound was “crowd-sourced,” writes Chris Nor­ris, “with artists build­ing on one another’s mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the device. One of the first major inno­va­tions came about in 1984,” with the “fine tun­ing of the 808’s low fre­quen­cies and fur­ther widen­ing of its bass kick drum to cre­ate the sound of an under­ground nuke test” heard on pro­duc­er Strafe’s club hit “Set it Off.” The new TR-08 has a much small­er foot­print and expands the machine’s capa­bil­i­ties with con­tem­po­rary fea­tures like an LED screen, con­trols over gain and tun­ing, bat­tery or USB pow­er, and audio or MIDI through a USB con­nec­tion.

Arguably “one of the most impact­ful pieces of mod­ern music hard­ware,” writes The Verge, upon its debut the 808 “received mixed reviews and was con­sid­ered a com­mer­cial fail­ure as its ana­log cir­cuit­ry didn’t cre­ate the ‘tra­di­tion­al’ drum sounds” most pro­duc­ers expect­ed. This meant that 808s could be picked up rel­a­tive­ly cheap­ly by bed­room pro­duc­ers and local DJs. As a result, “the trem­bling feel­ing of that sound,” Nor­ris writes, “boom­ing down boule­vards in Oak­land, the Bronx, and Detroit are part of America’s cul­tur­al DNA, the ghost of Rea­gan-era blight” and the renais­sance of cre­ativ­i­ty born in its midst. To get a sense of the breadth of the 808’s musi­cal con­tri­bu­tions, lis­ten to the playlist above, with every­one from Talk­ing Heads to 2 LIVE CREW, Phil Collins, and Whit­ney Hous­ton putting in an appear­ance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhyth­mi­con from 1931, and the Mod­ern Drum Machines That Fol­lowed Decades Lat­er

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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25,000+ 78RPM Records Now Professionally Digitized & Streaming Online: A Treasure Trove of Early 20th Century Music

in History, Internet Archive, Music | August 9th, 2017

Every record­ing medi­um works as a metonym for its era: the term “LP” con­jures up asso­ci­a­tions with a broad musi­cal peri­od of clas­sic rock ‘n’ roll, soul, doo-wop, R&B, funk, jazz, dis­co etc.; we talk of the “CD era,” dom­i­nat­ed by dance music and hip-hop; the 45 makes us think of juke­box­es, din­ers, and sock-hops; and the cas­sette, well… at least one sub­genre of music, what John Peel called “sham­bling,” jan­g­ly, lo-fi pop, came to be known by the name “C86,” the title of an NME com­pi­la­tion, short for “Cas­sette, 1986.” (Read­ers of the mag­a­zine had to clip coupons and send mon­ey by postal mail to receive a copy of the tape.)

Soon, how­ev­er, few­er and few­er peo­ple will remem­ber the age of the 78rpm record, the pre­ferred vehi­cle for the music of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. From clas­si­cal and opera to blues, blue­grass, swing, rag­time, gospel, Hawai­ian, and hol­i­day nov­el­ties the 78 epit­o­mizes the sounds of its hey­day as much as any of the media men­tioned above.

While cas­settes recent­ly made a nos­tal­gic come­back, and turnta­bles are found in every big box store, we’re gen­er­al­ly not equipped to play back 78s. These are brit­tle records made from shel­lac, a resin secret­ed by bee­tles. They were often played on appli­ances that dou­bled as qual­i­ty par­lor fur­ni­ture.

Thanks now to the Inter­net Archive, that stal­wart of dig­i­tal cat­a­logu­ing and cura­tion, we can play twen­ty five thou­sand 78s and immerse our­selves in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, whether for research pur­pos­es or pure enjoy­ment. Pre­vi­ous efforts at preser­va­tion have “restored or remas­tered… com­mer­cial­ly viable record­ings” on LP or CD, writes The Great 78 Project, the archive’s vol­un­teer pro­gram to dig­i­tize musi­cal his­to­ry. The cur­rent effort seeks to go beyond pop­u­lar­i­ty and col­lect every­thing, from the rarest and strangest to the already his­toric. “I want to know what the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry sound­ed like,” writes Inter­net Archive founder Brew­ster Kahle, “Mid­west, dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent social class­es, dif­fer­ent immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties and their loves and fears.”

You can hear sev­er­al selec­tions here, and thou­sands more at this archive of 78s uploaded by audio-visu­al preser­va­tion com­pa­ny, George Blood, L.P. Oth­er 78rpm archives from vol­un­teer col­lec­tors and the ARChive of Con­tem­po­rary Music are being dig­i­tized and uploaded as well. You’ll note the record­ings are often sub­merged in crack­le and hiss, and gen­er­al­ly lack bass and tre­ble (most play­back sys­tems of the time could not repro­duce the low­er and high­er ends of the audi­ble spec­trum). “We have pre­served the often very promi­nent sur­face noise and imper­fec­tions,” the Archive writes, “and includ­ed files gen­er­at­ed by dif­fer­ent sizes and shapes of sty­lus to facil­i­tate dif­fer­ent kinds of analy­sis.” Dif­fer­ent play­back sys­tems could pro­duce marked­ly dif­fer­ent sounds, and the record­ings were not always strict­ly 78rpm.

These con­di­tions of the trans­fer ensure that we rough­ly hear what the first audi­ences heard, though the records’ age and our pen­chant for 7 speak­er audio sys­tems intro­duce some new vari­ables. None of these record­ings were even made in stereo. The 78 peri­od, notes Yale Library, last­ed between 1898 and the late 1950s, when the 33 1/2 rpm long-play­ing record ful­ly edged out the old­er mod­el. For approx­i­mate­ly fifty years, these records car­ried record­ed music, sound, and speech into homes around the world. “What is this?” Kahle asks of this for­mi­da­ble dig­i­ti­za­tion project. “A ref­er­ence col­lec­tion? A collector’s dream? A dis­cov­ery radio sta­tion? The sound­track of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry?” All of the above. To learn more about The Great 78 Project, includ­ing the tech­ni­cal details of the trans­fer and how you can care­ful­ly pack­age up and mail in your own 78rpm records, vis­it their Preser­va­tion page.

h/t @Ferdinand77

Relat­ed Con­tent:

BBC Launch­es World Music Archive

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

DC’s Leg­endary Punk Label Dischord Records Makes Its Entire Music Cat­a­log Free to Stream Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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