Tag Archives: music

Kaytranada – Leave Me Alone (ft. Shay Lia)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a music video. Here’s one by Kaytranada, taken from his album “99.9%”.

The album has been on repeat ever since it dropped in May, and has already taken its place in my “Best Albums of 2016” list.

Kanye deconstructed: The human voice as the ultimate instrument

Once again a great video by the folks over at Vox — their videos are always insightful, clear, well narrated, edited nicely, etc. In this video they talk about Kanye West and usage of the human voice throughout his oeuvre:

Kanye West’s music orbits around the power and flexibility of the human voice.

Take “Wolves” from “The Life of Pablo” for example (track starts at around 1:00):

It’s that voice floating throughout the track – in contrast with that bass — which does all the heavy lifting.

Kanye deconstructed: the human voice as the ultimate instrument →

Note: “808s & Heartbreak” and “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy“ are two of my favourite Kanye West albums. His most recent “The Life of Pablo” also pleases me. I suggest you start with those if you haven’t been listening to his albums yet. I wouldn’t recommend the album “Yeezus” though, it doesn’t really click with me.

react-music — Make beats with React!

The past few days Ken Wheeler has been tweeting some sneak peeks of what he’s been up to, after having heard that Akai was discontinuing its standalone hardware MPC drum machine offering:

I did what any geek that writes React code all day long would do: I wrote a library so that I can make beats with ReactJS.

The result is react-music:

react-music let you make beats using JSX code and hooks into the Web Audio API to turn your code into beautiful music. There is no UI, with the exception of a play/stop button and a spectrum analyzer that renders on your page.

No UI, only code:

<Song tempo={90}>
  <Sequencer resolution={16} bars={1}>
    <Sampler
      sample="/samples/kick.wav"
      steps={[0, 4, 8, 12]}
    />
  </Sequencer>
</Song>

Amazeballs!

Make Dope Beats With ReactJS →
react-music (GitHub) →

Piano + Glacier =

Performance by pianist Ludovico Einaudi on the Arctic Ocean, organised by Greenpeace:

Through his music, acclaimed Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi has added his voice to those of eight million people from across the world demanding protection for the Arctic. Einaudi performed one of his own compositions on a floating platform in the middle of the Ocean, against the backdrop of the Wahlenbergbreen glacier (in Svalbard, Norway).

Young Fathers – Dead

Yesterday I went to see alt-J together with @joggink at Vorst Nationaal. Whilst chatting up before and after the – truth be told – not that great concert (singing off key from the start, ORLY?) one of the topics, of course, was music.

During that talk I mentioned one of the, to me, musical revelations of 2014: Young Fathers. Their album “Dead” is one of the best albums of 2014. My last.fm stats tend to agree: 2nd most played artist the past 6 months.

I must admit the albums takes a while to grow on you. Please don’t discard it after the first few tracks, but be sure to also give “War”, “Get Up”, “Dip”, “Am I Not Your Boy”, and “I’ve Arrived” a listen.