Kickin' it old school-ish ♥

     Old School Hip Hop/ Rap happened in the late 70's to the mid 80's. Some music from the early 90's is also considered as old school. Old school involves simple raps and simple rhythms. Hip hop was created around the concept of having fun and partying, with a few exceptions. Also during this period, rapping battles occurred, which since then has been a crowd pleaser. Some notable artists of this time are Afrika Baambataa, The Sugar Hill Gang, Fab Five Freddy, Doug E. Fresh, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

	Grandmaster Flash - The Message (1982) .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

      Hip-hop originated on the East Coast, primarily in New York.  It is believed that hip hop originated in the Bronx by Kool Herc who was a Jamaican DJ. Hip hop music has originated from the African American and the West African music. There was a lot of funk and soul music being played during the old school hip-hop era. The Djs finally started separating the percussion breaks from hit tracks. They gradually realized that these beats were more entertaining and fun to dance to.



 (Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five)

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five had one of the most influental effects on the rap game. They formed in the South Bronx of N.Y. They have one D.J: Grand Master Flash, and five rappers: Melle Mel, Kid Creole, Cowboy, Mr. Scorpion, and Rahiem. They got real famous in the early 80's. Two of their most famous songs are "Freedom" and "The Message". From 1983-1986, they broke up, but reformed in 1987, but they are no longer releasing hits these days.

It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing doo-ah, doo-ah! (:

     Swing music, swing jazz, or just swing: it was big through the 1930's and 40's, with a sophisticated sound and an exciting swing. It made people want to dance. Swing music is composed of good rhythm and fast tempos. Swing music took a decline guring WWII. Because of the war, two many musicians were over seas and it was tough to get enough people together to form a band and play. Touring became harder, due to costs and restrictions. There are so many famous musicians of the swing era, it's hard to choose a favorite but my top  would have to be Ben Webster, Count Basie, Dunke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and the Andrews Sisters. Swing music is really fun and eventhough it's an older type of music I really enjoy it. I mean alot if people to do; the rhythms are great and even the occasional vocals.
     A rather famous swing song is "It don't mean a thing" by Duke Ellington, in 1931. The lyrics go:

It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing
(doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah)
It don't mean a thing all you got to do is sing
(doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah)
It makes no difference
If it's sweet or hot
Just give that rhythm
Everything you've got
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing
(doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah)
It don't mean a thing all you got to do is sing
(doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah)
It makes no difference
If it's sweet or hot
Just give that rhythm
Everything you've got
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing
(doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah, doo-ah)
It makes no difference
If it's sweet or hot
Just give that rhythm
Everything you've got
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
It don't mean a thing all you got to do is sing
(doo-ah)
It makes no difference
If it's sweet or hot
Just give that rhythm
Everything you've got
Don't mean a thing all you've gotta do is swing
It don't mean a thing all you've gotta do is sing
It makes no difference
If it's sweet or hot
Give that rhythm
Everything you've got
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
(doo-ah, dooooo-aaaaah)
Don't mean a thing

     Duke was born Edward Kennedy Ellington, April 29, 1899, in Washington D.C. He was born to two pianists. He started taking piano lesson when he was 7 years old. He got the nickname Duke from his childhood friends who noticed his manners, grace, and noble attitude. In his life he accomplished so much, which is why he's so popularly known. For alot of people when you mention jazz or swing they automatically think of Duke Ellington.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington

 Duke

Serialism- music not murder (:

     Serialism music pretty much started with Arnold Schoenberg in 1921, and his twelve tone technique. It was extremely influential in post-war music. It's kinda like all twelve of the notes on the chromatic scale are only related with one another, and the music is NOT on key. The technique was pretty influential to composers in the mid-twentieth century. The music is definitely different from any music at or before its time. A lot of people were really against it, simply because they were not at all used to it.
     Arnold Schoenberg (September 13, 1874-July 13, 1951),  was first an Austrian composer, then later an American composer. the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea. He was born into a middle class Jewish family. He moved to the U.S in 1934. He was a painter, a tescher, a composer, and a music theorist. Since he was Jewish he had to flee several times before coming to America. Schoenberg experienced triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, which more than likely triggered his death. On Friday, July 13, 1951 Schoenberg laid in bed all day. Later that night he died at 11:45 p.m. Ironically enough it was 76, 7+6=13.


 (Schoenberg)


Although to the ear it may sound simple like anyone can play, but the notes are extremely complicated. For example:

 


     "So serial thinking is something that's come into our consciousness and will be there forever: it's relativity and nothing else. It just says: Use all the components of any given number of elements, don't leave out individual elements, use them all with equal importance and try to find an equidistant scale so that certain steps are no larger than others. It's a spiritual and democratic attitude toward the world. The stars are organized in a serial way. Whenever you look at a certain star sign you find a limited number of elements with different intervals. If we more thoroughly studied the distances and proportions of the stars we'd probably find certain relationships of multiples based on some logarithmic scale or whatever the scale may be."
                                                                                                                   -Karlheinz Stockhausen

The Romantic Period of Music

So I've never posted a blog before, but why not let the Romantic Period of music be my first because I have to for a class assignment.

     This period of music is pretty neat, considering I generally don't listen to this genre of music. There's a lot of emotion in the music and that was kinda different for that time. This music went era happened from like 1800 to 1910, and before that I don't think a lot of composers before that time put a lot of emotion in their music. There's a lot of songs in this era where you can actually paint a mental picture of what the composer is feeling. You hear romanticism and you automatically think lovey dovey stuff, but it's deeper than that. It's about all kinds of emotions ranging from being happy, sad, love struck, or even pist off. That's what I find intriguing about it. These dudes are like suttle rebels in a way, kinda like Elvis when he first came out except the crazy dancing. These composers wanted to do something different, I have the idea that they were tired of having to stick to the standards, they wanted to be creative and experiment.

Mauro Giuseppe Sergio Pantaleo Giuliani     July 27, 1781 – May 8, 1829

Mauro was an Italian guitarist and composer. He was born in Bisceglie, but he did most of his studying in Barletta. The first instrument he beacame familiar with was the cello. Somewhere he became devoted to playing guitar, and it didn't take long for him to become very good at it. Information on his musical training is vague, because any teachers he may have had are unknown. He was married with a kid, but one day he decided to move to Vienna alone and start a relationship with a lady, and they also had a child together. Vienna is where he became accustomed to the classical instrumental style, he began to publish in 1807. He was quite the muical celebrity of his time.