Dec 30, 2011

LuvJonez Music Youtube Channel

LuvJonez Music has a new Youtube channel for some promotional videos from the last few albums of 2011. Check them out if you like, by clicking on the Link in the title. Many of the albums are available for free to download or embed around your digital world.

Grafitti Science

This comic always makes me laugh. It simultaneously shows love for and makes fun of the world of graffiti and street art....with a mix of graphic design.

Dec 28, 2011

How Sampling Music Can and Has Changed the World

The World's Most Important Six Second Drum Loop

In 2004, Nate Harrison made a video discussing the surprising influence that a six second drumbeat has had on popular music. The Amen Break, as the beat has come to be known, has been sampled so many times by so many people that it's become part of our cultural fabric.

The brief drum solo, or break beat, first appeared on the B-side of a single recorded by the funk and soul band The Winstons in 1969. Because the break was isolated in the middle of the song, it was easy to isolate and incorporate into other songs using early samplers. By the 1980s, the drum loop was being sampled in hip hop, gangster rap, jungle, and drum and bass songs, spurring Harrison to claim that this six second clip "spawned several entire subcultures."

To learn more about how a six second drum loop came to be used for everything from producing old-school hip hop to hardcore dance music to the soundtrack for commercials, check out Nate Harrison's video below.