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Excellent Birds
"Excellent Birds" is a song written by Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel. It was first included on Anderson's '' Mister Heartbreak'' album in 1984. Gabriel later reworked the song for his 1986 '' So'' album with the title "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)". This version was excluded from the original vinyl edition of ''So'' but appeared as the final track on the cassette and CD releases. For later editions of ''So'', "In Your Eyes" was placed the last song on ''So'' instead, moving "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)" earlier in the track listing. Background Gabriel first encountered Anderson at her ''United States'' performance piece in spring 1983. After the performance, he approached her to discuss the possibility of collaborating on a thirty minute video that would showcase their work. In an October 1983 interview with Philip Bell of '' Sounds'' magazine, Gabriel reiterated his interest in working with Anderson on a multimedia project utilising her music, visuals, an ...
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Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson (born June 5, 1947) is an American avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker whose work encompasses performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting,Amirkhanian, Charles"Women in Electronic Music – 1977" Liner note essay. New World Records. Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York City during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery. She achieved unexpected commercial success when her song "O Superman" reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981. Anderson's debut studio album ''Big Science (Laurie Anderson album), Big Science'' was released in 1982 and has since been followed by a number of studio and live albums. She starred in and directed the 1986 concert film ''Home of the Brave (1986 film), Home of the Brave''. Anderson's creative output has also included theatrical and documentary works, voice acting, art installations, and a ...
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George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism. Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the Utopian and dystopian fiction, dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as George Orwell bibliograph ...
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Call And Response (music)
In music, call and response is a compositional technique, often a succession of two distinct phrase (music), phrases that works like a conversation in music. One musician offers a phrase, and a second player answers with a direct commentary or response. The phrases can be vocal, instrumental, or both. Additionally, they can take form as commentary to a statement, an answer to a question or repetition of a phrase following or slightly overlapping the initial speaker(s). It corresponds to the call and response pattern in human communication and is found as a basic element of musical form, such as the verse-chorus form, in many traditions. By region Africa In many African cultures, call and response is a pervasive pattern of democracy, democratic participation—in public gatherings in the discussion of civic affairs, in religious rituals, as well as in vocal and instrumental West African music, musical expression. Most of the call and response practices found in modern culture ori ...
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Fairlight CMI
The Fairlight CMI (short for Computer Musical Instrument) is a digital synthesizer, music sampler, and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979 by Fairlight. — with links to some Fairlight history and photos It was based on a commercial licence of the Qasar M8 developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney, Australia. It was one of the earliest electronic music workstations with an embedded sampler and is credited for coining the term sampling in music. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed with the Synclavier from New England Digital. History : 1971–1979 In the 1970s, Kim Ryrie, then a teenager, had an idea to develop a build-it-yourself analogue synthesizer, the ETI 4600, for the magazine he founded, '' Electronics Today International'' (ETI). Ryrie was frustrated by the limited number of sounds that the synthesizer could make. After his classmate, Peter Vogel, graduated from high school and had a brief stint at university in 1975, ...
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Synclavier
The Synclavier is an early digital synthesizer, polyphonic digital sampling system, and music workstation manufactured by New England Digital Corporation of Norwich, Vermont. It was produced in various forms from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. Used by many notable musicians, the Synclavier was inducted into the TECnology Hall of Fame, an honor given to "products and innovations that have had an enduring impact on the development of audio technology," in 2004. History The original design and development of the Synclavier prototype occurred at Dartmouth College with the collaboration of Jon Appleton, Professor of Digital Electronics, Sydney A. Alonso, and Cameron Jones, a software programmer and student at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Synclavier I First released in 1977–78, Note: This magazine article itself lacks sources, and as a result, lacks verifiability. it proved to be highly influential among both electronic music composers and music p ...
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LinnDrum
The LinnDrum, often erroneously referred to as the LM-2, is a drum machine manufactured by Linn Electronics between 1982 and 1985. About 5,000 units were sold. Development The LinnDrum was designed by the American engineer Roger Linn. It was cheaper and more widely produced than his first drum machine, the Linn LM-1, which had been affordable only to wealthy musicians and studios. Release The LinnDrum sold far more units than the Linn LM-1 and its successor, the Linn 9000, combined. It was used by artists and producers including Trevor Horn, Stock Aitken Waterman, Sandy Vee, Justin Hayward, and Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan .... When Linn Electronics closed in 1986, Forat Electronics purchased its assets and offered service, sounds, and ...
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Bill Laswell
William Otis Laswell (born February 12, 1955) is an American bass guitarist, record producer, and record label owner. He has been involved in thousands of recordings with many collaborators from all over the world. His music draws from funk, world music, jazz, Dub music, dub, and ambient music, ambient styles. According to music critic Chris Brazier, "Laswell's pet concept is 'collision music' which involves bringing together musicians from wildly divergent but complementary spheres and seeing what comes out." Although his bands may be credited under the same name and often feature the same roster of musicians, the styles and themes explored on different albums can vary dramatically. Material (band), Material began as a noisy dance music band, but later albums concentrated on hip hop, jazz, or spoken word readings by William S. Burroughs. Most versions of the band Praxis (band), Praxis have included guitarist Buckethead, but they have explored different permutations on albums. ...
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Twelve-string Guitar
A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 string (music), strings in six Course (music), courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in octaves, with those of the upper two courses tuned in unison. The gap between the strings within each dual-string course is narrow, and the strings of each course are fretted and plucked as a single unit. The neck is wider, to accommodate the extra strings, and is similar to the width of a classical guitar neck. The sound, particularly on acoustic instruments, is fuller and more harmonically resonant than six-string instruments. The 12-string guitar can be played like a 6-string guitar as players still use the same notes, chords and guitar techniques like a standard 6-string guitar, but advanced techniques can be challenging as players need to play or pluck two strings simultaneously. Structurally, 12-string g ...
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Manu Katché
Manu Katché (born 27 October 1958) is a French drummer and songwriter of Ivorian descent. He has worked extensively as a session musician, notably with Sting and Peter Gabriel, and his solo albums as a bandleader are largely in the jazz fusion style. Career Session musician Katché was born on 27 October 1958 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. He performed on several successful albums in the mid-1980s such as Peter Gabriel's 1986 album '' So'' and Sting's '' …Nothing Like the Sun'' (1987) and '' The Soul Cages'' (1991). Since then, he has been featured in the pop, rock and world music scenes, playing with numerous artists and bands, including: Afro Celt Sound System, Jeff Beck, Al Di Meola, Tears for Fears, Eurythmics, Simple Minds, Dire Straits, Laurent Voulzy, Jeanne Mas, Joni Mitchell, Mike Lindup, Jan Garbarek, Claudio Baglioni, Mango, Manu Chao, Loreena McKennitt, Youssou N'Dour, Robbie Robertson, Joan Armatrading, Joe Satria ...
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Register (music)
A register is the range (music), range within pitch space of some music or often musical speech. It may describe a given pitch or pitch class (or set theory (music), set of them), a human voice or musical instrument (or group of them), or both, as in a melody or part (music), part. It is also often related to timbre and musical form. In musical compositions, it may be fixed or "frozen". Relation to other musical elements or parameters Register is often understood in relation to other elements of music, sometimes called parameters. Relation to pitch A "higher" register may be said to indicate a "higher" pitch. For example, violins may be said to be in a "higher" register than cellos. This is often denoted concisely using subscripted numerals in scientific pitch notation. Relation to timbre The register in which an instrument plays, or in which a part is written, affects the quality of sound, or its timbre. Relation to form Register is also used structurally in musical form, with t ...
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Bassline
Bassline (also known as a bass line or bass part) is the term used in many styles of music, such as blues, jazz, funk, Dub music, dub and electronic music, electronic, traditional music, traditional, and classical music, for the low-pitched Part (music), instrumental part or line played (in jazz and some forms of popular music) by a rhythm section instrument such as the bass guitar, electric bass, double bass, cello, tuba or keyboard (piano, Hammond organ, electric organ, or synthesizer). In unaccompanied solo performance, basslines may simply be played in the lower register (music), register of any instrument while melody and/or further accompaniment is provided in the middle or upper register. In solo music for piano and pipe organ, these instruments have an excellent lower register that can be used to play a deep bassline. On organs, the bass line is typically played using the pedal keyboard and massive 16' and 32' bass pipes. Riffs and grooves Basslines in Pop music, popu ...
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