Performers Essay

DJ KHALED

DJ Khaled, Originally known as Khaled Mohamed Khaled was born on November 26th 1975. He is an establishes DJ, Record Producer, Radio Personality and Record Label Executive. He has collaborated with a number of successful artists including Birdman, Drake and Nas

In the video i found of him performing, he used two turntables, a pioneer mixer and his laptop. his setup is mixed with both older and newer technology. I think this is because he stays within the style of hiphop which birthed DJing so he wants to stay close to the original way. DJ Khaled is uses his own ad-libs which he has chopped up and he uses these to hype up and interest with the crowd. He also effectively mixes tracks and Puts in quite a lot of scratching to make his performances more interesting and engaging. He also doesn't talk much but will sometimes have an MC at his performances swell to hype up the crowd even further by creating more energy.

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

DRAKE

born October 24, 1986, Aubrey Drake Graham AKA Drake, is a Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor.Drake released his debut studio album Thank Me Later in 2010, which debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 and was soon afterwards became certified platinum. His next two releases were 2011's Take Care and 2013's Nothing Was the Same, with certifications of quadruple and triple platinum. This also earn't him his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. 

Drake has a few different ways of performing to his crowd. Sometimes he will take moments in his performance to come with loads of energy and jump around the stage. He also does a lot of call and response. i also feel that the way the he orders his songs is very precise because he knows how to get the right reaction from the crowd. He also takes moments in between songs or during songs to talk to and have a conversation with the crowd. i feel that this technique is effective because it allows the crowd to feel as if they are part of the performance because he is fully talking to them. he also trys to make all of his music relate to all of his fans with this technique as well. (41:00)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81OqCa107mg



I think i would employ the same technique as DJ khaled when he has the adlivs that he plays over his set this is just to help build up the atmosphere. I would also use scratching because the genre of music that i DJ is hiphop so the scratching would compliment it nicely because it derives from that genre. i also liked the way he created a loop but playing a little section of a track on one deck and switching the fader to the other track and playing that same section and going back and forth. that was a technique that came from some of the original DJ's such as DJ Kool-Herc so it was cool to see the same techniques still being employed in performances today.

critically cubed part 2

Although she was out of the limelight for a while, Kate Bush surprised everyone with her fifth studio album released in 1985 – “Hounds of Love”.

The Album starts off a classic; one of Bush’s most famous songs, “Running Up That  Hill”. this song was released as a single prior to the album.

 The song surprised previous critics of hers,  especially coming up from a period where she seemed to drift away from music.  “Running Up That Hill”, as described by Bush herself, speaks of the possibility of a woman and man “trading places”. 

which is described in the lyrics as “making a deal with God”. Bush was forced to change the title to “Running” after hearing of the possibility that it potentially wouldn’t be played in many countries. It was one of the highlights of this album, and remains as a key pinpoint in Bush’s success.

“Running Up That Hill” is followed by four other songs of a similar genre including The track “Hounds of Love”.  “Night of the Demon”, though continues to be one of art rock’s finest singles. Talking about the experience of falling in love, the single refers to the emotions which surfaced from being “chased” by the “hounds of love”. 

The song, like the following two – “The Big Sky” and “Mother Stands for Comfort”, relies heavily on synths and early drum machines, sounding somewhat dated now but nonetheless moving. 

Oscar-Zack, have you heard any of Kate bush's music from her album "Hounds Of Love"?

Zack-Yea, thats the album with the song "Running up that Hill on right"? i really enjoyed the use of her harmony sin that song i think it complimented her style because she was slightly eccentric.

Oscar- Oh really, my favourite track was Hound of love. i also liked how she split the album into two parts, One with the Pop Ballad sounding stuff and another for the weirder sounding tracks. i Think it was effective because it was more user friendly, but it also allowed her to show a contrast in her music very effectively 

Zack-yea i agree oscar i feel like contrast is very important as an artist because it allows you're music to be more interesting. Also it allows you to go further in depth with you're music and you can do things like have alter ego's which is used modernly in todays music by artists such as Tyler the Creator.

Oscar- exactly it also allows you connect with you're audience more because you can build a deeper connection with them by showing them more sides to you and you're music. 

critically cubed part 1

After reading the article from"pop matters.com" its clear too see that the writer talks about how Wonder's album progresses to a more funky yet balladry sound. This article relates to the “AustinChronicle.com" article as they both describe Stevie Wonder's album thoroughly. I prefer the"AustinChronicle.com" as it's more in depth. Although, I do agree with "pop matters.com" views of "Talking Book”. 

I feel that they are true with their views about the change of sound to his album which is an important point. It was also quite interesting to read, due to the fact that it was a conversation with two writers, both stating their different opinions of Stevie's album. Both of these articles were written recently, "Pop Matter" in 2012 and "Austin Chronicle" in 2000.

The "Rollingstone.com" and "Newstates.com" article don't actually describe or discuss Stevie's album. For example, with "rolling stone.com" key information such as the year the album was released is missing.  The article only spoke about who produced it and how different it was to previous albums. but not how they feel about his music or wether they think it would be successful or not. 

I wouldn't use this article to reflect how they feel about his music at all. "Newstates.com" speaks similarly to the "Rollingstone" article, however this one was also written in 2012 but it has a complete contrast to “Rollingstone”.  I didn't find this article engaging due to the fact that it fully talks about the instrument the clavinet and doesn't go into detail with Stevie Wonder's "Talking Book". "Newstates.com" focuses on Wonder's well known instrument the clavinet and how it was growing increasingly popular at the time of his album. They described this instrument as his 'second voice’.

Overall I would say that the pop matters article was my favourite. this is because they spoke about his music anyhow he was changing his sound as well. The second two articles are still good however i felt that their articles focus’s weren't where they should've been.

Context Essay

The 1980's was a period in which music began to progress further throughout society and pop culture. The variations of music genres being birthed out of the 80s varied, with pop and dance music amongst the most popular. Genres like smooth Jazz and Rock music were also becoming more dominant. Pop culture was taking the world by storm, networks such as MTV started to become super powers in television. 1981 was the debut for their first music video launch, it was by "The Buggles".

In 1982, Sony and Phillips released the new modernisation of the CD system.  Soon after that, the first CD was released onto the market. Billy Joel's "52nd street". The advanced movement to change to CDs left cassettes and vinyl on a downward trail of unpopularity. Fashion was also highly influenced in the 1980s.  important icons such as Madonna and David Bowie led the industry in and started lots of iconic trends such as baggy trousers and crimped hair.

Michael Jackson-
Michael’s music that was released during this decade was a major influence on 80’s music and style. 
He has also had lots of different major global influences, from the moon walk in his performances to the gloves and jackets that he wore. It was during the 80’s that The Jackson Five started to separate and the performers started to focus on their solo careers. Michael Jackson decided to emerge with a bad boy persona that became notoriously popular.  especially throughout this decade. It can be seen in his album titled “Bad” which included songs such as “Bad” and “Smooth Criminal”. 

Run-DMC – The group that really brought hip-hop to the forefront was Run-DMC. Iconic Rhymes known for including humour such as “Peter Piper,” “My Adidas” made it hip-hop more family friendly. They also took Michael Jackson and Prince’s foray into hard rock and applied it to hip-hop. Their huge smash hit “Walk This Way” with Aerosmith in 1986 paved the way for The Beastie Boys, Eminem, and the nu metal movement of the 1990s. 


Michael Jackson has influenced my musical style because he is a pioneering artist. He was majorly involved in fusing genres in his music which is used more often now. producers such as Kanye west took influence from him. he used many techniques in his music from vocal harmonies to breaks. he was a very energetic performer as well, his audience loved seeing him do iconic dance moves such as the moonwalk or the gravity lean. i would also like to have this same level of energy when performing on stage to interact with my audience.


The 90's decade heavily inspired me because that was a time in which hip hop grew a lot more developed and a lot of iconic artists and concepts were created. Many famous acts who influence hip hop were birthed from this decade for example "A Tribe Called Quest", "Public Enemy", "Jay-Z". Some of the most infamous artists such as Biggie Smalls and Tupac where probably the most famous artists from this genre and influenced me as a producer and as an artist. they're music is still heavily sampled today. Biggie smalls' flow has definitely not only influenced me but a lot of other rappers as well.

Workshop Diary (Week 5+6)

We were given a list of a few different audio songs and we had to use the skills we've learnt over the past few weeks to change the audio and remix it into something else. I was given the song..........and I rearranged the order and created a four bar loop. I also changed the pitch added a filter and some reverb to create a more ambient effect throughout the song. This also allows the drum pattern to come in very clean and crisp because the sound will be much more abrupt rather than it being ambient and almost floaty. which creates a very nice contrast. We were also introduced to the flex tool and we were shown a variety of different ways to manipulate audio monophonically and polyphonically are just two examples.

In todays DJ lesson we continued with what we worked on previously. Added some more songs to our playlist, still trying to get our mixes as clean as possible. we exported the playlist onto an M3U file, and then exported the playlist onto each of our USB's

https://soundcloud.com/user-568484798/koolin

https://soundcloud.com/user-568484798/komplications

Composition Analysis's

My first track called "Komplications" took some inspiration from Massive Attack's -Teardrop. You can see that some inspiration is present in the drum pattern. For example I interpreted the way that they layer a lot of different sounds and carefully bring in other sounds to create different textures within the song such has ambient or a more rough and crispy texture. I also added some reverb and Delay which was present on the vocals of the track This allowed me to manipulate the song and add to the dark and intense theme of my track through creating spatiality within the track.  I used atmospheric dark sounding pads which were low frequency and thick sounding which also filled up the track quite a lot, but i also had some higher frequeny sounds and the cntrast allowed the higher frequency sounds to cut through th elowe frequency sounds. the Higher frequenciy sounds were quite twinkly to give ther listener an eerie feel as he listened to the track. Also because the track was very full, the sections in the song where some of the other instruemnts are taken out stand out a lot more creating an effective diminuendo

My second track took inspiration from James Brown and stevie wonder. I tried to create a very rythmic and syncopated atmosphere throughout this track. Like the James Brown song-Feel Good i tried to use a realistic sounding bass to give the overall track a more realistic funky feel. To do this i started with the bass line it was on a swing and was a sequence that was filled with lots of short plucked phrases but also some elongated ones to create a nice groove. I then took inspiration from the stevie wonder superstition track by using lots of different layered and syncopated sounds, i also used the clav synth intrument in my song like Stevie Wonder did in superstition for the main riff. i did this because the clav is a very distinctive sounding instrument and it is recognised notoriously in funk music. I also think that it contrasts and compliments the baseline because it cuts through it allowing the listener to distinctly hear and enjoy both sounds simultaneously. i also took inspiration from Stevie Wonder through using lots of harmonies to create a more thicker and complex sound in the instruments