Tag: good music

Nudge – a seriously fun browser synth

The subversive geniuses at Hobnox have just released one of the most musical browser based synths I have ever played. Nudge enables you to step-enter 8 sounds into a looping 4/4 grid. The grid is pentatonic instead of full chromatic but there is still a surprising amount of creative flexibility. It is as fun to […]
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Bossa for a Blue Monday

I found a very good podcast of vinyl rips of out of print 60s bossa nova. There are some gems here but even when I am not blown away by a particular song, I love the way this stuff was recorded.
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The desert grew quiet last night

The brilliant and prolific Maurice Jarre passed away on Sunday. He wrote and recorded the entire score to Lawrence of Arabia in an astonishing 6 weeks – in reverse order. He achieved this by sleeping for 10 minutes every three hours for days at a time. One has to wonder if the crazed schedule and […]
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RIP Angela Morley

I was sad to hear of the passing this week of the gifted arranger, orchestrator and composer Angela Morley. Morley’s evocative and subtle work on many of the TV Dramas of my youth (Dallas, Dynasty, Hotel etc) still play in my head as the background music of my childhood and was often many magnitudes higher […]
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Buckwheat Zydeco Jackpot!

This sounds perhaps a little sad but I discovered Buckwheat about 25 years ago as a teenager when my mom bought the soundtrack album for ‘The Big Easy’. Even in the dead of winter in Rochester NY his tracks on that album were able to evoke swampy hot good times. It made me want to […]
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The Stark Reality and Hoagy Carmichael

Before American child rearing became neurotic and consumerist there was a time when we produced some really sophisticated, whimsical children’s television. Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop is one of these strange and charming experiments. Hoagy Carmichael shares the music with the excellent funk band  The Stark Reality and there is some seriously trippy animated musical notation […]
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My Favorite Lush Lifes

Anyone who knows me well knows that this is one of my favorite standards. I have been working on it since I was about the same age as Billy Strayhorn when he first started writing it – 16. It is a very subtle and difficult to play really well. I think I can finally do […]
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An Afternoon with Blossom

I’ve been listening to a lot of Blossom Dearie since learning of her death. What a loss. I had the good fortune to do a recording with her a few years back. I was doing the sound and incidental music for a Children’s TV pilot for my friends Bob and Anniken. They had managed to […]
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RIP Freddie Hubbard

Wow Freddie died. What a drag. He leaves an incredible body of work. Here is what I am listening today in his honor: Red Clay – Freddie Hubbard Mosaic – Art Blakey Hub Tones – Freddie Hubbard V.S.O.P – Herbie Hancock Maiden Voyage – Herbie Hancock
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A Song of its Time

Two of Portishead guest DJd on All Songs Considered a few weeks back. They brought in a varied combination of music that was important to them as a band and were mocked playfully for including Noel Harrison’s cover of Michel LeGrand’s ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ in the list. They defended this track by describing it […]
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