Download Disco-and More

Disco-and More!
• Disco is a genre of music that peaked in
popularity in the late 1970s, though it has
since enjoyed brief resurgences including the
present day. The term is derived from
discothèque (French for "library of
phonograph records", but subsequently used
as proper name for nightclubs in Paris).
• Its initial audiences were club-goers from the
African American, gay, Italian American, Latino,
and psychedelic communities in New York City
and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early
1970s. Disco also was a reaction against both the
domination of rock music and the stigmatization
of dance music by the counterculture during this
period. Women embraced disco as well, and the
music eventually expanded to several other
popular groups of the time.
• Musical influences include funk, Latin and soul
music. The disco sound has soaring, often
reverberated vocals over a steady "four-onthe-floor" beat, an eighth note (quaver) or
16th note (semi-quaver) hi-hat pattern with
an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a
prominent, syncopated electric bass line
sometimes consisting of octaves.
• The Fender Jazz Bass is often associated with
disco bass lines, because the instrument itself has
a very prominent "voice" in the musical mix. In
most disco tracks, strings, horns, electric pianos,
and electric guitars create a lush background
sound. Orchestral instruments such as the flute
are often used for solo melodies, and lead guitar
is less frequently used in disco than in rock. Many
disco songs employ the use of electronic
instruments such as synthesizers.
• Well-known late 1970s disco performers included ABBA, Donna
Summer, The Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, The Trammps,
Van McCoy, Gloria Gaynor, The Village People, Chic, and The
Jacksons—the latter which first dipped its toes into disco as The
Jackson 5.
• Summer would become the first well-known and most popular
disco artist—eventually having the title "The Queen of Disco"
bestowed upon her by various critics—and would also play a part in
pioneering the electronic sound that later became a prominent
element of disco. While performers and singers garnered the lion's
share of public attention, producers working behind the scenes
played an equal, if not more important role in disco, since they
often wrote the songs and created the innovative sounds and
production techniques that were part of the "disco sound."
• In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or
sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an
instrument or a sound recording in a different song or
piece.
• Originally developed by experimental musicians
working with musique concrète and electroacoustic
music, who physically manipulated tape loops or vinyl
records on a phonograph by the late 1960s, the use of
tape loop sampling influenced the development of
minimalist music and the production of psychedelic
rock and jazz fusion.
HIP HOP!
• However, hip hop music was the first popular
music genre based on the art of sampling - being
born from 1970s DJs who experimented with
manipulating vinyl on two turntables and an
audio mixer. The use of sampling in popular music
spread with the rise of electronic music and disco
in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, the
development of electronic dance music and
industrial music in the 1980s, and the worldwide
influence of hip hop since the 1980s on genres
ranging from contemporary R&B to indie rock..
• Sampling is now most often done with a sampler,
originally a piece of hardware, but today, more
commonly a computer program. However, vinyl
emulation software may also be used, and
turntablists continue to sample using traditional
methods. The inclusion of sampling tools in
modern digital production methods increasingly
introduced sampling into many genres of popular
music, as well as genres predating the invention
of sampling, such as classical music, jazz and
various forms of traditional music.
Kool Herc
• Often "samples" consist of one part of a song, such as a
rhythm break, which is then used to construct the beat
for another song. For instance, hip hop music
developed from DJs repeating the breaks from songs to
enable continuous dancing.
• The Funky drummer break and the Amen break, both
brief fragments taken from soul and funk music
recordings of the 1960s, have been among the most
common samples used in dance music and hip hop of
recent decades, with some entire subgenres like
breakbeat being based largely on complex
permutations of a single one of these samples.
Afrika Bambaataa
• Samples from rock recordings have also been
the basis of new songs; for example, the drum
introduction from Led Zeppelin's "When the
Levee Breaks" was sampled by the Beastie
Boys, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mike Oldfield, Rob
Dougan, Coldcut, Depeche Mode and Erasure,
among others. Often, samples are not taken
from other music, but from spoken words,
including those in non-musical media such as
movies, TV shows and advertising.