Carries side
Timeline of Caribbean influence
1950s
This is the beginning of Jamaican music and where other Jamaican genres have been influenced from.
Mento: Mento is Jamaican folk music and has influenced ska and reggae music.
Calypso: Calypso is African Caribbean music originating from Trinidad.
1960s
Ska: ska was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae its a mix of jazz, calypso and blues.
Rocksteady: Rocksteady came in between Ska and reggae in the mid 1960s. It was called Rocksteady because of the dance style in the song “Rocksteady” by Alton Ellis.
Soundsystems: a soundsystem is a group of DJ, MC’s and engineers playing ska, Mento Dub. Sound system culture helped develop Jamaican music and record labels significantly because they helped in selling records.
Island Records: Island records was founded in 1959 and released one of the top selling Ska songs of all time “My boy Lollipop” by Millie smalls. Island Record had Major influence in the progression of Jamaican music and by having most of the biggest names in Jamaican music like Bob Marley, Millie Smalls and Toots and the Maytals.
Blue Beat: Blue Beat like Island records was a records label in the 1960s that was hugely successful selling Ska and R&B records and because of its success they named early Jamaican pop music “Blue Beat”.
1970s
Reggae: in the 1970s Reggae grew to be the most popular Jamaican genre with the rise of Bob Marley. It was named Reggae after a song called “do the reggay” by the Maytals which was one of the first popular reggae songs to use the word reggae.
Dub: Dub grew out of reggae and consists of instrumental remixes of records and heavily emphasises Drums and Bass.
Lovers rock: lovers rock is a sub genre of reggae that has romantic lyrics or sound, this style became popular in London during the mid 1970s.
Two tone: In the late 1970s artists started fusing Ska with Punk rock and created “2 tone”. Its name comes from the Record Label “2 Tone”. This genre was about defusing racial tensions at the time by combining the two genres and getting everyone to dance to the same music.
Soca: Soca is a fusion of Calypso and Soul. It was made to try and revive Calypso music after the explosion in popularity of reggae.
The Police: The Police formed in 1977 and were a rock band heavily influenced by reggae. They were hugely successful and were part of the second British invasion in the US.
UB40: UB40 were a British pop and reggae band they formed in 1978. Their debut album “signing off” reached number 2 in the UK chart.
1980s
Dancehall: Dancehall is a sub genre of reggae that was mainstream in the 1980s and has heavily influenced recent pop music like “work” by Rihanna and “Get busy” by Sean paul and has led to the birth of American hip hop along with funk.
Ragga: Ragga is a sub-genre of dancehall and uses electronic music instrumentation. this genre has influenced grime.
1990s
Windrush generation: The Windrush generation is the generation of UK immigrants from the west indies. This caused alot of racial tension and many riots ensued.
2000s
Grime: Grime is a sub-genre of electronic dance music. It originally developed through pirate radio stations and the underground scene.
Evaluation of the live performance
For our performance on the 12th of December we had to turn a recent song from a British artist and use reggae techniques to make it into to a reggae song. My group consisted of Me, Josh, Kingsley, Oran and Steph. We had two proper rehearsals in total before the performance and i wasn’t in for the second one. In the first rehearsal we picked the song In2 by WSTRN. After we decided the song we figured out who was doing what, Oran and Steph on vocals Kinglsley on piano Me on bass and josh on drums.
On the day of the performance Steph didn’t show up and Oran was late so we got Dante to take Steph’s place and he did a great job. The song went well and we were all playing on time.
It would of been better if we had more time to rehearse so that we could have developed the reggae techniques further by adding walking bass lines and off beat syncopation on the drums.
Dub Track
Logic’s Overview
Logic’s architecture and the DAW architecture
A DAW is a Digital audio workstation, It is designed to produce music. There are 3 main parts to a DAW.
- Recording audio.
- Editing the audio by using various plugins and effects.
- Exporting the audio into a MP3 or whatever
Recording
To record Any audio into a DAW you need to tell it where it is recording the audio from and you will need an ADC or DAC, these are convertors that convert Digital signals to Analog signal and vise versa. The difference between an Analog signal and a Digital signal is that an Analog signal are continuous, smooth and can be seen on FM and AM radio stations whereas Digital signals are square waves and are either 1 (On) or 2 (Off), they can be seen on Digital Audio Broadcast radio (DAB).
Editing
The Main components of a DAW are the channel rack, mixer, timeline, piano roll. This can be found in most DAW except the interface may vary.
Channel rack: A channel rack is where you find all the different instruments of a track. The audio from the channel is taken sent to a Mixing track.
Mixer: A mixer works like a mixing desk. This is where you can add effects like reverb, compression, adjust EQ and etc..
Timeline: This is where the audio is presented
Piano roll: This allows you to draw MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) instead of playing it on a MIDI controller. But you can still use a MIDI controller to record audio and then quantise it to fix the subtle issues.
Exporting
After you’ve finished your project you have to export it if you want to share it with other people. You have many different options either MP3, .WAV or .FLAC. MP3 is the most common audio file but isn’t the best quality because its a small file. If you want a more accurate export of the raw audio you should use .WAV or .FLAC.
Music Business
Essay on Island records and It’s subsidiary companies.
Island Records
Island records is a mini major record label owned by UMG (Universal Music Group). It was founded on the 4 July 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall ,Leslie Kong and received some funding from a radio station.
Island records signs artists of all genres, from Dizzie Rascall to Florence and the machine. Island’s first Big artist was Bob Marley in 1973. Island records focused on their cover artwork because Blackwell believed that if it looked good on the outside their must be something good on the inside, Because of the combination of huge artists and good cover art sold a lot of new albums.
The record label started in Montego Bay and took local artists into their studio. They later decided to move to the UK after Jamaica gained independence, where he sold his records to record stores and then later with the success of Millie smalls became a mainstream record label. But after Millie One hit wonder Blackwell decided to rather go with artists with which he saw long term potential like Bob Marley, Cat Stevens and King crimson. In 1989 Blackwell sold Island Records for $300 Million and then later in 1997 stepped down as the boss.
Island Record’s Subsidiaries.
Island records has many subsidiary companies like Tuff Gong, Mercury Records and 4th and B’way records. These subsidiaries work through Island records but are owned by UMG.
Tuff Gong
Tuff Gong was founded by Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1970. Its headquarters are in Marley’s home in Jamaica. The label is distributed by UMG through Island records and is the official Caribbean distributor for Warner Music Group, Disney Music Group and Universal Music Group. It has a studio in Jamaica where some of Bob Marley’s songs were made such as “Redemption song”, “Buffalo soldier” and “No woman no cry”, the recording studio has also been used for other artist such as Snoop Dogg, Lauryn Hill and Sinead O’Connor.
Mercury Records
Mercury records was founded in Chicago in 1945 by Irving Green, Berle Adams, Arthur Talmadge and Ray Greenberg. It started as a jazz record label releasing Buddy rich and Quincy Jones albums in the early 1960s but then moved into a hard rock/Glam rock label with artists such as Kiss, Bon Jovi and Def leopard. It was bought by PolyGram (which was later bought by UMG), and uses Island records to distribute in the US and Virgin EMI records to Distribute in the UK.
4th and B’way Records
4th and B’way Records was fouded in 1984 by Chris Blackwell (founder of Island records) as a US subsidiary of Island records based in New York. It specialises in Hip hop and was distributed by island records in the US and by Virgin EMI records outside the US. It closed in 1998 when Blackwell left and all its artists were moved to Def jam records.
A Role in Island records and its Responsibilities.
Press Agent (PR Person):
PR stands for Public relations and their job is to handle the relationship between the artist and the media. They create Press kits which are packaged information about the artist sent to the media and then used for promotion. They are also responsible for press releases which are used to get coverage in the news papers. In conclusion a PR’s job is to get as much press coverage as possible.
Sync
Sync is when your music is added or used in a game or on TV. You can earn a lot of money from syncing your music to video games.
Copyright Law and Intellectual property
Intellectual property is what come out of your brain and you can copyright it so that no one can copy it and claim it as their own. Intellectual property encompasses books, films, songs and recordings.
How to copyright your own material?
- You have to record a song
- You have to register for a copyright
- Fill out a copyright registration application
- Pay the fee for registration
- Submit a copy of the song
- Wait for your registration to be proceeded
Copyright infringement
Radiohead were sued by Albert Hammond for similarities in chord progression and melody with his song “The air that I breathe” and Radiohead’s “creep”. Hammond won the lawsuit and got a percentage of the royalties and is credited as co-writers. Later Radiohead sued Lana Del Rey for copying “creep”. They wanted 100% of the publishing but it never went to court.
Publishing Companies
Publishing companies collect “royalties” which is money you have to pay to the owner of the copyrighted material if you use it.
An example of a UK Publishing company are PRS (performing rights society). They collect your copyrighted material. To join PRS its a one off membership fee for £100.
Globalisation of the music industry
The internet has changed the way people Consume and Distribute music. Less people buy physical copies of music now which means that the record label makes less money and people use streaming services which pays very little to the artist. This means that the label is making less money and has to get that money from other areas like merchandise and gigs.
Artist and repertoire (A&R)
A&R is responsible for talent scouting, the development of the artist both artistically and commercially, they also act as a middle man between the Record label and the artist. They can also sign artists to the record label.
Their jobs include listening to demos, putting artists with the right producer for them and assisting in creative input.
Record label departments and jobs
- Director of A&R
- A&R coordinator
- A&R administrator
- General manager
- Promotional Manager
- Promotion staffer
- Director of publicity
- Staff publicist
- Artist Development Rep
- Album cover designer
- Licensing Representative
- Sales and Marketing Manager
- Marketing coordinator
- Music marketing Rep
- Consumer Researcher
- Account Representative
- Sales Rep
- Field Merchandiser
- Music intern
- Social media Manager
- Music web designer
- Website Marketing Manager
Big three Major record Labels
- Sony
- Warner
- Universal
They make up almost 80% of the music market, they have everything in house and have the power to distribute and advertise artists all around the world, this means they can put you on major radio stations, Spotify playlists, Big billboards where there is a lot of circulation etc..
Mini Majors
Independent body distributed by a major record label
- Island
- Def jam
- Epic
Independent Record labels
Independent record labels operate without the funding of a major record label.
- Domino
- 4AD
- XL Recordings
Business models
Old model: 19% artist 81% label not including gigs, publishing and merchandise
New model: 360 record deal this means that they take a percentage of everything you gain even merchandise and gigs, (This is because of the globalisation of music through the internet).
Jeremy's Music Blog 