Is there an instrument more synonymous with a mood than the theremin? I’d hazard a guess no. Probably the kazoo, didgeridoo or other more novelty instruments might be in with a shout, but the theremin holds the prize of being considered a serious instrument and being totally bonkers at the same time.
I’ve tasked myself with doing this in my lunch break, so here goes… Air’s Moon Safari is one of those 90s coffee table albums along with Zero 7’s Simple Things and various others that helped bring the sound of downtempo and chill out to the masses (there are tonnes more but I’m against the clock here…)
Moon Safari was released in 1998 and produced three singles – All I Need, Sexy Boy and Kelly Watch the Stars.
As a young impressionable teenager, it was first hearing Mingus’ tribute to Thelonious Monk – Jump Monk – that first turned me on to jazz. I’d been exposed to odds and sods during secondary school but this was a milestone in terms of me becoming obsessed with the sound.
One of the eureka moments I had studying music was when I began to understand the harmonic series and how in turn this relates to pitch, intervals, harmony, tuning, waveforms, frequency and latterly timbre.
As a music technology teacher it’s often useful to go through a track in its entirety as a case study. Normally using your own music makes the most sense as you have access to all the stems and have prior knowledge of the sound design, chord progression choices, where samples are taken from etc.
New York in the 1940s saw an explosion of musical creativity: small ensembles playing heavily reharmonized tunes, often at a flurried pace, and relying very heavily on improvisation – this is the music we know now to be bebop.