Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the good folks at The Word assem­bled 40 Nois­es That Built Pop, a col­lec­tion of dis­tinc­tive pop music sounds that have “caused your ears to prick up, or your eye­brows to raise.” Some were orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in quite cal­cu­lat­ed ways. Oth­ers were hap­py acci­dents. Either way, the­ses sounds are now part of the pop tra­di­tion. We have high­light­ed four sounds that speak to us. But you should real­ly dive into and enjoy The Word’s col­lec­tion that was clear­ly put togeth­er with lov­ing care.

The Pow­er Chord from The Kinks: You Real­ly Got Me (1964)
“It’s the essen­tial build­ing block of rock; the root and the fifth of the chord played at sub­stan­tial vol­ume on gui­tar and dis­tort­ed to taste. It’s also the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of the pok­er face; with just the two notes, it’s nei­ther a sun­ny-sound­ing major chord nor a gloomy minor… With­out the pow­er chord entire gen­res of met­al sim­ply would­n’t exist.”

Vinyl Scratch from Her­bie Han­cock: Rock­it (1983)
“Any DJ cue­ing up a record through one ear of a pair of head­phones will have heard the sound of scratch­ing, but it was­n’t until the ear­ly days of hip hop that it was incor­po­rat­ed into musi­cal per­for­mance… Grand­mas­ter Flash, Afri­ka Bam­baataa and Kool Herc became the pio­neers of “turntab­lism”, while Grand Mix­er DXT’s work on Rock­it pro­pelled the sound into the main­stream and trans­formed the DJ into an unlike­ly front­man.”

Hand­clap from Kool & The Gang: Ladies Night (1979)
“As a per­cus­sive sound, [the hand­clap has] been used by every­one from fla­men­co dancers to Steve Reich, but it was in the mid-1970s when it found its true call­ing. Lay­ered on top of the snare drum to empha­sise the sec­ond and fourth beats of the bar, its for­mi­da­ble “crack” can be heard through­out dis­co and funk, and has since been employed by any­one wish­ing to hint at a par­ty atmos­phere…”

Gui­tar Feed­back from Gang Of Four: Anthrax (1981)
“A clas­sic case of rock music tak­ing an unde­sir­able noise and mould­ing it to suit its own pur­pos­es. The rea­son for feed­back is sim­ple: the gui­tar pick­up “hears” itself being blast­ed out of a speak­er cab­i­net, process­es the sound and pass­es it to the speak­er: noise piled upon noise. As rock music became less polite, more lib­er­ties were tak­en with feed­back; while there’s an unin­ten­tion­al burst at the front end of I Feel Fine by The Bea­t­les, the out­ro to The Who’s My Gen­er­a­tion uses the sound more cre­ative­ly.”

H/T Metafil­ter

And, on a total­ly unre­lat­ed note: Sun Ra and The Blues Project do Bat­man & Robin songs. Cour­tesy of the WFMU Blog Way­back Machine.

The Vel­vet Under­ground first released “Sweet Jane” in 1970, and a cool ver­sion it was. But, soon enough, Lou Reed launched his solo career, put out a live ver­sion of “Sweet Jane” on Rock n Roll Ani­mal (1974), and made the song his own. That same year, Reed per­formed anoth­er funk-laden ver­sion in Paris, with Prakash John play­ing bass and Steve Hunter on gui­tar. And that’s what the vin­tage video gods are serv­ing up today.

All these years lat­er, Sweet Jane still fires the rock ‘n roll imag­i­na­tion. In 2009, Reed per­formed the anthem with Metal­li­ca at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ben­e­fit Con­cert at Madi­son Square Gar­den, and it laid the foun­da­tion for a project now com­ing to fruition — a col­lab­o­ra­tive album called Lulu that will drop on Octo­ber 31st in the US, and Novem­ber 1 abroad. Reed orig­i­nal­ly wrote the songs for a play called Lulu, then he brought Metal­li­ca into the some­times emo­tion­al project and things just rolled along. In a recent inter­view with New York Mag­a­zine, Reed said, “the ver­sion of the Lulu music I did with Metal­li­ca is awe-inspir­ing. It’s maybe the best thing done by any­one, ever. It could cre­ate anoth­er plan­e­tary sys­tem. I’m not jok­ing, and I’m not being ego­tis­ti­cal.” The bar is now offi­cial­ly set high…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

The Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion Revis­it­ed: Hav­el at Colum­bia

James Tay­lor has start­ed to offer free gui­tar lessons online. He is, after all, your Handy Man.

Now let’s get this out of the way: The jury is still out on whether these video lessons will offer seri­ous guid­ance or not. The first video offers a some­what detailed primer on … car­ing for your fin­ger­nails. And it comes cou­pled with a short les­son, “Lit­tle Wheel” in e minor, that is decid­ed­ly short on ped­a­gogy. More lessons will be com­ing soon though. Sign up for JT’s email list, and they’ll ping you when new videos are post­ed online.

What to do in the mean­time? Well, you can always turn to YouTube, which fea­tures a sur­pris­ing num­ber of free video tuto­ri­als. If you sift around, you can learn how to buy an acoustic gui­tar, tune it by ear, play stum pat­terns, fin­ger pick, play var­i­ous chord pro­gres­sions and so on. For more lessons, you can start rum­mag­ing around three help­ful YouTube chan­nels: Rock­on­Good­Peo­ple; Watch & Learn Music Lessons;  and Mar­tyZ­songs. They pro­vide lots of free tuto­ri­als (while also try­ing to pro­mote paid prod­ucts on the side).

via metafil­ter

Today marks the offi­cial release of The Green Album, a new com­pi­la­tion fea­tur­ing con­tem­po­rary rock and indie artists cov­er­ing clas­sic Mup­pets songs. OK Go, Weez­er, Andrew Bird, and My Morn­ing Jack­et, they all con­tribute to the album. And, thanks to the good peo­ple at NPR, you can stream the com­plete album online for the remain­der of the week.

Mean­while, if you want to indulge in some more Mup­pet nos­tal­gia, don’t miss the Mup­pet ren­di­tion of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, or Jim Henson’s 15 Minute Primer on Pup­pet Mak­ing from 1969.