Misplaced Pages

Grandmaster Flash

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

A slipmat is a circular piece of slippery cloth or synthetic materials disk jockeys place on the turntable platter instead of the traditional rubber mat.

#217782

75-469: Joseph Robert Saddler (born January 1, 1958), known by his stage name Grandmaster Flash , is an American musician and DJ. He created a DJ technique called the Quick Mix Theory. This technique serviced the break-dancer and the rapper by elongating the drum breaks through the use of duplicate copies of vinyl. This technique gave birth to cutting and scratching. It also gave rappers better music with

150-405: A " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several minutes or hours, or, at

225-438: A "pulse-group" that corresponds to the poetic foot . Normally such pulse-groups are defined by taking the most accented beat as the first and counting the pulses until the next accent. Scholes 1977b A rhythm that accents another beat and de-emphasises the downbeat as established or assumed from the melody or from a preceding rhythm is called syncopated rhythm. Normally, even the most complex of meters may be broken down into

300-463: A "wafer") allowed the record to move fluidly. The end result of that was the creation of what we today call the Slipmat. Another item that played a key role in the successful implementation of the quick mix theory is the needle/stylus. He realized that the stylus came in two classes: elliptical, which sounded better but would not stay in the groove, and spherical. The spherical needle, although making

375-437: A basic pulse but a freer rhythm, like the rhythm of prose compared to that of verse. See Free time (music) . Finally some music, such as some graphically scored works since the 1950s and non-European music such as Honkyoku repertoire for shakuhachi , may be considered ametric . Senza misura is an Italian musical term for "without meter", meaning to play without a beat, using time to measure how long it will take to play

450-546: A building, referring to patterns in the spacing of windows, columns, and other elements of the façade . In recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Maury Yeston , Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff , Jonathan Kramer , Christopher Hasty, Godfried Toussaint , William Rothstein, Joel Lester, Guerino Mazzola and Steffen Krebber . In his television series How Music Works , Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm recalls

525-430: A chain of duple and triple pulses either by addition or division . According to Pierre Boulez , beat structures beyond four, in western music, are "simply not natural". The tempo of the piece is the speed or frequency of the tactus , a measure of how quickly the beat flows. This is often measured in 'beats per minute' ( bpm ): 60 bpm means a speed of one beat per second, a frequency of 1 Hz. A rhythmic unit

600-413: A change in rhythm, which implies an inadequate perception of musical meaning. The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody (see also: prosody (music) ): it is a topic in linguistics and poetics , where it means the number of lines in a verse , the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented. Music inherited

675-523: A characteristic tempo and measure. The Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing defines the tango , for example, as to be danced in 4 time at approximately 66 beats per minute. The basic slow step forwards or backwards, lasting for one beat, is called a "slow", so that a full "right–left" step is equal to one 4 measure. ( See Rhythm and dance .) The general classifications of metrical rhythm , measured rhythm , and free rhythm may be distinguished. Metrical or divisive rhythm, by far

750-571: A copy of my album and I bought just enough felt to cut out two round circles the same size as a 33’ LP and—when my mother wasn't looking—I turned the iron all the way up high and I used my mother's spray starch. I sprayed it until this limp piece of felt became—I called it a wafer, like what you get in church at Easter. Today it's called a slipmat.” This music-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Rhythm Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός , rhythmos , "any regular recurring motion, symmetry " ) generally means

825-469: A double tempo (denoted as R012 = repeat from 0, one time, twice faster): However, the motive with this rhythm in the Moussorgsky's piece is rather perceived as a repeat This context-dependent perception of rhythm is explained by the principle of correlative perception, according to which data are perceived in the simplest way. From the viewpoint of Kolmogorov 's complexity theory, this means such

SECTION 10

#1732798106218

900-592: A fingertip-to-vinyl and crossfader technique called the Quick Mix Theory. In doing this, he figured out a mathematical way to cut, paste, repeat, and extend a very minuscule piece of an existing composition. This innovation took place in two places in the Bronx. The first location was his parents' house, 2730 Dewey Ave in the Throggs Neck Projects of the Bronx. The completion of the Quik Mix Theory

975-503: A grooved disc. Flash continued to experiment by taking apart any machine he could get his hands on to figure out how it worked. His early work shows the innovative ways in which his artistic abilities led to what is considered the first evolution of hip hop culture. He hosted a weekly show on Sirius Satellite Radio (Friday Night Fire with Grandmaster Flash) and was presented with the BET "I Am Hip Hop Icon" award in 2006. Grandmaster Flash and

1050-492: A pattern that is short enough to memorize. The alternation of the strong and weak beat is fundamental to the ancient language of poetry, dance and music. The common poetic term "foot" refers, as in dance, to the lifting and tapping of the foot in time. In a similar way musicians speak of an upbeat and a downbeat and of the "on" and "off" beat . These contrasts naturally facilitate a dual hierarchy of rhythm and depend on repeating patterns of duration, accent and rest forming

1125-558: A piano-roll recording contains tempo deviations within [REDACTED] . = 19/119, a span of 5.5 times. Such tempo deviations are strictly prohibited, for example, in Bulgarian or Turkish music based on so-called additive rhythms with complex duration ratios, which can also be explained by the principle of correlativity of perception. If a rhythm is not structurally redundant, then even minor tempo deviations are not perceived as accelerando or ritardando but rather given an impression of

1200-425: A representation of the data that minimizes the amount of memory. The example considered suggests two alternative representations of the same rhythm: as it is, and as the rhythm-tempo interaction – a two-level representation in terms of a generative rhythmic pattern and a "tempo curve". Table 1 displays these possibilities both with and without pitch, assuming that one duration requires one byte of information, one byte

1275-678: A seamless elongated bed of beats to speak on. He also invented the slipmat . He is the founder and creator of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five , the first rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2019 he became the first hip hop artist to be honoured with the Polar Music Prize . On May 21, 2022, he acquired an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Buffalo State University . On June 1, 2023, he

1350-419: A series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time". The "perception" and "abstraction" of rhythmic measure is the foundation of human instinctive musical participation, as when we divide a series of identical clock-ticks into "tick-tock-tick-tock". Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the sense of rhythm was developed in the early stages of hominid evolution by

1425-517: A shape and structure of their own, also function as integral parts of a larger ["architectonic"] rhythmic organization. Most music, dance and oral poetry establishes and maintains an underlying "metric level", a basic unit of time that may be audible or implied, the pulse or tactus of the mensural level , or beat level , sometimes simply called the beat . This consists of a (repeating) series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time. The "beat" pulse

1500-414: A strong pulse are strong , on a weak pulse, weak and those that end on a strong or weak upbeat are upbeat . Rhythm is marked by the regulated succession of opposite elements: the dynamics of the strong and weak beat, the played beat and the inaudible but implied rest beat , or the long and short note. As well as perceiving rhythm humans must be able to anticipate it. This depends on repetition of

1575-484: Is a 7-minute solo showcase of Grandmaster Flash's virtuosic turntable skills, combining elements of Blondie 's "Rapture", Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache", Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", Chic's "Good Times", and the group's own "Freedom". It is also the first documented appearance of scratching on a record. That year, the group opened for The Clash and were poorly received by an audience unaccustomed to

SECTION 20

#1732798106218

1650-405: Is a durational pattern that has a period equivalent to a pulse or several pulses. The duration of any such unit is inversely related to its tempo. Musical sound may be analyzed on five different time scales, which Moravscik has arranged in order of increasing duration. Curtis Roads takes a wider view by distinguishing nine-time scales, this time in order of decreasing duration. The first two,

1725-570: Is a subject of particular interest to outsiders while African scholars from Kyagambiddwa to Kongo have, for the most part, accepted the conventions and limitations of staff notation, and produced transcriptions to inform and enable discussion and debate. John Miller has argued that West African music is based on the tension between rhythms, polyrhythms created by the simultaneous sounding of two or more different rhythms, generally one dominant rhythm interacting with one or more independent competing rhythms. These often oppose or complement each other and

1800-448: Is any durational pattern that, in contrast to the rhythmic unit, does not occupy a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level. It may be described according to its beginning and ending or by the rhythmic units it contains. Rhythms that begin on a strong pulse are thetic , those beginning on a weak pulse are anacrustic and those beginning after a rest or tied-over note are called initial rest . Endings on

1875-550: Is fundamental, so that a person's sense of rhythm cannot be lost (e.g. by stroke). "There is not a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory beat", Sacks write, "No doubt many pet lovers will dispute this notion, and indeed many animals, from the Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna to performing circus animals appear to 'dance' to music. It

1950-402: Is needed for the pitch of one tone, and invoking the repeat algorithm with its parameters R012 takes four bytes. As shown in the bottom row of the table, the rhythm without pitch requires fewer bytes if it is "perceived" as it is, without repetitions and tempo leaps. On the contrary, its melodic version requires fewer bytes if the rhythm is "perceived" as being repeated at a double tempo. Thus,

2025-515: Is not a common word or phrase in the English Language, appearing approximately 0.01 times per million words in modern written English. Counter Rhythm has been on a steady decrease in usage since its conception, with the exception of a spike in usage in the 1970s. Previous definitions that have been phased out include, "The musical counter-rhythms which Marlowe introduced" and "Splashes of counter-rhythms, flashing tremolos" (OED ).   In

2100-434: Is not clear whether they are doing so or are responding to subtle visual or tactile cues from the humans around them." Human rhythmic arts are possibly to some extent rooted in courtship ritual. The establishment of a basic beat requires the perception of a regular sequence of distinct short-duration pulses and, as a subjective perception of loudness is relative to background noise levels, a pulse must decay to silence before

2175-468: Is not necessarily the fastest or the slowest component of the rhythm but the one that is perceived as fundamental: it has a tempo to which listeners entrain as they tap their foot or dance to a piece of music. It is currently most often designated as a crotchet or quarter note in western notation (see time signature ). Faster levels are division levels , and slower levels are multiple levels . Maury Yeston clarified "Rhythms of recurrence" arise from

2250-499: Is one of the three aspects of prosody , along with stress and intonation . Languages can be categorized according to whether they are syllable-timed, mora-timed, or stress-timed. Speakers of syllable-timed languages such as Spanish and Cantonese put roughly equal time on each syllable; in contrast, speakers of stressed-timed languages such as English and Mandarin Chinese put roughly equal time lags between stressed syllables, with

2325-475: Is related to the effectiveness of their upholding community values. Indian music has also been passed on orally. Tabla players would learn to speak complex rhythm patterns and phrases before attempting to play them. Sheila Chandra , an English pop singer of Indian descent, made performances based on her singing these patterns. In Indian classical music , the Tala of a composition is the rhythmic pattern over which

Grandmaster Flash - Misplaced Pages Continue

2400-400: Is the dependence of its perception on tempo, and, conversely, the dependence of tempo perception on rhythm. Furthermore, the rhythm–tempo interaction is context dependent, as explained by Andranik Tangian using an example of the leading rhythm of "Promenade" from Moussorgsky 's Pictures at an Exhibition :( This rhythm is perceived as it is rather than as the first three events repeated at

2475-521: The Funky Four ) and Scorpio (Eddie Morris, a.k.a. Mr. Ness) to make Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Quickly gaining recognition for their skillful raps, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five pioneered MCing and freestyle battles. Some of the staple phrases in MCing have their origins in the early shows and recordings of the group. In 1978, the new group began performing regularly at Disco Fever in

2550-472: The Griot tradition of Africa everything related to music has been passed on orally. Babatunde Olatunji (1927–2003) developed a simple series of spoken sounds for teaching the rhythms of the hand-drum, using six vocal sounds, "Goon, Doon, Go, Do, Pa, Ta", for three basic sounds on the drum, each played with either the left or the right hand. The debate about the appropriateness of staff notation for African music

2625-711: The gamelan . For information on rhythm in Indian music see Tala (music) . For other Asian approaches to rhythm see Rhythm in Persian music , Rhythm in Arabic music and Usul —Rhythm in Turkish music and Dumbek rhythms . As a piece of music unfolds, its rhythmic structure is perceived not as a series of discrete independent units strung together in a mechanical, additive, way like beads [or "pulses"], but as an organic process in which smaller rhythmic motives, whole possessing

2700-567: The infinite and the supra musical, encompass natural periodicities of months, years, decades, centuries, and greater, while the last three, the sample and subsample, which take account of digital and electronic rates "too brief to be properly recorded or perceived", measured in millionths of seconds ( microseconds ), and finally the infinitesimal or infinitely brief, are again in the extra-musical domain. Roads' Macro level, encompassing "overall musical architecture or form " roughly corresponds to Moravcsik's "very long" division while his Meso level,

2775-484: The Bronx, one of the first times a hip-hop group was given a weekly gig at a well-known venue. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were signed to Bobby Robinson's Enjoy Records and in 1979 released their first single, "Superrappin'". In 1980 they signed to Sugar Hill Records and began touring and releasing numerous singles. The seminal " The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel ", released in 1981,

2850-596: The Furious Five were the first hip-hop/rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 12, 2007, by Jay-Z . In 2008, he remixed the single "Into the Galaxy" by the Australian group, Midnight Juggernauts . It has been said that "his pioneering mixing skills transformed the turntable into a true 'instrument', and his ability to get a crowd moving has made his DJ sets legendary." Grandmaster Flash appears in

2925-481: The Furious Five". Grandmaster Flash was also interviewed in the 1986 cult documentary Big Fun in the Big Town . Although frequently credited on the records, Grandmaster Flash does not actually appear on "The Message", "Freedom", or many of the other Furious Five songs. Although Grandmaster Flash provided the central element of the group's sound when performing live (in addition to giving the group its name), there

3000-509: The National Recording Registry, the first hip hop recording to receive this honor. Critics praised the song's social awareness, calling the chorus "a slow chant seething with desperation and fury." Other than Melle Mel, no members of the group actually appear in the song. Rahiem lip-synced Duke Bootee's vocal in the music video. The same year, Grandmaster Flash appeared in the movie " Wild Style " and sued Sugar Hill over

3075-657: The TOP ten of the German charts. In 2008, he released a memoir, The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats , in which he talks about the origins of his fascination with scratching records and creating new beats. From a young age, Flash talks about how he would sneak into his father's record room to watch the record player spin, and then get punished for touching the records. He found inspiration even from things not associated with music. The spokes of his bicycle caused an interest in how record players create music just by rotating

Grandmaster Flash - Misplaced Pages Continue

3150-423: The bar. A composite rhythm is the durations and patterns (rhythm) produced by amalgamating all sounding parts of a musical texture . In music of the common practice period , the composite rhythm usually confirms the meter , often in metric or even-note patterns identical to the pulse on a specific metric level. White defines composite rhythm as, "the resultant overall rhythmic articulation among all

3225-625: The development of the effective defense system of early hominids. Rhythmic war cry , rhythmic drumming by shamans , rhythmic drilling of the soldiers and contemporary professional combat forces listening to the heavy rhythmic rock music all use the ability of rhythm to unite human individuals into a shared collective identity where group members put the interests of the group above their individual interests and safety. Some types of parrots can know rhythm. Neurologist Oliver Sacks states that chimpanzees and other animals show no similar appreciation of rhythm yet posits that human affinity for rhythm

3300-428: The dominant rhythm. Moral values underpin a musical system based on repetition of relatively simple patterns that meet at distant cross-rhythmic intervals and on call-and-response form . Collective utterances such as proverbs or lineages appear either in phrases translated into "drum talk" or in the words of songs. People expect musicians to stimulate participation by reacting to people dancing. Appreciation of musicians

3375-417: The earliest New York DJ scene, attending parties set up by early luminaries like DJ Kool Herc and Disco King Mario. Saddler's uncle Sandy Saddler was a featherweight boxing champion. Grandmaster Flash observed the styles of the smooth transitions of a disco DJ versus the non-fluid non-BPM-matched transitions of early DJing. He chose to complete his studies with the former. Grandmaster Flash came up with

3450-563: The ensemble went by the name "Grandmaster Flash & the 3 MCs". Cowboy created the term hip hop . He created the term while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of soldiers marching. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance. Mel was the first rapper to call himself "MC" (Master of Ceremony). Two other rappers briefly joined, but they were replaced more permanently by Rahiem (Guy Todd Williams, previously in

3525-405: The forces of natural selection . Plenty of animals walk rhythmically and hear the sounds of the heartbeat in the womb, but only humans have the ability to be engaged ( entrained ) in rhythmically coordinated vocalizations and other activities. According to Jordania, development of the sense of rhythm was central for the achievement of the specific neurological state of the battle trance, crucial for

3600-414: The four element cultures of hip-hop. After the premiere of The Get Down , Netflix premiered Hip-Hop Evolution , a music documentary discussing the history of hip hop in which Grandmaster Flash talks about the evolution of his art. In 2023, Grandmaster Flash competed in season nine of The Masked Singer as "Polar Bear". He was eliminated on "New York Night". As part of his encore, some DJ equipment

3675-454: The interaction of two levels of motion, the faster providing the pulse and the slower organizing the beats into repetitive groups. "Once a metric hierarchy has been established, we, as listeners, will maintain that organization as long as minimal evidence is present". A durational pattern that synchronises with a pulse or pulses on the underlying metric level may be called a rhythmic unit . These may be classified as: A rhythmic gesture

3750-581: The level of "divisions of form" including movements , sections , phrases taking seconds or minutes, is likewise similar to Moravcsik's "long" category. Roads' Sound object : "a basic unit of musical structure" and a generalization of note ( Xenakis' mini structural time scale); fraction of a second to several seconds, and his Microsound (see granular synthesis ) down to the threshold of audible perception; thousandths to millionths of seconds, are similarly comparable to Moravcsik's "short" and "supershort" levels of duration. One difficulty in defining rhythm

3825-449: The loop of interdependence of rhythm and tempo is overcome due to the simplicity criterion, which "optimally" distributes the complexity of perception between rhythm and tempo. In the above example, the repetition is recognized because of additional repetition of the melodic contour, which results in a certain redundancy of the musical structure, making the recognition of the rhythmic pattern "robust" under tempo deviations. Generally speaking,

SECTION 50

#1732798106218

3900-534: The more redundant the "musical support" of a rhythmic pattern, the better its recognizability under augmentations and diminutions, that is, its distortions are perceived as tempo variations rather than rhythmic changes: By taking into account melodic context, homogeneity of accompaniment, harmonic pulsation, and other cues, the range of admissible tempo deviations can be extended further, yet still not preventing musically normal perception. For example, Skrjabin 's own performance of his Poem op. 32 no. 1 transcribed from

3975-544: The most common in Western music calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of the beat. Normal accents re-occur regularly providing systematical grouping (measures). Measured rhythm ( additive rhythm ) also calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of a specified time unit but the accents do not recur regularly within the cycle. Free rhythm is where there is neither, such as in Christian chant , which has

4050-410: The most extreme, even over many years. The Oxford English Dictionary defines rhythm as "The measured flow of words or phrases in verse, forming various patterns of sound as determined by the relation of long and short or stressed and unstressed syllables in a metrical foot or line; an instance of this" . Rhythm is related to and distinguished from pulse, meter, and beats: Rhythm may be defined as

4125-468: The new style. The group's most significant hit was the electro rap song " The Message " (1982), which was produced by in-house Sugar Hill producer Clifton "Jiggs" Chase and featured session musician Duke Bootee. Unlike earlier rap tunes, "The Message" featured a grim narrative about inner city violence, drugs, and poverty. In 2002, it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to

4200-422: The next occurs if it is to be really distinct. For this reason, the fast-transient sounds of percussion instruments lend themselves to the definition of rhythm. Musical cultures that rely upon such instruments may develop multi-layered polyrhythm and simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature, called polymeter . Such are the cross-rhythms of Sub-Saharan Africa and the interlocking kotekan rhythms of

4275-412: The non-payment of royalties. Tensions mounted as "The Message" gained in popularity, eventually leading to a rupture between Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash. Soon the group disintegrated entirely. Grandmaster Flash, Kidd Creole, and Rahiem left Sugar Hill, signed with Elektra Records , and continued on as simply "Grandmaster Flash", while Melle Mel and the others continued on as "Grandmaster Melle Mel &

4350-455: The platter, allowing the DJ to manipulate a record on a turntable while the platter continues to rotate underneath. This is useful for holding a record still for slip-cueing , making minute adjustments during beatmatching and mixing and pulling the record back and forth for scratching . They are also very commonly used simply as decoration for when a record isn't on the turntable. The slipmat

4425-557: The regularity with which we walk and the heartbeat. Other research suggests that it does not relate to the heartbeat directly, but rather the speed of emotional affect, which also influences heartbeat. Yet other researchers suggest that since certain features of human music are widespread, it is "reasonable to suspect that beat-based rhythmic processing has ancient evolutionary roots". Justin London writes that musical metre "involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of

4500-426: The sense of a regular beat is absent because the music consists only of long sustained tones ( drones ). In the 1930s, Henry Cowell wrote music involving multiple simultaneous periodic rhythms and collaborated with Leon Theremin to invent the rhythmicon , the first electronic rhythm machine , in order to perform them. Similarly, Conlon Nancarrow wrote for the player piano . In linguistics , rhythm or isochrony

4575-488: The song sound worse, would stay inside the groove. This, in turn, allowed Flash to turn the vinyl counterclockwise to re-arrive at the top of the break. Grandmaster Flash played parties and collaborated with rappers such as Kurtis Blow and Lovebug Starski . In the late 1970s, he formed his own group. The original lineup consisted of Cowboy ( Keef Cowboy ), Melle Mel (Melvin Glover), and Kidd Creole (Nathaniel Glover), and

SECTION 60

#1732798106218

4650-405: The steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry. In some performing arts, such as hip hop music , the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics is one of the most important elements of the style. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed movement through space" and a common language of pattern unites rhythm with geometry. For example, architects often speak of the rhythm of

4725-516: The term " meter or metre " from the terminology of poetry. ) The metric structure of music includes meter, tempo and all other rhythmic aspects that produce temporal regularity against which the foreground details or durational patterns of the music are projected. The terminology of western music is notoriously imprecise in this area. MacPherson preferred to speak of "time" and "rhythmic shape", Imogen Holst of "measured rhythm". Dance music has instantly recognizable patterns of beats built upon

4800-534: The timing of the unstressed syllables in between them being adjusted to accommodate the stress timing. Narmour describes three categories of prosodic rules that create rhythmic successions that are additive (same duration repeated), cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short). Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with openness or tension, while additive rhythms are open-ended and repetitive. Richard Middleton points out this method cannot account for syncopation and suggests

4875-548: The video game DJ Hero as a playable character along with original mixes created for the game. In December 2011, Grandmaster Flash was reported to be at work on his 12th album. Aired in 2016, the Netflix original series The Get Down features a version of Grandmaster Flash that is played by Mamoudou Athie . The series takes place in 1977 New York City and follows the genesis of the DJing , B-boying , graffiti, and emceeing,

4950-399: The voices of a contrapuntal texture". This concept was concurrently defined as "attack point rhythm" by Maury Yeston in 1976 as "the extreme rhythmic foreground of a composition – the absolute surface of articulated movement". From 1927 and forward the recognized definition of "Counter Rhythm " is "A subordinate rhythm acting as a counterbalance to the main rhythm" (OED ). Counter Rhythm

5025-458: The way in which one or more unaccented beats are grouped in relation to an accented one. ... A rhythmic group can be apprehended only when its elements are distinguished from one another, rhythm...always involves an interrelationship between a single, accented (strong) beat and either one or two unaccented (weak) beats. In the performance arts , rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences that occur over time, of

5100-409: The whole piece is structured. In the 20th century, composers like Igor Stravinsky , Béla Bartók , Philip Glass , and Steve Reich wrote more rhythmically complex music using odd meters , and techniques such as phasing and additive rhythm . At the same time, modernists such as Olivier Messiaen and his pupils used increased complexity to disrupt the sense of a regular beat, leading eventually to

5175-466: The widespread use of irrational rhythms in New Complexity . This use may be explained by a comment of John Cage 's where he notes that regular rhythms cause sounds to be heard as a group rather than individually; the irregular rhythms highlight the rapidly changing pitch relationships that would otherwise be subsumed into irrelevant rhythmic groupings. La Monte Young also wrote music in which

5250-647: Was a fan of Caribbean and African American recordings. During his childhood, Joseph Saddler was fascinated by his father's record collection. In an interview, he reflected: "My father was a very heavy record collector.... I used to open his closets and just watch all the records he had. I used to get into trouble for touching his records, but I'd go right back and bother them." Saddler's early interest in DJing came from this fascination with his father's record collection as well as his mother's desire for him to educate himself in electronics. After high school, he became involved in

5325-595: Was awarded an honorary doctorate in music from Lehman College in the Bronx, NY. On August 4, Grandmaster was issued a proclamation from the city of New York stating that August 4th is Grandmaster Flash Day. Saddler's family immigrated to the United States from Barbados . He was raised in the Bronx , New York City, where he attended Samuel Gompers High School , a public vocational school. There, he learned how to repair electronic equipment. Saddler's parents played an important role in his interest in music. His father

5400-523: Was brought out so that Grandmaster Flash can scratch along to Chic 's " Good Times ". Grammys Global Spin Awards RIAA Grammys Urban Music Awards Rock and Roll Hall of Fame BET Hip Hop Awards Polar Music Prize Honorary Doctorates Degree Slipmat Unlike the rubber mat which is made to hold the record firmly in sync with the rotating platter , slipmats are designed to slip on

5475-507: Was done at 927 Fox Street in the Hunts Point Area of the Bronx. The Quick Mix Theory gave birth to techniques such as cutting, scratching, and transforming. In addition to Grandmaster Flash's on-time BPM-perfected technique, additional items were needed to pull this off. These items were felt and wax paper. The combination of these two materials cut into the size of a record and placed on the turntable (at that time referred to as

5550-435: Was invented by hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash to improve its sound and move the vinyl counterclockwise without causing too much drag and too much friction. In a Washington Post interview, he recalls “My mother was a seamstress so I knew different types of materials,” he continues. Having settled on felt, Flash encountered another issue. “The problem with felt is that it draped, it was limp,” he recalls. “So I ran home and got

5625-433: Was little room for his turntablism in early singles driven by the grooves of live session musicians. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five reformed in 1987 for a charity concert, and in 1988 they released a new album. The group reunited again in 1994, although Cowboy died in 1989. In 1999, Grandmaster Flash recorded with DJ Tomekk and Flavor Flav the single " 1, 2, 3, ... Rhymes Galore ". The single stayed for 17 weeks in

#217782