Bitter (Meshell Ndegeocello Album)
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Bitter (Meshell Ndegeocello Album)
''Bitter'' is the third album by Meshell Ndegeocello. It was released on August 24, 1999, on Maverick Records. The album peaked at #105 on the ''Billboard (magazine), Billboard'' Billboard 200, Top 200 in 1999. The album also peaked at #13 on ''Billboard's'' Top Internet Albums chart and #40 on ''Billboard's'' R&B Albums chart. Critical reception ''Billboard (magazine), Billboard'' called the album "a modern masterpiece," writing that it "shines for its sonic presence as well as its inherent musical quality." ''The New York Times'' wrote that "its rhythms flow in circulatory patterns guided by Ms. Ndegeocello's bass playing; guitars, strings and her guarded vocals intertwine like brain waves." The ''Chicago Tribune'' called it "one long bittersweet downer." ''Vibe (magazine), Vibe'' called ''Bitter'' the "Album of the Year." The ''Hartford Courant'' wrote that "though ''Bitter'' attempts to explore ambitious life themes about loyalty, faith, love and beauty, it instead commits the ...
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Meshell Ndegeocello
Michelle Lynn Johnson, better known as Meshell Ndegeocello (; born August 29, 1968), is a German-born American singer-songwriter, rapper, and bassist. She has gone by the name Meshell Suhaila Bashir-Shakur which is used as a writing credit on some of her later work. Her music incorporates a wide variety of influences, including funk, soul, jazz, hip hop, reggae and rock. She has received significant critical acclaim throughout her career, being nominated for eleven Grammy Awards, and winning one. She also has been credited for helping to "spark the neo-soul movement". Biography Ndegeocello was born Michelle Lynn Johnson in West Berlin, Germany, to US Army Sergeant Major and saxophonist father Jacques Johnson and health care worker mother Helen. She was raised in Washington, D.C. where she attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts and Oxon Hill High School. Ndegeocello adopted her surname, which she says means "free like a bird" in Swahili. Early pressings of ''Plantation Lull ...
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Hartford Courant
The ''Hartford Courant'' is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is considered to be the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. A morning newspaper serving most of the state north of New Haven and east of Waterbury, its headquarters on Broad Street in Hartford, Connecticut is a short walk from the state capitol. It reports regional news with a chain of bureaus in smaller cities and a series of local editions. It also operates ''CTNow'', a free local weekly newspaper and website. The ''Courant'' began as a weekly called the ''Connecticut Courant'' on October 29, 1764, becoming daily in 1837. In 1979, it was bought by the Times Mirror Company. In 2000, Times Mirror was acquired by the Tribune Company, which later combined the paper's management and facilities with those of a Tribune-owned Hartford television station. The ''Courant'' and other Tribune print properties were spun off to a new corporate parent, Tribune Publishing ...
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Electric Guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic guitar exist). It uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals, which ultimately are reproduced as sound by loudspeakers. The sound is sometimes shaped or electronically altered to achieve different timbres or tonal qualities on the amplifier settings or the knobs on the guitar from that of an acoustic guitar. Often, this is done through the use of effects such as reverb, distortion and "overdrive"; the latter is considered to be a key element of electric blues guitar music and jazz and rock guitar playing. Invented in 1932, the electric guitar was adopted by jazz guitar players, who wanted to play single-note guitar solos in large big band ensembles. Early proponents of the electric guitar on ...
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Ronny Drayton
Ronny Drayton (May 19, 1953 – February 7, 2020) was a guitarist based in the New York City area and Monroe, New York. Born and raised in South Jamaica, Queens, New York City, Drayton started out playing drums at St. Clement The Pope Middle School and switched to guitar at age 14. After high school, he eventually met and played with many notables in the genres of rock, funk, soul, blues and jazz, most notably R&B acts like The Persuaders and The Chambers Brothers. He became an in-demand session musician, performing with Edwin Birdsong and Nona Hendryx, and also studied Composition and Arrangement at Kingsborough Community College. Over the years, he has worked on countless recording projects as well as numerous TV shows and videos. In late 2012, Drayton joined 24-7 Spyz, performing with them as well as the bands Defunkt and Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber until his death. In 2012, Drayton was active in trying to get his son, Donovan Drayton, released from Riker's Islan ...
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Wendy Melvoin
Wendy Ann Melvoin (born January 26, 1964) is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Prince as part of his backing band The Revolution, and for her collaboration with Lisa Coleman as one half of the duo Wendy & Lisa. Music career Wendy Melvoin met Prince in 1980 when her girlfriend Lisa Coleman joined Prince's band for the ''Dirty Mind'' period. Prince would stay at their house when he came to the L.A. area and she was regularly at the Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999 tour shows. She was watching from backstage when Prince and the band opened for the Rolling Stones in 1981. One night when she was practicing guitar in Lisa Coleman's room, Prince overheard and asked Coleman who was playing guitar. A few days later, when guitarist Dez Dickerson didn't show up at soundcheck, Prince asked Melvoin to play his guitar; that same night after asking Lisa first, Prince invited her to join the band. Melvoin sang back up on the ''1999'' album song "Free" ...
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Keyboard Instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term ''keyboard'' often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Another important use of the word ''keyboard'' is in historical musicology, where it means an instrument whose identity cannot be firmly established. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the early ...
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Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ...
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Lisa Coleman (musician)
Lisa Coleman (born August 17, 1960) is an American musician. She primarily plays piano and keyboards. She was a member of Prince's backing band The Revolution from 1979 to 1986. Coleman is one half of the musical duo Wendy & Lisa, formed with Wendy Melvoin in 1986. Early life Coleman was born the middle of three children in Los Angeles, California. Her mother was Mexican-American visual artist Marylou Ynda-Ciletti (April 4, 1936 – November 17, 2013). Coleman's father, Gary L. Coleman (born 1936), is an Anglo-American session musician, who in the 1960s and 1970s was part of the collective The Wrecking Crew and befriended fellow musician Mike Melvoin. Their families became close with each other and often played and recorded music together. Lisa formed a close relationship with Melvoin's daughter Wendy, saying once "we've been familiar with one another since we were in diapers". Career At age 12, Coleman got her professional start as a keyboardist in the bubblegum pop band ...
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Electric Bass
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ... and Scale length (string instruments), scale length, and typically four to six string (music), strings or Course (music), courses. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music. The four-string bass is usually tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar (typically E, A, D, and G). It is played primarily with the fingers or thumb, or with a plectrum, pick. To be heard ...
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Vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument (as in art song or some jazz styles) up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music, Japanese music, and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, ghazal, and popular music styles such as pop, rock, and electronic dance music. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged, or improvised. It may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual as part of music education or ...
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David Torn
David M. Torn (born May 26, 1953) is an American guitarist, composer, and producer. He is known for combining electronic and acoustic instruments and for his use of looping. Background Torn has contributed to recordings by artists as diverse as David Bowie, k.d. lang, John Legend, Madonna, Tori Amos, Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, Mick Karn, David Sylvian, Chocolate Genius, Michael Shrieve, Steve Roach, Patrick O'Hearn, Andy Rinehart, Matt Chamberlain, Meshell Ndegeocello and Don Cherry. In addition to his composition work, Torn's music has been featured in a wide variety of films, including '' Friday Night Lights'', ''Velvet Goldmine'', ''Adaptation'', ''The Big Lebowski'', ''The Departed'', ''Fur'', ''The Hoax'', ''Kalifornia'', ''Traffic'', '' Reversal of Fortune'', ''Tibet'', and ''Three Kings.'' He studied with Leonard Bernstein (within the "Music for Young Composers" series), as well as with guitarists John Abercrombie, Pat Martino, Paul Weiss and Arthur Basile. Torn ...
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Doyle Bramhall II
Doyle Bramhall II (born December 24, 1968) is an American guitarist, producer and songwriter best known for his work with Eric Clapton and Roger Waters. He is the son of the songwriter and drummer Doyle Bramhall. Early life Bramhall was born in Texas and lived half of his life in Northern California. His father, Doyle Bramhall Sr., played drums for the legendary bluesmen Lightnin' Hopkins and Freddie King and was a lifelong collaborator with his childhood friends Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan. Career When Bramhall was 18, he toured with Jimmie Vaughan's band the Fabulous Thunderbirds. He co-founded the blues rock band Arc Angels with Charlie Sexton and members from Stevie Ray Vaughan's rhythm section, Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon. He released his first solo album ''Doyle Bramhall II'' in 1996. Bramhall received phone calls from both Roger Waters and Eric Clapton following the 1999 release of '' Jellycream''. Bramhall joined Waters on his In the Flesh tour ...
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