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Earl Smith Jr.
Earl Smith Jr. (c.1965 – September 21, 2016), known as DJ Spank Spank or Spanky, was an American musician credited with inspiring the acid house music genre. He founded the group Phuture. Biography He became involved in music production after dancing to house music played in Chicago by DJ Ron Hardy. In 1985 he formed Phuture with DJ Pierre and Herb Jackson, and bought an old Roland TB-303 synthesizer which enabled him to create an "unusual burbling, squelchy" bass line. Smith said: "I knew that we needed something else than just beats. So we would try to make music together with keyboards and stuff like that, but it really didn't sound where we was confident that Ron Hardy would play it. It wasn't until we purchased the TB-303 that e thoughtthis would be something that Ron Hardy would play in the club, which was 'Acid Tracks.'" [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acid House
Acid house (also simply known as just "acid") is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesizer-sequencer, an innovation attributed to Chicago producers DJ Pierre of Phuture and Sleezy D. Acid house soon became popular in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, where it was played by DJs in the acid house and later rave scenes. By the late 1980s, acid house had moved into the British mainstream, where it had some influence on pop and dance styles. Acid house brought house music to a worldwide audience. The influence of acid house can be heard in later styles of dance music including trance, hardcore, jungle, big beat, techno and trip hop. Characteristics Acid house's minimalist sound combined house music's ubiquitous programmed four-on-the-floor 4/4 beat with the electronic squelch sound produced by the Roland TB-303 ele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phuture
Phuture is an American house music group from Chicago, founded in 1985 by Earl Smith Jr., Earl "Spanky" Smith Jr., Nathaniel Pierre Jones aka DJ Pierre, and Herbert "Herb J" Jackson. The group is famous for inventing and defining the sound of acid house, a subgenre of house music, with their 1987 release "Acid Tracks". History and background Phuture's seminal "Acid Tracks" is considered to be the first acid house record and credited for inventing and defining the genre. The 12-minute instrumental composition was released on Trax Records in 1987. Originally, it was recorded to tape and played by DJ Ron Hardy at the Chicago nightclub Music Box, supposedly already in 1985. * Lothario "Rio" Lee * Nathaniel Pierre Jones aka DJ Pierre (1985–1990; 2013–present) * Fernando "Fher" Rivera aka Lessnoise Former members * Herb J (Herbert Jackson) (1985–1988) * Jay Juniel (1990) * Phill Little (1990) * Roy Davis Jr. (1990–1997) * DJ Skull (Ron Maney) (1996–1997) * Earl Smith Jr. aka ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Music
House is a music genre characterized by a repetitive Four on the floor (music), four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 beats per minute. It was created by Disc jockey, DJs and music producers from Chicago metropolitan area, Chicago's underground Clubbing (subculture), club culture in the late 1970s, as DJs began altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat. House was pioneered by African Americans, African American DJs and producers in Chicago such as Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy, Jesse Saunders, Chip E., Steve "Silk" Hurley, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, Marshall Jefferson, Phuture, and others. House music expanded to other American cities such as New York City and became a worldwide phenomenon. House has had a large effect on pop music, especially dance music. It was incorporated by major international pop artists including Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson ("Together Again (Janet Jackson song), Together Again"), Kylie Minogue, Pet Shop Boys and Madonna ("Vogu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayor–council , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , area_tot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ron Hardy
Ron Hardy (May 8, 1958 – March 2, 1992) was an American, Chicago, Illinois-based DJ and record producer of early house music. He is well known for playing records at the Muzic Box, a Chicago house music club. Decades after his death, he is recognized for his innovative edits and mixes of disco, soul music, funk and early house music. Early career Hardy started his career in 1974 in Chicago's gay club Den One. Here, with a set-up of two turntables, a mixer and a reel-to-reel tape-deck, he played long nights of underground black dance music. Around 1977, he went to work in Los Angeles. At the end of 1982, when DJ Frankie Knuckles left the Warehouse to open the Power Plant, Ron Hardy DJed at the Warehouse's new location until Robert Williams renamed it "The Music Box." Producer Chip E. introduced Hardy to recording music in 1986 when the two mixed "Donnie" by The It (featuring Chip E., Larry Heard, Robert Owens, and Harri Dennis). From humble beginnings, Hardy's contributions to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DJ Pierre
Nathaniel Pierre Jones, better known by his stage name DJ Pierre, is an American DJ and performer of house music based in Chicago. He helped to develop the house music subgenre of acid house, as member of Phuture, whose 1987 EP ''Acid Tracks'', is considered the first acid-house recording. Allmusic.com calls Jones a crucial DJ and the production wizard partly responsible for the development of Chicago acid-house. Jones' first single, "Generate Power," became standard fare for scores of producers during the next few years. Philippe Renaud, a journalist for '' La Presse'' in Montreal, states that the term ''acid house'' was coined in Chicago in 1987 to describe the sound of the Roland 303 bass machine, which made its first significant recording appearance on Phuture's Acid Trax (DJ Pierre) in that year. Musical career Phuture Jones has recorded under the names Audio Clash, Darkman, Disco Fuhrer, DJ Pierre, DJ Pierre's Afro Acid Project, Doomsday, M & M, Nathaniel Pierre Jones, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herb Jackson
Herb Jackson (born August 18, 1945), is an American artist and educator. He is the Douglas Houchens Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of Art Emeritus at Davidson College, where he retired from teaching in 2011. In 1999, Jackson was awarded the North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor in the state, by Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina. In 2015 Jackson was awarded the North Caroliniana Society Award for extraordinary contributions to North Carolina's cultural heritage. Biography Herb Jackson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on August 18, 1945. Throughout his childhood he was a regular at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh and won his first award for art in a juried exhibition there in 1962, while a student at Needham B. Broughton High School. He received his undergraduate degree in German from Davidson College in 1967 (art was not offered as a major yet) and studied abroad at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany for a year. Three years later he earned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland TB-303
The Roland TB-303 Bass Line (also known as the 303) is a bass synthesizer released by Roland Corporation in 1981. Designed to simulate bass guitars, it was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1984. However, cheap second-hand units were adopted by electronic musicians, and its "squelching" or "chirping" sound became a foundation of electronic dance music genres such as acid house, Chicago house and techno. It has inspired numerous clones. Design and features The TB-303 was designed by Tadao Kikumoto who also designed the Roland TR-909 drum machine. It was marketed as a "computerised bass machine" to replace the bass guitar. However, according to ''Forbes,'' it instead produces a "squelchy tone more reminiscent of a psychedelic mouth harp than a stringed instrument". The TB-303 has a single oscillator, which produces either a "buzzy" sawtooth wave or a "hollow-sounding" square wave. This is fed into a 24 dB/octave low-pass filter, which is manipulated by an envelope ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI. Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, RCA Mark II, which was controlled with Punched card, punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips in 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (''Musicassette''), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed - for example the Microcassette - the generic term ''cassette tape'' is normally always used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. Its uses have ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers; the Compact Cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led to it supplanting the stereo 8-track cartridge and reel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acid Tracks
"Acid Tracks" is a 1987 acid house song by Phuture produced by Marshall Jefferson and released by Trax Records. Phuture consisted of Nathan Pierre Jones, better known as DJ Pierre, Earl Smith Jr., Earl Smith Jr (known as "Spanky"), and Herbert Jackson. Jones had been interested in developing dance music and became superficially interested in house music after Spanky had taken him to see DJ Ron Hardy perform in Chicago. The trio began developing tracks without finding anything that they felt was satisifying; Jones had heard a track made on the unpopular Roland TB-303 bass machine, which led the group to purchase one. In 1985, the group developed a track initially known as "In Your Mind", which they gave to Ron Hardy to listen to. Hardy agreed to play it at the Muzic Box. Although the audience were not at first receptive, the song became more popular over the course of the night. "Acid Tracks" was bootlegged as "Ron Hardy's Acid Track", leading to Phuture seeking out a way to release ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trax Records
Trax Records is an American independent record label based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It played a major part in the development of house music. History Larry Sherman was originally a collector of vintage jukeboxes, and, frustrated with the limited range of records began operations in 1983 by purchasing Musical Products, a pressing plant in Bridgeport, Illinois.Though it is frequently said that Jesse Saunders and Vince Lawrence were co-founders there is no proof via corporations or any type of genuine documentation to prove it. There is no legal documentation what so ever to back Vince Lawrence Claim of label design or Trademark. Legal exhibits need to be included to verify this information. The initial artist signings were done by Vince Lawrence. The first release was "Wanna Dance/Certainly" by Le Noiz (a pseudonym of Jesse Saunders), TX-101 (matrix number 85 indicated the year of release). Trax Records was an important outlet for house music in its early days, releasin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
