Building

In his fabulous book BLINK, Malcolm Gladwell explores the power of intuition. He talks about a practice that we all do called "Thin-slicing," where a snap judgment is made with limited information, and how it is usually more successful than long, deliberate decision-making.

Anyway, there's a song out right now that is absolutely fantastic. It's Umbrella, by Rihanna. The first time I heard it, it was about a five second clip, and I was blown away. I looked at Keyno and said, "Yo, who is that!" He said, "You haven't heard that yet?"

After picking the song up, I noticed a technique that the producer uses for the beat: he uses a one-bar phrase, then builds on it, retaining some of the original qualities plus more in the second bar. He basically loops it through the whole song, and it provides a fantastic base from which the song can construct or deconstruct however he sees fit.


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