I was thinking about how superstar producer RedOne, or Nadir Khayat if you like, has set up a little sonic logo for himself. I spliced together some examples to compare uses in different tracks, which you can listen to below (excuse the rough editing). He gets the artist on the song he’s producing to sing…

Nineteenth-century Czech composer Leos Janáček was fascinated by what he termed speech melody – the inflections, timings and frequencies of people’s spoken phrases, which he notated and used as source material for his music. (The below are scans from Janáček’s Uncollected Essays On Music, selected, edited and translated by Mirka Zemanová.) Below you can see…