This definitely falls into the category of an accident waiting to happen.

No flammable materials should ever be used in this manner.

Not only is there the danger of the paper catching fire from a heating element or flame, there is also the risk of it catching fire from a pan fire (and consequently making that situation worse).

However, if you want something disposable, a foil sheet works and won't catch fire.

Additionally, if you want it vented so steam can escape, you can poke small holes in the foil.

I can't see what kind of heater this is.

If it is induction, there is no problem.

You can even keep the paper between heater and pan.

It can char a bit there, but unless you are keeping your pan very hot, it works well and won't catch fire.

On top of the pan, it is even safer.

If this is a resistive stove, then it is a bad idea.

The grease soaked paper might touch the burner like Chris Bergin said, and catch fire.

Had it been gas, it would have been even worse.

I recommend you use the lid instead.

I think is way better and safer to use it instead of some paper.

The only way to use a paper towel safely could be on an induction oven, but i still consider better to use a lid, maybe shifting it a little if you want to avoid completely closing the pan.

I believe it is difficult for anyone to accurately quantify what is safe for you .

Please allow me to explain my view:

I use razor sharp Japanese knives.

Most people that I cook for, or that watch me cook, comment on how those can't be safe.

I made the switch over 10 years ago, and so far, I still have all my digits.

I have shaved some skin off my knuckles ( yum! ), but I haven't made it through enough flesh to seriously bleed or hit bone (yet).

And for larger dinners with friends I will drink - a lot - when I cook.

Yay me!

Still, I think this practice is perfectly safe for me .

Just as I find frying with oil in large, open cast iron skillets to be perfectly safe for me .

So with that said, I recently (in the past year or so) have started using this method of covering a skillet with paper towel while I fry bacon.

I don't get the pan hot enough for the paper to combust, and I typically use a high-wall 10" or 12" skillet, which keeps the paper well away from the burner's flame.

I prefer this to the other forms of splatter reduction, including: Using a Standard Lid.

Way, way too much steam buildup, which brings water into the pan of grease for a very unhappy tim (even if the lid is left "cracked" on the pan to allow most the steam to escape).

Using a Mesh Splatter Guard.

These work ok, but have two main drawbacks: 1) if you don't own several sizes to match your pan sizes, they can be cumbersome; and 2)

they are more of a pain to clean (especially when compared to just throwing away a paper towel).

Microwaving Bacon.

It comes out ok, but it's just not the same.

I get such a better crunch and variance in consistency when frying bacon (especially in cast iron).

Not Eating Bacon .

This is just not an option .

I love combining paper with fire when making a campfire or lighting a fireplace but highly do not recommend using paper as a 'lid' or Splatter Guard when cooking.

Besides possibly catching fire, the paper towel could also become 'steam-soaked' and sink into the food being fried.

Removing a hot oil-soaked paper towel would not be 'finger friendly' and could also drip onto a heating element or into a gas flame.

Because I have several frying pans that don't have lids, I simply tear off a sheet of Aluminum Foil that's large enough to lay fully over the pan...but leaving one or two side edges lifted a little higher so steam can escape without burning you or adding water to the oil.

This has worked well for me when frying up bacon and eggs, chicken, seafood, French fries, onion rings, etc.

Clean up is a breeze, too, since you just throw the 'lid' out when done. :)

Question: I recently watched a friend cooking, and he used a paper towel as a splatter shield:    This seems like a very convenient solution, since you can just throw away the paper towel afterwards, as opposed to conventional splatter shields, which are a nuisance to clean.  Is it safe to do that, or will the paper catch fire (or are there any other hazards that I did not think of)? I tried to research the burning point of paper towels, but I failed to find a reliable source...

Using a paper towel as a splatter shield: Great idea or terrible accident waiting to happen?

This is dangerous as it could catch fire from a heating element, flame or pan fire, and is especially risky with a resistive stove. It could also soak up steam and sink into the food being fried. A lid would be much safer, and an improvised option could be an aluminium foil cover with space for steam to escape.

Paper is not generally considered a suitable material for use as a spatter screen unless you are cooking on an induction hob, even then a lid is a better option. A disposable option is to use aluminum foil.

Paper is not a suitable material to use as a spatter screen as it may catch fire or drop into the hot oil.

Aluminum foil is a disposable option for making a spatter screen.

Paper is safe to use on an induction hob.


Most sauces, tomato based or not, will improve in flavour after being left overnight.

This is also true of stews and casseroles.

The received wisdom is that it gives the flavours a chance to 'marry' and blend, though I'm not sure of the science behind it.

Cells are complex.

Each one is a unit which needs to keep itself alive and achieve homeostasis with its environment (big picture: tomato vs. world, small picture: tomato vs. other cells).

To this end they need an assortment of proteins and other compounds.

Some nutrients are in a plant due to the nature of the the organ the tissue it is a part of: the tubers contain cells with organelles which contain carbohydrates due to their function as an energy store, while fruiting bodies often contain chemicals (and the enzymes which form the metabolic pathway to create them) which act on the behavior of the animals eating them.

A good example would be the tobacco plant and nicotine, which is a pesticide; more mundane examples are herbs.

When you cut the fruiting body of a plant you lyse some of the cells where you have cut.

Pureeing the fruiting body lyses many more, and the vacuoles in the cell which store digestive enzymes (for breaking down unneeded cellular structures - tomatoes aren't carnivorous) occasionally break and begin acting upon whatever is around them.

This is why cut apples brown and why cut fruit and prepared herbs lose their flavor.

But why does it taste better?

The most likely explanation is that this allows the digestive enzymes to break down the contents of the sauce, some of which are indigestible.

This makes the sauce more nutritious and easier to digest and your tongue notices.

For reference see this patent which mentions the use of pectinase to prepare a tomato sauce.

Pectin binds cells together and is an indigestible fiber.

The process would convert some of the pectin in the prepared tomatoes into digestible carbohydrates.

It is a well known phenomenon.

Many sauces, stews, casseroles, etc.

improve as flavours develop over time due to chemistry.

Breads also can improve if left to proof slowly before baking.

I do most of the cooking in our house, and I'd have to say it's true.

When I'm making a jumbalaya, spaghetti sauce or goulash, all of which have tomato-based sauce, my wife always comments that leftovers the next day taste better than the night I made it.

The same for my pulled pork, where I use a tomato and BBQ based sauce.

I can't notice the difference myself, chiefly because I eat like a pig, but I trust my wife's judgement.

I'm not sure of the mechanism involved, whether it's some kind of "marrying" or settling process one of the other contributors posited, or whether it's simple placebo or expectation...

but it works.

It's not just about tomatoes.

This is a well-known phenomenon.

I used to be a professional chef, and the recipes for the soups in one particular restaurant I worked in called for resting overnight.

One night, a particular soup ran out.

A server took an order for it anyway even though he had been told it was 86'd (gone), because he knew there had been a pot of it cooking in the prep kitchen just before opening time.

Imagine the drama when he was told that he'd have to go tell his diner "Sorry" because the soup wouldn't be done till tomorrow.

Question: I cooked some green beans in a tomato-based sauce then ate some and left the rest in the fridge 3 days ago. I tasted it today, and it was better than I remember: is this a known phenomenon or am I not remembering right?

Do tomato-based sauces change/enhance flavour when left in the fridge?

This is a well-known phenomenon that is true for tomato sauces of different kinds.

It is well known that sauces and stews taste better the next day or later than on the day they are cooked.


None of those is a necessary element in bolognese; find a recipe that doesn't use them (use beef mince, or quorn).

There are many bolognese variations out there, some which have milk in them, but there are many which do not as well.

My understanding is that a traditional bolognese does not have milk, but as always with Italian food

what's traditional is what Mama makes.

In any case, you can drop the milk products without substituting anything for them.

I don't think that adding soya or anything else will give you the same effect.

As for the pork you can replace it with ground beef or turkey, beef has more flavor than turkey but turkey is generally leaner.

I make bolognese with a mix of beef and turkey because I find it's less greasy while still flavorful, but that's subjective.

Pancetta adds richness, but is not essential.

Some people, myself included, use bacon in a bolognese.

If you want a substitute for that there are turkey bacons out there in some places but to be honest the ones I've tried generally haven't been very good substitutes for the real thing.

Bacon has fat, salt and smoke flavors (presuming it's smoked), so you could try and substitute any kosher cured and smoked meat sliced into thin strips.

You could just leave it out entirely as well.

Milk (and, I guess as an extension, cream and cheese) is included for richness, pork because a mix of pork and beef is somewhat lighter than beef alone, and pancetta for flavour.

None of these ingredients is essential and a "basic" Bolognese sauce would work just fine without all of them.

In the original italian recipe of " Ragù alla bolognese ", pork is optional, there is just beef mince simmered with red wine until reduced, some vegetables (carrot, onion and celery), tomato sauce, and absolutely no compulsory dairy products (cheese is added on personal taste when the dish is served).

this one seems perfect, notice: olive oil or butter and ½ glass of milk cream ( optional ).

When I was growing up, my family had a tradition of having bolognese once a week.

We liked putting cheese on top and my mother is vegetarian, so for both of these reasons we used soy "mince".

I don't know how easy it is for you to find

but I often see both dried and "fresh" varieties in my supermarket.

It's often sold under the name "textured vegetable protein", or TVP.

As long as you're not eating any other meat, you can use as much or as little dairy as you like.

Question: I am trying to make bolognese kosher for my family and struggling. Here is the list of ingredients I hope to find a substitute for:   Pork  Pancetta  Heavy cream  Milk  Parmigiano Reggiano

What can substitute for the non kosher ingredients in bolognese sauce?

These ingredients are not necessary, and can be omitted. The pork could be replaced with ground beef or turkey, while the pancetta can be replaced with kosher smoked meat.

The original Italian recipe for Bolognese sauce does not include pork, dairy or pancetta. All these ingredients can be left out or substituted. Beef and turkey can replace the pork and bacon or kosher cured meet can replace the pancetta.

There is no need to include dairy products, pork and pancetta in a Bolognese sauce. In fact the original Italian recipe does not include them.

Pancetta is unnecessary. I can be replaced with bacon or kosher cured meat.


If you just want the concept, there are pasta sauces involving egg or egg yolk where the heat from the pasta is the only thing that cooks the egg.

In that way you cooked your food with food, but you didn't have to do without either piece of it.

It's possible to smoke meat using nuts or herbs, and fish can be baked on a huge slab of rock salt, but other than that, people don't really bother.

There's nothing wrong with experimenting though.

Maybe you'll invent something new by burning fruit.

Who knows.

In a way, exactly that happens in a flambe - potable alcohol (you can drink it and it has calories - food ;) ) is set on fire to cook stuff... and in some preparations (eg very high heat wok cooking), cooking oil (edible calories too) are set on fire for a moment...

Of course, there is a symbolic/style/fashion/hip/just plain decadent factor to take into account here - a burger prepared that way would make people CLAIM it tasted better, and that make enough people PERCEIVE it as tasting better, no matter what the actual influence of the technique is - unless it renders the food patently unpalatable, unsafe (though that has a hip factor in itself) or inedible.

Also, in a way, any smoking wood you use IS a food ingredient:

You process it (by burning it) to extract an edible/palatable fraction (the smoke particles) and add that fraction to your food (by exposing it to the smoke).

What about acidity to "cook" fish ?

You can make ceviche by "cooking" the fish in lime and/or lemon juice. or salt to cure fish and meat ?

You can make gravlax by "cooking" the fish with sugar and salt.

Stakes may burn well, steak does not.

Go ahead, light a pile of them.

I dare you.

How long did those burn for before they fizzled out?

I generally try to avoid having fat-flare-ups when grilling, as the thick greasy black smoke is the opposite of an improvement in flavor.

That would be most of what you'd get from tossing a steak on the coals, which is about the only way you're going to "burn steaks" without having them either not light at all or go out in seconds, depending how hard you try to light them.

Your fuel would still be charcoal.

The only "practical" application of your general concept which comes to mind (only "practical" due to weird US farming subsidies) would be using a corn-burning stove, and I doubt that would have any particular flavor benefit.

You could burn other dry grains, pasta, or nuts if money is no object (presumably if you are starting with "burn steaks.")

The nuts will tend to greasy black smoke again (I once gave up on shelling some black walnuts and used the remaining ones for firestarters; They burned quite well.)

There is a self -fueling food, but it's only partially self-fueling.

You need another heat source to provide the ignition.

First, get the fattiest grind of ground/minced beef that you can find.

Cook it over either charcoal or a gas grill with a heat deflector.

Place the burger directly over the charcoal or heat deflector.

Close the lid, which will help heat the entire burger so it renders the fat.

As the fat drips, it will create flare-ups which will cook the burger faster than just the starting heat source.

It helps to use thinner patties -- as all of the fat is then relatively close to the surface, a higher percentage will drip out ... and the thing will be cooked before the outside becomes a hardened husk.

Question: I was thinking about it and we use charcoal, gas, wood chips, etc to heat our food; for obvious reasons and since they burn for a long time.  But what if, for example, you set a few steaks on fire and use those steaks to cook a hamburger? Would it improve the taste of the hamburger?

Using food as a cooking fuel to cook other food?

Steaks would not burn well, but there are a number of examples of food cooking in other food. Eggs or egg yolks can be cooked in pasta, meat can be smoked with nuts or herbs or on rock salt, flambeed food is cooked with cooking oil that burns briefly and ceviche can be made by "cooking"  the fish in lime and/or lemon juice.

There are many examples of a food used to cook anoth food, pasta carbonara for example. However, wood stakes burn beter than meat steaks so it is probably better to stick with them.

There are numerous examples of one food being used to cook another food. These include pasta carbonara and ceviche.

Wood stakes burn well, meat steaks do not.


You're right that the smaller pieces of cheese will melt faster than a whole block when added to a sauce.

The main advantage to shredding or grating cheese is that you create smaller pieces of uniform size, and often smaller than can be achieved just by crumbling (at least when working with harder cheeses).

The smaller the pieces the faster they melt, and if they're a consistent size/shape you don't have to investigate the sauce closely to find when the last, largest bit of cheese has been incorporated.

This helps ensure the cheese will be evenly distributed throughout the sauce.

Lot's of small bits (of anything ) makes for more surface area, therefore melting not only faster but evenly .

Dissolving works the exact same way.

If you put cheese in the last step of cooking, it would melt in perfect timing.

If you have to cook longer with other ingredients, for example: pasta, since pasta serve al dente, it would overcook quickly.

Also, shed cheese would give even taste to the dish.

It depends on what you are putting the cheese into.

If it is sauce then it would be fine.

It may take less time to locate and use a grater than to break the cheese by hand.

So theoretically, you could use a knife to slice the cheese up and it wouldn't make a difference in the quality of the sauce.

It just might take longer to cut it up.

Other answers mention it helps the cheese melt faster and more evenly.

This is, truly, one great benefit to shredding or grating the cheese.

One other factor is moisture.

Especially with drier cheeses, just trying to melt them with heat can easily end up rubbery bits and oil, as the proteins seize up and the fats separate.

Wetter cheeses melt better, and with drier cheeses this can be approximated by adding liquid - though smaller shreds and longer soaking help get the moisture into the cheese evenly.

Melting them into just liquid like milk, though, doesn't always work as planned - the liquid is too thin to hold the cheese, so it clings to itself instead of spreading into the liquid and when it hits the right temperature

, it seizes, clumps up with the same rubbery oily result.

Melting into a sauce works better, since it has enough stuff in the sauce for the cheese to cling to, and it spreads the cheese out into the sauce and hydrates it, which lets it melt very nicely into the sauce.

The result is smooth, not tangled.

In short, the smaller shreds also work mechanically - the cheese is spread out quickly and surrounded by the sauce, instead of staying in cheese-clumps, and with better access to the moisture as it heats will tend to mix out into the sauce instead of cling to itself (into aforementioned rubbery lumps and oil).

With larger chunks, the edges and the surface are exposed to the sauce and should melt nicely.

The inside, though, doesn't have nearly as much exposure - it is possible, if the temperature is a bit on the lower side and the stirring frequent enough, for the time it takes those outer edges to be melted and the mixing pulls them into the sauce, to be enough time for the next layer to be moistened and heated to melting.

It is also possible, if the heat is higher or the mixing a less diligent, for the insides of the cheese to not get exposed to the sauce quickly enough, and while the outer layers will melt into the sauce correctly, the inside doesn't have enough exposure to the moisture, will stick to itself rather than the sauce, and end up rubbery chunks and oil.

Again.

So shredding the cheese works on several levels.

One is that it lets the cheese have very good exposure to moisture, which helps it melt instead of solidify.

Another is that it makes it easier for the cheese to grab onto the solids in the sauce and spread out, rather than clump up by only grabbing other shreds of cheese.

A third factor is that shredded cheese needs less stirring - since the shreds melt quickly, and a few stirs will roughly mix them into the sauce.

With larger chunks, stirring has to continue longer since each layer of cheese that gets melted off the chunk needs to be stirred into the sauce, to prevent said clumping, and the inner layers will of course be slower to heat and take longer to melt than the outer (hence more stirring).

A last factor is, the texture changes as cheese is added (of course) and shreds will be easier to portion out to mix gradually.

A thinner sauce can be trickier to get the cheese to melt into, and it helps to have less cheese added at once and stir very well, to maximize exposure to the sauce.

As it gets thicker, from the cheese previously melted in, it is easier to add more cheese in at once and it melts in better (including somewhat bigger pieces, at this point).

It is, of course, easier to separate and on-the-fly adjust the amounts of cheese for this sort of gradual addition with piles of small shreds rather than fewer bigger chunks.

Question: I know it melts faster, but tearing cheese into rough parts and adding it to a white sauce melts just fine. Is there a specific reason to why you should shred cheese before adding it to a sauce?

Why do you shred cheese before adding it to a sauce?

Shredding cheese makes pieces that are smaller and more even than crumbling it, giving it more surface area and letting it melt faster and giving a more even taste.

Shredded cheese melts faster and more evenly, giving an even taste to the dish.


This is physics.

There's an effect called: " Granular convection "

It's a phenomenon where if you have materials of different sizes in a container and vibrate or shake them, that the largest objects will move to the top and the smallest to the bottom.

To keep the onion from sinking, you should make the chopped onion pieces bigger relative to the other ingredients in the salad.

As you can see in JBentley's answer, in a salad where all ingredients are evenly chopped you won't get the sinking effect.

I don't think the issue here is dicing vs slicing the onions.

The reason why the latter appears to present better in this answer is in my opinion because of the size relative to the other ingredients.

In the left hand image, the diced onions are much smaller than the tomato and cucumber, whereas the sliced onion on the right is a closer match in size.

This also explains why the onion sinks in the left image - being smaller than the other ingredients, it can make it's way through the gaps more easily to the bottom.

This leads to an alternative solution: dice the other ingredients to match the size of the onion.

Take for example a salad shirazi (a classic Persian salad): As you can see, the onion is nice and evenly spread throughout the other ingredients (no sinking) and in my opinion presents rather well.

Also it's worth being aware that this is highly subjective.

I personally find smaller chunks more attractive than bigger in general.

I also find it improves the taste, as the ingredients blend better together while chewing and you experience the salad as more of a "whole".

With bigger chunks, you tend to taste "all tomato" followed by "all cucumber" etc.

I found that slices float better and present better.

They don't take much longer to cut and you don't need much onion for a salad.

Slices on the right Thick slices can be cut to taste.

You want some to sink.

I like them for a little crunch.

They're easier to pick out if anyone doesn't like onion at all.

In some cases thin slices might be better, though.

If your salad is lettuce-based, thick slices may still tend to sink, while thinner slices will cling to the lettuce a bit better.

This may also be a good idea if anyone eating the salad doesn't like larger chunks of onion.

A down side to thin is that it can overpower the presentation.

There is no law of nature that requires salad to be served in a bowl.

In fact I rarely see it served in a bowl: I'm used to seeing it served on a plate.

You can toss together the leafy components, dressing, and any other ingredients you want to mix well, plate them, and then sprinkle the onion on top and serve.

I recently discovered pickled red onions (and I've added the recipe I use on my website), and they're really easy to make.

I say this because they're an excellent addition to any tossed salad, and because they're saturated in vinegar, they're not rigid, so leaving full rings isn't a problem like raw onions.

Also, because they're larger pieces, they don't settle in a salad.

Similarly I avoid using chopped carrots, favoring shredded or matchstick carrots because they have the same issue of being too small that the end of the salad is all carrot.

This is also known as the "Brazil Nut Effect" .

There is a very simple way to counter that porblem if you are going to dress a salad in a bowl.

You can cut any ingredients in the size you want, so you can dice oignons.

Before serving, when you added everything, just take a tool like a spoon or a wooden spoon and "incorporate" everything delicately.

All your ingredients will be mixed up without any harm and therefore you will enjoy a delicious mix of your salad.

This action, "incorporate', comes from pastry cooks who use that to incorpore ingredients that are heavier than others.

just like in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfqBYkNDRSg

This is simple.

We can chopping an onion with loop chopping.

Question: How to keep onions from sinking in a salad?  I like raw and cooked onions.    I like raw onions in a lot of salads but the problem is diced onions end up in the  bottom of the bowl.

How to keep onions from sinking in a salad

Try making your onion pieces bigger relative to the other ingredients, or use thin slices that will cling to the lettuce a bit better.

To stop onion sinking to the bottom of the salad, chop them larger than the other ingredients or slice them rather than chopping. For lettuce based salads, thin slices work best.


Chicken bones have a tendency to 'splinter' when 'mashed' (as in chewed upon), which is why you never give chicken bones to a dog.

This applies equally to humans, if we gnaw on a chicken bone it is more like to create a harmful splinter that may find itself lodged in any number of places in your digestive system.

That said, as has been commented above, extracting the flavorful marrow and those 'last little bits' from the carcass can be achieved by making stock.

If you are wanting to reduce the waste, I would then recommend drying and grinding the remaining bones to provide calcium into your compost.

[Edit]

Interesting comments from @JohnEye

& @Molot prompted a bit of research.

Here is an article from WebMD that supports my original statement.

Is Eating Chicken Bones Bad For Our Health

Other articles suggest that some people do this, but I would still conclude that it is not safe to do so, though apparently it can be done.

Pressure cookers will quickly soften most chicken bones.

We make stock with our chicken carcasses in a pressure cooker, and the resulting bones can be crushed with fingers, no splintering.

Absolutely!

My wife makes her own dog food out of 1 Lb of rice, 1 Lb of carrots, and the trimmings of 1 whole chicken.

After she breaks down the chicken for the meat that the family will eat during the week, all the trimmings, including the bones, are put into a pot and boiled so we get the marrow and gelatin from the bones as well.

I'd describe it as making stock except that the liquid is not separated for reasons I'll get back to.

Once the 'chicken stew' has cooked, she finds all the bones and puts them into a high-end blender to render into a thick paste we call a 'bone shake'.

She puts the rendered bone into the the stew / stock along with the rice and carrots to finish cooking.

Once that is done

she adds vitamins and other supplements to the batch before dishing out portions for freezing

and then we have dog food for several weeks.

We have used everything from the chicken, including the skeleton .

We joke that the dog eats better than we do and have had multiple vets give their approval.

Now, for those who ask what this has to do with human food, my response is even though we use this process to feed the dog, there is nothing special about it and would be perfectly safe for humans.

The bones are completely rendered in the sense of cook time and safety.

Cooking them in the stock makes them safe from a bacteria perspective and using the blender essentially grinds them into particles so small as to eliminate any issues with splintering.

In fact, my wife started to make (dog) cookies by adding sugar, flour, salt, etc.

I mention this to illustrate the multitude of uses for the bones so there is no reason why the bone shake couldn't be incorporated into other recipes for people.

We recently made a chicken bone stock by cooking a carcass in water with a few tablespoons of vinegar.

When it was done, the bones had demineralized enough that they could be chewed thoroughly without any difficulty nor observable splintering.

Torigara (鶏がらスープ) is a common Japanese recipe most commonly associated with the making of ramen.

The recipe usually calls for a whole chicken carcass or chicken bones and using a very long cooking time (eg.

5 to 10 hours)

in order to reduce everything to a rich broth that can be made into a ramen.

Some recipes call for discarding the bone while I am aware of some ramen shops actually pounding the soup and keeping the crushed bones (which renders down to powder) as part of the soup.

The recipe is common in ramen shops all around the world and is safe to consume.

PS, I think the addition of rice-vinegar in some recipes would help breaking down the calcium in the bones faster.

I cooked my whole turkey carcass for several days and poured all the bones and juice from boiling it, a little bit at a time: liquified it in my osterizer to get all the marrow and nutritional value but strained it to get rid of all the pulp at the bottom and have been drinking it.

It’s delicious!

I’ve heard it’s good for arthritis.

It made over a quart to drink!

Using a pressure cooker and a vitamix blender you can turn the leftover bones into a paste.

Question: I like to preserve as much as possible from my cooking and trash as little as possible.  With that in mind:   can chicken skeleton be made edible?  or is there a way for the bone marrow to be extracted and cooked?   Or does it exist a reason for why it is a bad idea to consume chicken skeleton?

Can chicken skeleton be made edible?

The easiest way is to make stock by cooking the carcass in water with a few tablespoons of vinegar. Chicken and turkey bones can be cooked in pressure cooker, which will soften them enough to make a paste that can be used or strained and drunk. Chicken trimmings can also be mixed with rice and carrots to make dog food.

It is generally considered possible to make chicken bones edible. One method id to make a stock. Moreover a pressure cooker can be used to soften the bones quickly. Poultry bones can be liquefied in an osterizer. They can also be made into dog food.

Chicken bones can be made edible by making them into stock.

Pressure cookers can cook the bones until they are soft enough to eat.

Dog food can be made from chicken bones.

Poultry bones can be boiled and liquefied in an osterizer.


I'm going to agree with Szczerzo about this being an anthropologic question, but I'm going to disagree about the cause.

While nomadic lifestyles was an influence, it's not causative.

I'm also going to ignore the distinction made about raising agents in the OP, because it's factually incorrect; most Arab/Levantine/Turkish/Kurdish breads use yeast.

Instead, I'm going to answer the distinction between loaf bread and flatbread.

Specifically: loaf bread is an aberration, not flatbread.

You find flatbreads around the world in every society that has access to any kind of grain anywhere.

Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas, Malaysia, everywhere.

Some are raised (yeasted) and some are not.

Some are filled and some are not.

All grains are used: wheat, barley, millet, rice, lentils, corn, etc.

Whereas:

loaf bread pretty much only shows up in Egypt (and nearby) and in Europe, and there's good reason to believe that the latter two regions learned it from Egypt.

Thing is, loaf bread requires several different things to be easily and cheaply available in the same place: Wheat or barley (high-gluten flours) Ability to build brick, stone, or earthen ovens

(this is where nomadism isn't compatible) Ability to cultivate starters (both the right grains and the right weather) Inexpensive, but hot, fuel for ovens (e.g. wood)

This combination simply didn't happen in too many places; either people lacked suitable grains, lacked cheap fuel, didn't build ovens, or simply never got started (the Babylonians appear to only have made flatbread, for example, despite having all the right ingredients and tools).

So it's really not so much a question of "why did X culture only make flatbread" as "why did these three places make loaf bread?"

If you're interested in this, I highly recommend the book Six Thousand Years Of Bread .

It's actually an anthropologic question.

It's more due to

Europe being settled down while Middle Eastern peoples were still nomadic.

Raising bread, even with agents, is very hard when you move or don't have much time.

For a raised bread you need a starter and few hours; for a flat bread you need a few minutes.

Not to mention flat bread can be baked ON an oven or grill while you cook other food alongside within minutes (it takes me around 10 minutes to prepare 20 flats) while European bread needs its own oven and around 1 hour to make.

It's also worth mentioning that many flatbreads have a rather long storage life.

For instance, the Sardinian pane carasau is split and cooked a second time so that it could be used on months long trips.

It's quite possible that the different climates and jobs led to differences in bread making.

Perhaps the difference is not so much between leavened and unleavened as between flat and loaf.

In colder climates, there is an existing need for a persistent fire, which has been lit for heating, as well as cooking.

In those cultures, ovens and baking are more likely to arise.

Even the leavened breads of the Middle East and South Asia tend to be flat, and more quickly cooked.

Given a persistent fire and an oven, loaf breads have the advantage of economy of scale.

More weight of them can be produced, without the need for constant attendance, in larger simultaneous batches, than of flat breads.

As @Marcin stated in the comments above, there are no sources for the answers given, and many of the answers have issues:

Materials , it may not be the prairie, but wheat, spelt, barley, and rye were all available and used for breads even in the ancient Middle East Resources , sure, there's less wood for ovens and flatbread cooks more quickly, but desert temperatures are higher, ovens hold heat more efficiently, and the Middle East had plenty of ovens and kilns.

Not only that, but plenty of things other than wood burn, having fire in the freezing night temperatures of the desert is essential, and nomadic desert folk still keep campfires going and cook food.

Lifestyle , yeah, lots of nomads, herders and the like, but like @Marcin stated, cities existed.

Not only that, but cities tend to be cultural centers as well.

We tend to define a people's cuisine and culture by what large centers of life do, not by their more sparse and scattered population.

Shelf Life , c'mon, if anything, the dry Middle East is going to have a longer shelf life for goods than all the moisture up north.

But, all that is unsourced speculative rebuttal.

If I had to pick a reason, it's yeast.

Even in Europe, when you look at the fairly well-documented history of beer and wine ( http://www.thecomicbookstoryofbeer.com ), people relied on wild yeasts.

The microscopic world wasn't a concept and yeast was obtained by luck mixed with trial-and-error.

Wild yeasts may be more abundant in the moist, plant-rich environment in Europe; they are spread in the air and in the foliage.

While some Middle Eastern beer was made from fermented bread, it is possible that much of the yeast for beer and wine may have come from imports.

While beers and wines were made in the Middle East, yeast from one batch is used to make the next (even today, wherever they are made).

Unlike in spirits, in breads much of the yeast dies in the baking.

How much more convenient it must be to mix together some flour and water, maybe some oil and salt, throw it on a sheet of metal that's been sitting in the sun or over your campfire, and watch it turn into a pita.

Tandoor style ovens commonly used in the Middle East and Central Asia where you cook the dough sticking it to the walls only work with flatbreads.

The process of leavening Uzbek non, for example, is similar to most Western loafs but it is flattened with a bread stamp right before going into the oven.

I don't think the lack of fuel is the reason since there places with thick woods but still baking flatbreads (The Caucasus or the Southern shore of the Caspian Sea.)

Question: This may be a history question so please move it if appropriate.   Culturally, local ingredients dominate cooking recipes and national dishes (e.g., soy in SE Asia), but why do Europeans add a raising agent to bread items to make  loaf bread  whilst people from the Middle East still favour flat breads?  Were raising agents discovered in Europe and never migrated?  Is there a taste difference?

Why did flatbread dominate the Middle East but Europe adopted raised breads?

The reason is unlikely to be fuel, but rather differences in climate, rising time and ovens. Flatbread rises quickly, can be cooked on an oven or grill or on the walls of a tandoor while other foods are being cooked, is ready in minutes and has a longer shelf life.

Flat bread is found in more areas of the world than loaf bread. It is easier to make and requires less time. Loaf bread requires a raising agent and time to rise. Moreover, some ovens are not designed for cooking loaf bread. Flat bread generally stays fresh longer.

Flatbreads are found everywhere. Maybe jobs and climate led to different ways of making bread.

Raising agent is important in loaf bread.

Flat breads can be baked on any fire and the typical ovens in the Middle East are only designed to cook flat bread.

Lack of fuel was not a reason for the different bread making style developing in different areas.


You can add some liquid to mayonnaise without breaking it.

I've added smallish amounts of soy sauce and hot sauce and such to mayonnaise with success.

The question would be, could you get enough coconut flavor into the mayonnaise before breaking the emulsion?

Hard to say without trying.

If it doesn't work, you can try using coconut cream instead of coconut milk.

Like the name suggests, coconut cream has a higher amount of fat and a lower amount of water than coconut milk.

This should allow you to add more of it to the mayonnaise without making it too liquid.

Depending on the type of coconut milk you have access to, you could only use the upper, creamy part of the coconut milk.

Here in Germany (and the Netherlands, as we often buy there)

the out of the box

coconut milk is not homogenized, so the fat and the watery part have split.

Coconut Cream might be an option, but it is quite sweet.

Perhaps a light variant could do the trick.

If you do not want to dilute the mayonnaise with liquid, coconut milk powder is an option.

Depending on how much you add, you might find that your mayo is too thick.

If that is the case, you could get around this by making up a paste beforehand with a little water.

This is speculative, as I've not tried this, and I'm assuming that by 'the flavour of coconut milk' you mean 'coconut flavour'.

Creamed coconut/coconut butter, rather than coconut cream, may be your answer.

It comes as a solid block, in solid form in individual sachets and jars.

Creamed coconut, also known as coconut butter, is a coconut product made from the unsweetened dehydrated fresh pulp of a mature coconut, ground to a semi-solid white creamy paste.

It is sold in the form of a hard white block which can be stored at room temperature.

I use this rather than canned coconut milk or cream when making things like Rendang, because it doesn't have all the emulsifiers and thickeners of the brands I can buy locally, and at around 70% fats should incorporate more successfully into mayo than coconut milk which can be around 70% water.

When cooking you can just add solid chunks of the product to a sauce and it will melt and dissolve, but you can also melt it first and in this melted form you may be able to successfully whip it into a pre-made mayonnaise.

With the sachets you just place the sealed sachet into a jug of hot water until the contents liquefy, but you would also be able to melt some in a bain-marie as you would do with chocolate.

According to wikipedia Coconut oil melts at around 24°C, so in warmer weather it is a liquid paste.

so you may need to do very little to get it to a state suitable for incorporating

(I live in the north of Scotland so haven't experienced it in that state.)

I would suggest that to improve the chances of spreading the flavour evenly through your mayo, it would be best to add the mayonnaise to the creamed coconut a little at a time rather than dumping the coconut into the mayo.

Having the mayo at room temperature rather than fridge-cold will also help avoid resetting the coconut cream before it is incorporated.

It is likely that quite a small amount would be needed as the flavour in this dehydrated product is more concentrated than in coconut milk, in my experience.

Edit to add: If it is just the flavour of coconut you are looking for, the other option might be a much more concentrated natural coconut extract.

If you want coconut flavor in something that is already a semiliquid I would not use liquid coconut products at all.

Use shredded coconut.

Unsweetened shredded coconut is powerfully coconutty.

You can put it thru a blender or coffee bean grinder to pulverize it further if you do not like the stringy consistency in your mayo.

The addition of these coconut solids will not affect the creaminess of your mayo base unless you add a lot.

It is worth mentioning that you can also just add coconut flavor if that is not cheating for you.

Coconut flavor comes in a little bottle like vanilla.

Along those lines I used to keep a bottle of Malibu coconut rum to add to stir fry; Malibu is also powerfully coconut flavored and you can cook off the alcohol in a few seconds using a saucepan.

If you go that route, cook down the Malibu by itself then add to mayo.

Question: I want to make a mayonnaise-based sandwich spread with coconut milk in it, but I'm concerned that adding enough coconut milk for any flavor will make the spread too runny.    Note, I do not want to make mayonnaise from scratch - I have seen recipes where you infuse the oil in homemade mayo first then use it to make mayo. I'm talking about using packaged mayo as the base, ending up with the texture of mayonnaise and the additional taste of coconut milk.

Can mayonnaise be infused with coconut, without getting watery?

You can add some liquid to mayonnaise without breaking it, but it would be easier to use coconut cream, coconut milk powder, coconut butter,, unsweetened shredded coconut or coconut flavouring.

Small amounts of liquid can be added to matonnaise without breaking it, so some coconut milk could be added. However, better options may be powdered coconut milk, coconut butter or shredded coconut. Finally, coconut flavouring is available.

Mayonnaise will not break if a little liquid is added so coconut milk/cream could be added as a flavouring. Coconut milk powder may be a better option.

A solid could be added rather than a liquid: coconut butter or shredded coconut.


Traditionally (at least in Spain) garlic was kept in a braided string, hung in a dry place, so that they could last until the following season.

Separating them in cloves will cause them to dry prematurely.

Most advice I see is to keep the head whole, keep it in the dark, and avoid moisture.

This will allow you to keep garlic for several months.

In my kitchen, I go through several heads of garlic over the course of just one month, so long term storage is not really that critical for me.

I suspect, technically, you would shorten the life span a bit.

Whether or not that matters depends entirely on how quickly you work your way through your garlic stash.

I would say you have little to lose.

Break them apart

(keep the skin on the individual cloves intact), and try it for a few weeks (though, this seems like extra work to me).

If it turns out you use them too slowly, purchase less garlic and keep it whole.

Alternately, store the rest of your whole garlic in a dark, cool, cabinet.

You can separate them and cut off the end and freeze them.

We do this all the time.

I use a garlic press to use them when needed even while it's frozen.

They seem to last forever.

Breaking them apart to put in a jar - I see several issues.

You will almost certainly break through the skin on a good percentage of them as you separate them into individual cloves, meaning they will have lost their protective layer.

Unless the jar has some kind of desiccant, there is potential for the garlic to sweat & go off rapidly.

The air inside the jar, if anywhere near a source of sunlight, will also be warner than its surroundings, accelerating this still further.

They will all be touching, meaning if one goes bad, the rest will follow in short order.

There is often good, tried & tested sense in traditional storage methods.

The Spanish tradition of weaving them into plaits* is more than decorative - not only does it allow air to circulate to keep the bulbs dry, it also keeps them physically separated in case

one goes bad - it's not going to directly contaminate its neighbours.

*My British father used to do exactly the same with brown onions, so they would last until next year hanging in an outhouse.

I doubt he ever saw a garlic bulb in his life.

It should be fine if you keep the individual clove skins on, the way I see it the outer skin doesn't really add that much extra protection compared to just the inner skin as long as it is not for very long periods.

The bigger risk would be drying out, and it will dry out faster, but the inner skin should suffice as protection almost as effectively as the whole head, so for short periods it should not be very significant.

In my kitchen we even peal individual cloves ahead of time and keep them ready for use in a small jar in the refrigerator.

These keep well for a few weeks at a time.

There may be slight loss of taste over long periods, but I have never seen any go bad.

An unglazed ceramic vessel should help to regulate the moisture issues that many of the others have mentioned (which would be true in a glass jar).

Glass jars are also problematic as they act as small greenhouses, with the light warming the jar which can cause it to spoil faster.

I would recommend that you fit what garlic you can into the container as whole bulbs/heads, then add your remaining garlic broken up into smaller bits (unpeeled cloves or clumps of cloves).

As you use the garlic, use the fragments first, then break into the whole bulbs.

But the more important thing is to only buy as much garlic as you're going to use in a reasonable amount of time.

If you're not using up your garlic within a month or so, you should probably be buying less garlic each time.

The whole/fragmented method should allow you to tell your older garlic from more a more recent shopping trip -- empty the jar, put the new garlic in as whole bulbs, then break the older garlic apart and fill the jar.

Question: I bought jar for garlic but it can store only two bulbs with most place being wasted. Can I separate bulb into cloves and store them? Or will it significantly shorten the lifespan of garlic?  EDIT  To clarify - this is jar made out of ceramic with holes in the bottom for ventilation.

Can I separate garlic into cloves for storage?

You may be able to separate them into cloves with the skin on without losing too much protection, especially for short periods, but it may still cause them to dry out. Keep as many of the heads whole if you can and keep them in a dark, dry place, or you can separate them, cut off the ends and freeze them.

Garlic is best kept whole. Separating the cloves causes them to dry out faster. If you want to separate them, keep the skin on or remove the skin and freeze.

Separating garlic cloves causes them to dry out quickly.

It is recommended that garlic bulbs be kept whole. In a jar, keep as many bulbs whole as possible and only separate when necessary.

You can separate if you leave the skin on. After removing the skin, they should be frozen


Most tomatoes from the produce aisle will be relatively flavourless— this is because they are frequently picked when they are unripe so that they can ripen en route to the store and extend their shelf life as a result.

Try using canned tomatoes instead, which are picked at the height of their ripeness and preserved right away.

Are you sure the taste difference is only based on the tomatoes?

I think Indian cuisine has a lot more aspects/ingredients.

As for the tomatoflavor, try adding some tomatopaste.

It is usually fried like onion/garlic for a short while, before adding the bulk liquid (like stock).

This source says it "needs a few minutes on medium heat to darken in color and release its flavor" Edit: changed 'baked' to 'fried' for clarification

Variety makes a huge difference as well.

We make a variant of Caprese salad frequently, which is something that depends heavily on the quality of the tomatoes, and we basically have two choices when making it for optimal flavor: Use tomatoes

we grow ourselves

(we live in the northern US, so that's possible for about 2 months out of the year)

Use Campari tomatoes, which we are able to get hydroponically grown relatively nearby and packed ripe.

Camparis are a highly flavorful variety, one of the most flavorful that are easy to obtain (at least in our area), and because we're able to find a source that gives us fully ripe tomatoes consistently, they turn out very well.

We've tried with quite a few other varieties and sources, and even in season haven't gotten results near what we can get out of season with hydroponic Camparis.

You may want to find out what varieties of tomatoes are commonly used in the dishes you prepare - depending on what kind of flavor you're going for, plum, campari, or roma may be a good choice, for example.

This site recommends Plum tomatoes for sauces, for example.

I also see the desi tamatar , which seems to be a common Indian variety of tomato, which seems very similar to the Campari, both in appearance and flavor; I've seen some recipes that consider the two identical, though I suspect that's not truly the case (as the Campari is a recent hybrid developed in Europe).

It'd be wonderful if we could always purchase delicious, fresh tomatoes; bursting with intense, spectacular tomato flavor!

Alas, such is not the reality for most cooks, most times of the year.

The solution is to use fresh tomatoes as much as possible when they are available, but supplement them with one or more types of canned tomato products.

From canned whole tomatoes; through the many variations of diced, crushed, pureed, etc.; to the even more varietal tomato pastes and sauces; no pantry is complete without one or more types of canned tomatoes.

Experiment with whatever selection of tomato products are typically available where you live.

Through trial, error, and patience; you'll eventually achieve the taste you're longing for!

I use store bought "fresh" tomatoes on the vine for a lot tomato based dishes I make (such as curries).

I've found one way to bring out the flavour

is to

slow cook them for 6-8 hours on low , with the last few hours lidless to allow some water to evaporate off.

You can then mash or blend the mix to whatever consistency required.

You can also do this in a saucepan if you're careful not to burn the tomatoes.

Obviously this is time consuming but it can be done in advance and in bulk then frozen for future use

but it does really help bring out more flavour.

If the recipe calls for it, adding browned onions into the mix can create a sweeter flavour and as others have mentioned concentrated tomato puree and/or roasted garlic puree can enhance the flavour.

Question: I'm making an Indian dish, for this I need tomatoes, no matter what recipe I follow I'm not getting the taste of the restaurant.  Is this because I'm not preparing tomato properly or is it because I'm not choosing good tomatoes? How can I identify good tomatoes??

How to get best taste out of tomatoes?

Try experimenting with different varieties, especially on the vine and in season, but supermarket tomatoes are often picked unripe and ripen in transit, making them less flavourful. In contrast, canned tomato products are picked and processed at peak ripeness and may be a better option alone or in combination with fresh tomatoes.

Use fresh tomatoes only when available locally, supermarket tomatoes are often tasteless. Canned tomatoes are a good substitute outside the tomato season, as is tomato paste.

Supermarket tomatoes are picked before ripe and may have no flavour. Local tomatoes are a better bet. Different dishes require different types of tomato.

Canned tomatoes and tomato paste can be used when fresh tomatoes are not available and may give a better taste.

Use fresh tomatoes when available and canned the rest of the time.


The description of a genre is a collection of patterns.

Songs that share patterns can be grouped in a genre that describes those patterns.

You can find these patterns in any music dynamic: rhythm, speed, progression, key, instrumentation, whatever.

You determine the genre of a song by identifying these patterns, and associating them with the description of a genre.

For example, let's create two genres: fast music and slow music.

Any music below 120 bpms (beats per minute) is slow music, anything faster belongs to the fast music genre.

Listen to X song, count how many beats you heard in a minute, and group it

the genre it belongs to.

Genres work exactly like this, but with many more associated characteristics.

For another example, let's define two genres.

I'll just use over-simplified definitions to make the point clearer.

Techno:

Little harmonic and melodic movement (if at all).

Emphasis in rhythm and percussive instruments.

There is small variation through the song (no climax, no distinctive sections, for example).

Trance: Both melodic and harmonic movement.

Emphasis on bass, and time-based effects like reverb and delay.

Sometimes features string-ensemble-like synthesizers (known as pads).

There is variation through the song (it has well-defined intro, break-down, climax, and other sections).

Both Techno and Trance: Loop-based electronic music, based on samplers and synthesizers, carved for the dance floor.

Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtMQj2ivc9I

There is no harmonic movement, with some melodic movement, which repeats through the song.

The movement is injected through the timbre of the melody part, and the percussion part.

There is little variation through the song, with no distinctive sections.

This song is a good fit for our simplified techno definition.

Now listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8uWlSOMjcQ

There is harmonic and melodic movement.

It has distinctive sections (intro, break down and start of build up at around 3:50, climax at around 5:30, outro).

A lot of reverb and delay is being used.

This is a good fit for our Trance genre, even if it doesn't feature pads.

Sometimes it's hard to draw an objective link and define a genre objectively, so the genre subject is often a source of debate.

Since musicians can be very creative, not all songs have a specific and defined genre.

Some are a combination of many, others present a new pattern with no associated genre at all (for example, in our fast-slow music example, what do we do with songs that have no evident tempo, or songs with variable speed, or a song that can be described at more than one speed like 80 and 160 bpms?).

In contrast, there are songs that share well-defined patterns (by tradition, convention, influence, whatever) and are easier to catalog.

Visit http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html Scroll to the right and

you'll find a little search box at the top of thescreen, so now type in an artist e.g.

Queen

All genres associated with all songs on Spotify at the time the genre list was produced will appear below the search box!

Have fun navigating the website, it's one of my favourites by far.

I will be simple...

year does not matter much...

it's more about the types of samples you use and the type of instruments and sounds you use.

The only problem with your sample tracks (not mocking you as you did great explaining it)

above is that you picked a Detroit techno track (WHICH IS FINE); however, there are many sub-genres the fall under techno...

location of the creation also influences the genre choice.

So, to recap :)

Genre is based on year, location and most importantly it's strongly based on the sounds you use to create the track (e.g, type of snare, cymbals, shakers, kicks, hi hats etc...)

However, This is not always as clear.

Sometimes one genre is almost exactly the same as one another.

One easy and direct way of finding the genre of a song is to search for it at Discogs .

The most specific genre will be listed under "Style":

Discogs is crowsdourced (like AllMusic ), so the genre is the opinion of the person who contributed the entry.

Note that some songs aren't available (e.g.

Nora En Pure - Don't Look Back ), or they're part of albums and you can't find the individual track genre ( Coldplay - Arm of One ).

None of the previous answers actually addresses the question of determining the genre of a particular song .

Here's one way to do that : Add your song to a playlist in Spotify Go to that playlist, click the '...'

button ->

Share ->

Copy Spotify URI Go to http://organizeyourmusic.playlistmachinery.com Choose "

A specific playlist" form

the dropdown Paste the Spotify URI of your playlist Organize Your Music will analyze the playlist and show the genre of each song: OYM is open source.

How exactly is works is that it fetches the genres of some album the song is in (if any - I have yet to seen the Spotify API return any genres for any album), then those of the artist , and returns the first genre from that list.

Spotify doesn't supply per-track genre information, so this is the best that can be done using the Spotify API.

Note also that Spotify considers "edm" a genre, when it's actually an umbrella term for electronic music in general (contemporary mainstream club stuff).

You can also use it to analyze your entire music collection on Spotify.

Interesting to see which genres are most represented.

Question: I listen to many songs and I always wonder how the genre of a song is determined. Is it by listening to the song, or by the song's info like the artist, year released and so on?

How to determine the genre of a song?

You can find the genre directly by searching for it at Discogs, but otherwise you can identify shared patterns of sounds and instruments. Sometimes one genre is almost exactly the same as another one though.

Songs sharing patterns are grouped into genres. The genre of a song is based on year, location and sounds used to create it. Search for a song on Discogs to find out its genre.

Songs that share patterns are grouped in a genre.

Genre is based on year, location and sounds used to create the song.

Discogs is an app you can use for determining song genres.


Hip Hop is not a musical genre (although many people consider it to be so).

It is a cultural movement characterized by four elements, all of which represent the different manifestations of the culture: Rap music [oral] ; Turntablism or "DJing" [aural] ; B-boying [physical] ; Graffiti art [visual] .

So basically, when someone refers to Hip Hop this is encompassing the whole culture in which rap is just one of all elements.

From my understanding Rap Music and Hip Hop music are the same, however Hip Hip music and Rapping are different.

Hip hop music :

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music, or hip-hop music, is a music genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted.

Rapping: Rapping is often associated with and a primary ingredient of hip hop music, but the origins of the phenomenon can be said to predate hip hop culture by centuries.

So Rap would be a Speech and Hip Hop a Genre.

Also, Rap is more about the poetry of words and word styles and Hip Hop is more about the music(beats).

Additional Info:

What is the Difference between Rap and Hip Hop?

Rapping is a style of long-form narrative poetry recitation with a strong and regular rhythmic beat, typically spoken, but occasionally delivered in a sing-song fashion (Nelly, Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony).

Rap is most closely associated with the hip-hop musical genre, which often includes sampling, vinyl scratching, rapping, a distinctive beat, a deconstructionist aesthetic, and an urban sensibility.

Rap can be included in any genre, however, and has been featured in rock, heavy metal and country, among others.

(Many modern pop songs include a rapped verse or bridge as a way of adding a bit of "edge.")

Likewise, the hip-hop genre is not exclusively associated with rapping.

The music of singers such as Mary J. Blige and Frank Ocean is generally considered in the realm of hip-hop despite not always including rapping, and rappers such as Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean have occasionally released hip-hop songs that are sung, not rapped.

Both terms, and the linkage between the two, were popularized by the Sugarhill Gang's pioneering hip-hop rap song Rapper's Delight which featured the famous hook "I said a hip, hop, the hippie the hippie dibby

hip hop hop

and you don't stop to rock it to the bang bang boogie..."

musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/92/Chris Sunami supports Monica

To my understanding, rap music is usually all about the lyrics, while hip-hop can simply be a 'street' style of house beats or other genres.

Rap music is the combination of rhyming and poetry to a beat.

It is part of the Hip-Hop genre, which involves lyrics over fast-paced music.

Some people have described Hip-Hop as a way of life and a subculture, while rap is a specific genre of music.

The Grammys for the Hip-Hop category include R&B and Rap subcategories.

From Diffen .

I think hip hop is more like an entertainment industry that is part of the history and culture of African civilization.

This includes Dances, Clothes, Music, Singing, and so on.

All this is summed up in one - Hip Hop Culture.

rap on the other hand is the voice of the street, the voice of the poor man who recruits to seek an opinion against someone or against the regime in which he lives, from here comes the rapping That is only main opinion.

Martin WC from Million Rap Views

Question: What is the difference between 'hip hop' and 'rap' genres?

What is the difference between hip hop and rap?

Hip hop music and rap music cover the same styles, but hip hop is broader and also encompasses a subculture and way of life.

Hip Hop and Rap music are the same genre of music but rapping is different to Hip Hop music.Rap music focuses on the lyrics while Hip Hop music focuses on the sound and melody and while Hip Hop is a lifestyle,  Rap music is a specific genre.

There is no difference between the two music genres but the act of rapping is different to Hip Hop music

The two genres have two different objectives. In Rap music more importance is given to the Lyrics whilst the melody is more important in Hip Hop music

Hip Hop is a lifestyle while Rap music is a specific genre


Jack White has a habbit of including hidden tracks and other features.

Here's for instance his latest album Lazaretto : The 11-track album on White's label Third Man Records , includes different mixes and sequencing to the digital version, and will play at 33.3rpm as normal.

However two secret tracks hidden in the centre label will play at 45 and 78rpm respectively – a repeat of the trick White pulled with his Dead Weather supergroup and their album Sea of Cowards .

Side

A meanwhile demands that you place the needle on the inside of the record as it works its way outward, eventually getting caught in a perpetual locked groove at the outer edge (the more jaded White fan might suggest that you won't be able to tell when said groove begins).

The first song on Side B however, has two different intros, one acoustic and one electric, which differ depending on where the needle is dropped .

The two grooves then blend into one halfway through the song.

If that wasn't enough to play with, there is also a hologram on Side A hand-etched by artist Tristan Duke, featuring a spinning angel appearing to float in the blank area between the groove and the label.

Side B is given a matte finish

so it resembles a shellac 78rpm record.

Yes, you need to destroy the center labels to play the hidden tracks.

Billboard has a video .

C+C Music Factory's Gonna Make You Sweat album on cassette had a hidden track.

The cassette said that "Bang That Beat" was the final track on the tape, but if you let the cassette continue playing for about 20-30 seconds past the end of that song, then you heard the "Shade" song start playing.

Monty Python's Matching Tie & Handkerchief may qualify, as entire sides were 'hidden' by two methods.

Both sides of the album had the same label, claiming it was 'Side 2' One side had dual concentric grooves, so which tracks you heard was dependent on which of the two grooves you hit when dropping the needle.

It was referred to at the time as a 3-sided record.

The cassette release of Pulse by Pink Floyd contains a 22-minute hidden track titled Soundscape (Cassette 2, Side 4) that starts a few minutes after the last listed track Run Like Hell .

"Wish You Were Here

" 6:35 "Comfortably Numb" 9:29 "Run Like Hell" 8:36 "Soundscape (Ambient piece played before all concerts)"

22:00 In case of vinyl, the contents in the locked groove will be in many cases a hidden track ( discussed here ).

One of the first and most famous hidden tracks is on The Beatles' Abbey Road . "

Her Majesty " begins 14 seconds after the last song listed on the album jacket ("The End") and runs 23 seconds long.

It is often considered the first example of a hidden track in recording history.

Released in 1969, this was long before CDs.

There have been lots of albums featuring hidden bonus tracks since, released on every format you can think of, using various techniques.

Wikipedia has an article about hidden tracks that discusses the techniques and notable examples.

musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/48/Ben Miller - Remember Monica

From Mew's album No More Stories Are Told Today, I'm Sorry

They Washed Away

No More Stories, The World Is Grey, I'm Tired,

Let's Wash Away , the track New Terrain , when played backwards, is a different song called Nervous .

I'm not sure if it strictly qualifies as a "hidden" track - it was added as a bonus track on the vinyl edition, but since it's the same audio played in reverse, hiding the song is independent of the media it is recorded on.

Question: I know about hidden tracks on CD's, but are there examples of hidden tracks on cassette/ vinyl?

Hidden tracks on other media than CD?

Several artists have done this, including Jack White, Monty Python in Matching Tie & Handkerchief, The Beatles in Abbey Road, C+C Music Factory in Gonna Make You Sweat and Pink Floyd in Pulse.

Various artists, bands, and Movie sountracks include hiddenn tracks  using varous sound storage mediums like cassettes.

Aritists like Jack White, The Beatles and movie soundtracks like Monty Python's Matching Tie & Handkerchief include  hidden tracks but the sound storage  medium is not specified

C+C Music Factory's Gonna Make You Sweat and Pink Floyd's Pulse cassettes include hidden tracks


Yes.

Many times.

Just google "B/W Same" (which means "Backed With Same") and you'll find many images of singles marked this way.

An example of this can be found here .

Singles were typically released and "backed with" a track that was a strong contender for airplay.

As music moved into the 70's, singles would often get backed with alternate tracks that didn't appear on an album, as to make fans more likely to buy them.

Some famous 45's like that were "

Hey, Hey, What Could I Do" by Led Zeppelin, and "Abilene" by Yes.

One of the most unusual cases is the song American Pie , by Don McLean.

The album version is listed as being 8:33, making it the longest number 1 song in history, but at that length, it took up both sides of a standard single.

The length part of the Wikipedia entry list the length of side A as 4:11, and side B as 4:31.

no, singles had 2 sides, (A-side and B-side)

so there would be at least 2 songs.

I say "at least" because some B-sides might have 2 songs.

And some B-sides have become famous in their own right - Queen's

"We will Rock you", for example.

I've seen also singles where in the A side is the original song and on the B side is an instrumental version.

Another thing could be, that on the A side is a cover version or a remix and on the b side is the original one.

For example: "Swing the mood" by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers.

On the A side is the radio version of Swing the Mood and on the B side is the original one by Glenn Miller Medley ( http://www.discogs.com/Jive-Bunny-And-The-Mastermixers-Swing-The-Mood/release/541208 )

Let's say 'nothing famous' was done as a single track, but Google has a few suggestions for '1-sided vinyl' including one interesting hit of a release that was CD on one side, record on the other.

There's an entire wikipedia article on A-Sides & B-Sides

This question is fraught with conflation.

Everyone here seems to be trying to shoehorn answers to fit with the original question.

When the term came about, 'single' was not intended to connote that you would only be buying one song.

Music was first distributed on vinyl records.

You could purchase vinyl in three options: LP, or Long-Playing.

This vinyl record consisted of roughly 5 songs per side.

It was spun on a record player at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute (RPM) EP, or Extended-Play.

This vinyl consisted of a number of total songs less than an LP, but more than a single.

Single.

The intent on releasing a single was putting the best foot forward to promote an entire album, or LP.

Singles were only a song in length on each side.

Because there was less content, it was recorded differently (to take up more vinyl real estate), and ran at 45 RPM.

Some LPs had strength enough to release multiple singles.

(Michael Jackson had a number of LPs where this was true) The single, or reason that this single song was released, was consider the A side.

The B side almost always contained a weaker (and different) song, used to draw interest on the rest of the album.

Over time, artists would put songs on the B side that would never be contained on a studio LP, to generate rarity and more reason to purchase singles.

Question: Every single I have on vinyl, cassette, and CD has at least two tracks, even if they are alternate mixes of the same song.   With downloads you can obviously buy individual songs these days, but before that, when you bought a single, did you ever really get just one song?

Before the days of downloads, were 'single' releases ever really only one song?

Singles had two sides, and A and B side.

You could get a single but you would never really get just one song seeing as even singles had two sides.


I would answer this in two ways: HISTORICALLY, "house" and "techno" are two regional variations of post-disco club music that grew up more or less simultaneously.

House music is associated with Chicago in the early 1980s, and Techno with Detroit.

The most distinctive Chicago house sounds were "soulful" house, which used gospel diva samples, piano riffs, and inspirational raps over 4/4 beats, usually realized on an 808 drum machine; and "acid" house, which was a more stripped down "jacking" style of house that featured the TB-303 bassline, used as a melody instrument, to create a squelching, electronic style of dance music.

Detroit techno is associated with a specific set of suburban black DJs who were looking to fuse dance music with the avant-garde, sci-fi aesthetic of Kraftwerk and electro.

They featured complex, mechanical sounding beats programmed on more advanced drum machines (TR-909) and sequencers (Roland MC500), along with cold, dissonant synthesizers and vocoded voices.

These two ways of making music -- soulful, "deep" dance music, with pronounced aspects of blackness and femininity; and hard, "banging" electronic dance music, using synths and computers -- have given rise to endless variations.

To oversimplify vastly, it seems like "house" is the root style of dance music, with an almost classical feel to it.

It tends to stay closer to the 118-120BPM of disco and early 1980s club music, and has always been more hospitable to "acoustic" sounding samples, expressive divas, etc.

Techno, on the other hand, has tended to speed up, quickly reaching 130-140BPM, and becoming more and more psychedelic, until it spawned (in the 1990s)

the very influential style called "trance."

Go to a big dance party and and you will probably hear a descendant of one of these two styles.

(Unless, that is, you are listening to something with breakbeats or dub influences...)

House - very melodic music influenced by 80s disco and electro; house has simple beats and real voiceshouse examples here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki6wWg2o8uQ

Techno - very percussive, psychedelic, futuristic music that is usually not melodic

; techno has complex and variable beats of 4/4 and 2-step.

techno examples here

(this one is a compilation i made) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRO0QWTsW2w

Adding to Robert's fantastic answer above, the name House music comes from the night club in Chicago where the sound really caught on - a night club called Warehouse and a DJ named Frankie Knuckles who created seamless mixes of repetitive disco loops using similar record mixing techniques as new york hip hoppers like Grand Master Flash.

Chicago DJ Jesse Saunders' song 'On and On' is often credited as 'the' first house record pressed.

There is a great history of electronic music documentary by Iara Lee called Modulations that really breaks down what sounds and styles came from what regions of the world and when, covering house, techno, trance, gabber, and jungle with interviews from the likes of Frankie Knuckles, Juan Atkins and more.

if you are interested, you can check it out here: https://vimeo.com/87206606

House has its stylistic origins in Chicago.

In Chicago, the black community heavily use gospel and blues as just the vernacular frame for their music.

The dances there is the jack and the juke .

Because of the history of gospel and blues, there is often a pronounced backbeat that is absent in techno.

Techno has its stylistic origins in Detroit.

In Detroit, gospel is in the background―sure―but jazz

is much more prominent.

The dance there is the jit (terbug).

In house music, it is always one-step.

Techno can be one-step or two-step or a hybrid of the two.

The variation enjoyed in techno over the number of step allows it to be more consistently percussive than house.

The role of the hat in techno is much more important in providing the basis of the rhythm more than the bass drum and the snares.

When we introduce Europe in the question, much of the popular dances there are one-steps and largely have a history that draws from disco and house.

The German interpretation of techno has been largely to treat it as a one-step with crosses of Berlin School and Dortmund School instrumentation.

Throughout Europe, house largely has a pulsing bassline on the off beat.

OK, in short, and cutting a lot of corners: House is the EDM version of "black" music (soul, funk, jazz), and Techno is the EDM version of "white" music (rock).

House usually has a "swing" feel to it (also known as a "shuffle"), whereas Techno is played "straight".

answer is so simple.

house music contains Claps on the second beat in the measure, where in Techno, claps are non existent and the snare is very rarely put on the second beat in the measure.

Question: Both are considered pillars of electronic dance music, and probably its most known and recognized genres. They are often used interchangeably, sometimes to refer to electronic dance music in general, something techno and house fans consider an inaccuracy (to say the least). Tech-house is another popular genre, so apparently you can combine them both.  So, what's the difference?

What's the difference between house and techno?

House music is associated with early 1980s Chicago, and has a melodic music with a shuffle influenced by 80s disco and electro with simple beats and real voices. Techno is associated with Detroit, and is very percussive, futuristic and not usually melodic.

House Music originates in Chicago and Techno Music originates in Detroit. House music is very melodic and has simple beats while Techno music is not very melodic and is very percussive. It is known that  House music is the EDM version of soul, funk and jazz music. Whereas Techno is the EDM version of Rock music.

House Music originates in Chicago in the early 1980's and Techno music originates in Detroit

House music is very melodic, is influenced by 80's disco music and has simple beats whilst Techno music is not melodic, very psychedelic, very percussive and futuristic

House Music is the EDM version of soul, funk and jazz music that's why it usually has a ''swing'' feel to it. Whereas Techno music is played ''straight''' because it is the EDM version of rock music


Massive Attack are most commonly labelled a Trip-Hop band.

The most obvious other band that came from the same Bristol scene is Portishead ; you might also want to check out Tricky 's first solo album, Maxinquaye .

The term 'Trip-Hop' was supposedly used even earlier to describe DJ Shadow 's In/Flux single, so he might also be worth a listen (starting, of course, with Endtroducing... )

As a slightly downbeat dance-influenced music, you might also give Gorillaz a try; I wonder if you might also like Model 500 's Mind and Body album -

e.g. Rain .

Another laid back techno-with-vocals work

I'm listening to now : William Orbit 's Strange Cargo Three .

maybe a bit clichéd/cheesy

but it's so well done.

Everyone is forgetting about UNKLE - a British trip-hop band with some amazing pieces, Lonely Soul being the first one you need to hear.

I absolutely agree about Hooverphonic, Portishead and Morcheeba , those'd be my first picks too.

Groove Armada have some songs that are in this sort of style, Think

Twice

I think you'd really love!

Next, we are moving on to The Chemical Brothers -

I think you'll absolutely love the entire Come With Us album , specifically The Test,

The State We're In !

I fell in love with those songs instantly, and Massive Attack are one of my fave bands :)

Nice taste in music

everyone's got in this topic!

You might want to check out Santigold as well, it's not exactly trip-hop

I guess,

but she's a really underestimated female artist with a great sound!

I started a Massive Attack channel on Pandora a couple of years ago and my eyes were opened.

Portishead - Dummy

(The whole album is actually quite good) Tricky - Maxinquaye ( 1 2 3 ) Zero 7 - Various albums, but " Simple Things " and " When It Falls " are my two favorite.

( 1 2

3 4 )

Nightmares on Wax ( You Wish , Passion , Les Nuits )

Hooverphonic ( 2 Wicky ) Thievery Corporation -

The Richest Man In Babylon

( Until the Morning ) FC Kahuna - Most is too electronic for me, but Hayling felt

right DJ Shadow ( In/Flux ) Télépopmusik ( Breathe , Don't Look Back )

Groove Armada ( Inside My Mind (Blue Skies) )

Little People - Mickey Mouse Operation Natalie Imbruglia ( Leave Me Alone ) Sneaker Pimps ( 6 Underground ) Morcheeba - So often mentioned, but I personally don't see the similarities in the vast majority of their work.

Who Can You Trust is the most applicable album I think.

There's also a Belgian band who made awesome triphop music in their early days: Hooverphonic fka Hoover.

Their first 2 albums 'A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular' and 'Blue Wonder Power Milk' are really nice ones.

If you are more into instrumental music, you should listen to the French band Air .

They made beautiful albums like 'Walkie Talkie' and 'Moon Safari'.

Another place to look is under the label "downtempo.

" There was a lot of great stuff on Ninja Tune records in the 1990s...

Most of the other suggested artists don't have that particular dark, almost post-punkish atmosphere of the later Massive Attack.

If that is what you like about them, I recommend the first two albums "Balance of the Force" and "The Night Garden" and the EP "Northern Light" by Austrian Producer Waldeck .

His later works are rather in the electroswing genre.

Another - also Austrian - band that plays trip-hop with a dark post-punkish vibe to it are Sofa Surfers , in particular their 2005 self-titled album and those following it.

Also you need to check out the band Archive , in particular their superb album "Controlling Crowds", they also play a rather dark brand of trip-hop.

Immediately K.Flay comes to mind.

Take for example:

https://soundcloud.com/kflay/make-me-fade-2 Slow tempos,

Hip-Hop grooves, trippy electronic samples and female vocals.

This is a bit old and there's a lot of great stuff covered here, but I feel I should add you might check out some of the anticon.

acts and associates such as Themselves , and cLOUDEAD .

There is a total dark-horse album that most people don't know about, that sounds very like the Bristol sound.

For me it was an aquired taste but it's lived with me since the late 90's Archive Londinium.

You can listen to an example of it here:

Question: I love Massive Attack; they are one of my favorite "bands" in the world. And I want to find something similar to them, but more like the albums:  Mezzanine ,  100th window  and  Heligoland . Any suggestions?

Bands that sound like Massive Attack?

Portishead is another band from the same Bristol scene. Other similar albums include Nightmares on Wax ( You Wish, Passion, Les Nuits), Hooverphonic (2 Wicky) Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man In Babylon, and Groove Armada (Inside My Mind (Blue Skies)).

Bands like Portishead, UNKLE, Nightmares on Wax, Hooverphonic, Thievery Corporation and Groove Armada  and the album '''Mxinquaye'' are very similar to Massive Attack.

Other british bands like Portishead and UNKLE were recommended. The album Maxinquaye was also suggested

The Bands Nightmares on Wax, Hooverphonic, Thievery Corporation and Groove Armada were recommended


You may want to check Edu Falaschi (ex-Angra) project called Almah .

Their second album, Fragile Equality, has frequent parts of symphonic/orchestration keyboards with complex guitars riffs and progressive parts.

I also recommend you to check the Swedish Operatic Metal band Therion , most of their albums have complex orchestrations parts mixed with Power/Melodic Metal.

A very good way to find new bands is searching on related bands from your favourite artists on Last.fm. Or even searching on YouTube for "symphonic progressive metal bands megamix", will return a plenty of good suggestions!

I'd suggest Haggard as a full symphonic band, with "Eppur si muove".

Septicflesh are using a lot of orchestra parts, you can try Titan, Communion and The Great Mass. Dark Lunacy had a violin in Forget me Not and Devoid.

Fleshgod Apocalypse uses piano and various orchestration parts, I'd suggest listening to their Agony album.

Probably less symphonic than previous bands

you can give a chance to old Novembre albums:

Arte Novecento, Classica and Novembrine Waltz.

Their composition is unique, grasps a wide range of sounds, you'd probably like it.

When it comes to technical guitars one should definitely mention

Rhapsody(now renamed to Rhapsody of Fire).

Give Gargoyles, Angels Of Darkness a try.

In their older albums Luca Turilli was playing the guitars and he is very talented guitar player.

The band split in 2011 and now there are two bands - Rhapsody of Fire and Luca Turilli's Rhapsody.

You may also give Gwyllion a try (e.g. The Night Awakes ).

It is worth to also mention Morten Veland - some of the peaces of Sirenia and his band Mortemia could also fit in what I imagine as technical guitars.

As for Nightwish I really like the band

and I think some peaces(from the older era) could fit as well - for instance give their interpretation of Crimson Tide And Deep Blue Sea a try.

Of course we can not leave out Therion and Haggard, but they have already been mentioned.

I think you should check the one-man-band (from Behold the Arctopus) project Direwolf:

http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Direwolf/91376 Fist in Fetus are also technical and symphonic.

Therion, Nightwish, are symphonic, not so technical.

Same thing with Haggard, Septic Flesh and Fleshgod Apocalypse, they are trully symphonic and progressive, but I wouldn't call them technical.

Dream Theater, Pain of Salvation, Dark Lunacy and Novembre don't fit the "Symphonic&Technical" combo either...

I would also add: Adagio Yngwie Malmsteen

Blind Guardian Therion Evergrey

Uli Jon Roth Also David Maxim Micic's solo albums have a symphonic vibe in them although he does not belong in that genre.

Direct Answer to Your Question:-- Try "A Glimpse Beyond" by Dan Mumm. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnIQnlxhYys )

[ Warning :

Harsh, Noisy, and/or Disorienting Sound in the video link directly above.]

Other References:--

This artist has the advantage of being a professional guitar teacher with materials you can visit:-- ( http://www.danmumm.com/do-you-really-need-theory-as-a-guitarist/ ) ( https://metalmethod.com/sweep-picking-secrets )

Question: When it comes to symphonic metal bands, the guitar parts aren’t usually very complex.  I know two bands which have both symphonic instruments and very technical guitars:   Symphony X   Angra   Failed to find any more. Do you know any?

Symphonic metal bands with very technical guitar

Bands that could be considered symphonic include Haggard with "Eppur si muove", Rhapsody (now renamed to Rhapsody of Fire), Gargoyles, Angels Of Darkness and Blind Guardian  Therion  Evergrey.

The bands Haggard, Rhapsody of Fire,  Gargoyles, Angels of Darkness, Blind Guardian, Therion and Evergrey were reccommended


YYZ by Rush is a pretty obvious example.

YYZ is the IATA airport identification code of Toronto PearsonInternational Airport, near Rush's hometown.

The band was introduced to the rhythm as Alex Lifeson flew them into the airport.

A VHF omnidirectional range system at the airport broadcasts the YYZ identifier code in Morse code.

Peart said in interviews later that the rhythm stuck with them.

Peart and Geddy Lee have both said "It's always a happy day when YYZ appears on our luggage tags.

"The pieces's introduction, played in a time signature of 10/8, repeatedly renders"Y-Y-Z" in Morse Code using various musical arrangements.

"YYZ

" rendered in Morse code:

Y Y Z- . - - - . - - - - . .

Source: Wikipedia

They've been using talking drums to communicate between African villages for centuries.

( Drum telegraphy )

A village elder, usually the griot , would play the drum to announce weddings, births, deaths, warnings of attack, etc.

The griots of the neighboring villages would then repeat the tune to relay the message to their neighboring villages, so on and so forth.

The drum transcends the villages' individual languages, breaking language barriers and carrying messages very far very quickly.

In classical music, the term for composition inspired by or including a message or code is a cryptogram.

This approach to composition was sometimes used by the western-European classical composers.

See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_cryptogram Bach may have been the most prolific user of cryptograms.

Among his entire compositional output (estimated up to 2000 works) there are dozens of examples where Bach "encoded" his music with secret messages.

Most of them were inside jokes (only meant to amuse himself) and praises to God.

One notable instance is the Bach Motif , which is a sequence of notes that spells out composer Johann Sebastian Bach's last name using note names (using the German names for notes, which include an "H").

It was used frequently by Bach and many of the composers influenced by him.

see

Here is a link to the review of an album that purports to feature only famous Bach songs that utilize cryptograms: http://justinpledger.com/2010/12/23/bachs-secret-messages

musicfans.stackexchange.com/users/92/Chris Sunami supports Monica

' Amarok ' by Mike Oldfield is (mostly) instrumental (it contains some shouting and some spoken word.

It also contains a bit of morse code :

a sequence of Morse code found 48 minutes into the piece, spelling out "FUCK OFF RB" in reference to Virgin's Richard Branson, the man who had first signed him.

Source: Wikipedia

The rhythm and timing in Tool's Lateralus contain numerous references to the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Ratio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralus_(song)

(Very good answers above!)

There are so many examples of music communicating more information than mere artistic expression.

The only reason that the Romans developed the brass horn was to signal troop movements.

They made brass horns bigger, louder and implemented a set of musical motifs to order charge, retreat, etc.

They weren't interested in music at all, but the modern-day brass section owes a debt of thanks to the Roman army.

The same applies to other cultures using the drums, bagpipes, etc.

The psychological warfare aspect to these noisy instruments is secondary to communication among troops.

Church bells are another ubiquitous example: signaling time, weddings, emergencies, celebrations, etc.

Town bell towers indicate time, in fact Big Ben uses different variations of a melody to signal time every fifteen minutes.

In the modern era, the spacecraft Voyager included a CD recording of several great musical works, in an attempt to communicate some information about Earth to any civilization that discovers it (and succeeds at decoding it).

At my local university, I participated on a research team to create an algorithm that would synthesize an instrumental soundtrack to replace the continual beeping of the ECG.

The premise was that a melody could contain several elements, each tied to a different bio-feedback item.

Therefore, the overall status of a patient could be easily determined by the nurse upon his/her entering the patient's room and hearing the melody.

As a side-benefit, this soothing melody replaced the annoying beep of the ECG.

Check out 'Bermuda Triangle' by Tomita, where a cryptic message is encoded within the audio.

You need special (obscure) hardware to decode the message.

According to isaotomita.net/recordings/bermuda.html

The computer encoded signals found on this album are in a format known as TARBEL.

Using this system, messages may be encoded in a recording via audio signals.

The TARBEL format was used as a way to save data onto an audio cassette recorder in the mid to late 1970s before the IBM PC and hard disk drives.

The sound is familiar to anyone who has used an old tape interface (lots of 'piii's and 'gaaa's!) and can be decoded with a computer programmed to recognise the TARBEL system.

The actual messages are Side A

THIS IS THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE,

OVER.

SLOW DOWN.

TARGET 50 MILES OFF SOUTH FLORIDA, A GIANT PYRAMID AT OCEAN BOTTOM.

Side B

THIS IS THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, OVER.

LOOK OUT!

THE CYLINDRICAL OBJECT

JUST LIKE THE ONE EXPLODED OVER SIBERIA AND CRASHED INTO TUNGUSKA IN 1908, HAS JUST COME INTO THE SOLAR SYSTEM.

Even at the time of its release TARBEL was uncommon.

In fact, apart from this Tomita album, I've never heard of anyone else using it.

Question: Music is often dubbed 'the universal language', but language usually carries some information.  I know that music has many different notes, with letters and pitches assigned to each. Was there ever any instrumental (lyric-free) music written as a code to carry information, in any form? (numbers, letters, etc)   If so, can you please list the name, and artist/composer, if possible?  Thanks for your help.

Has any instrumental music ever been used to carry information?

Examples of this include YYZ by Rush, the Bach Motif, which is a sequence of notes that spells out composer Johann Sebastian Bach's last name using note names (using the German names for notes, which include an "H"), references to the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Ratio in the rhythm and timing Tool's Lateralus, and  'Bermuda Triangle' by Tomita, where a cryptic message is encoded within the audio.

The songs YYZ by Rush  ,The Bach Motif, Tool's Lateralus and Bermuda Triangle are noted to carry some form of information.

Information like names, formulas and cryptic messages is shared through the use of notes, rhythm and timing. The examples given are The Bach Motif, Tool's Lateralus and Bermuda Triangle