Like all nerds, I revere Brian Eno. When MusicRadar asked for a column about him, I jumped on it. They wanted something about his generative music, and Music For Airports was the obvious choice.
Author Archives: Ethan
Subterranean Homesick Blues
I have Bob Dylan on the brain, because my socials are saturated with ads for the Timothee Chalamet movie, and because MusicRadar used the movie as the news hook for a column about Bob. I rewatched Don’t Look Back for the first time in forever. It’s a sign of my advancing age that Bob came …
I want to write a book about the Grateful Dead
I wrote a lot of posts about the Grateful Dead last year. I started doing it for my own enjoyment and interest, and was pleasantly surprised by how many enthusiastic responses I got. I have also been surprised by how interested my students have been in hearing about these songs. I started thinking that I …
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MusicRadar column on one of Bob Dylan’s greatest hits
To tie in with the new Dylan movie, MusicRadar asked me to analyze “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” My first choice would have been “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”, my favorite Dylan song and one of my favorite songs by anyone ever, but I was happy to go with their request too, it’s a …
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Things I wrote in 2024
It has been a big year for my writing life. My work life continues to consist of badly paid contingent faculty work, but hope springs eternal. So here’s a list of things I wrote and what I am hoping happens as a result.
My year in pop aural skills teaching
This year, in addition to teaching my first NYU pop music theory class, I also taught two semesters of pop aural skills. If you didn’t go through a university music program, you may not know what aural skills class involves. Traditionally, you identify chords and intervals by ear, practice sight-singing, and do dictation (meaning, you …
My year in pop music theory teaching
See also: my year in pop aural skills teaching This year I taught my first theory class in NYU’s new popular music sequence. It was not my first music theory class, or my first pop music class, but it was the first one in a university-level sequence dedicated specifically to pop. I think it mostly …
In defense of “Wonderful Christmastime”
New on MusicRadar, I take a mostly sympathetic look at Paul McCartney’s omnipresent and divisive earworm. I don’t generally like Christmas music, but this song is so goofy and odd that I can’t help but find it endearing. The main problem with it is that the tempo is too fast and the feel is too …
Jason Yust on the racist history of tonality
I haven’t done any culture war material lately, but Jason Yust recently published an article in the Journal of Music Theory with the title “Tonality and Racism“, and I couldn’t not respond. The arguments in the paper are relevant to my teaching life in NYU’s new and wonderful pop theory and aural skills sequence. These classes …
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Stormy Monday
Sometimes you find a song that is so full of clear examples of music theory concepts that you want to build your whole syllabus around it. The Allman Brothers version of “Stormy Monday”, which they adapted from Bobby Bland’s arrangement of a T-Bone Walker song, is a case in point: it has extended chords, augmented …