If you flatten the seventh note of the major scale, you get Mixolydian mode. It’s like a bluesier version of major. Mixolydian is a medieval mode that fell out of favor with “art” music composers during the Baroque era. However, it stayed alive and well in various European folk traditions before having an explosion in …
Author Archives: Ethan
The microphone placement playlist
Last week in music tech class, we talked about audio recording, and how the placement of microphones relative to the voices or instruments can shape the sound of a recording. Mics don’t just pick up the sound of the voice or instrument itself. They also pick up the sound of the voice or instrument bouncing …
In My Life
My daughter is getting deep into the Beatles, so I’m listening to them a lot with her. I don’t usually listen to the Beatles all that much, because I know their songs backwards and forwards and inside out. But it’s always nice to come back to the songs in a new context, and it’s rare …
Why are there so many minor scales
I wrote this explainer for my New School students; maybe you will find it useful too. The white keys on the piano don’t just have to play C major. If you play the white keys over a droning or repeated A, you get a very different-sounding scale. It has a few different names: the A …
Tuning is hard
I am committed to teaching my students something about the history of tuning in Western European music. I don’t expect them to retain any details or do any math, I just want them to know that the history exists. In preparation, I continue to refine my explanation of this history to myself. Before the year …
What’s Going On
For a discussion of musical form in Contemporary Music Theories, we talked about Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On.” The multitrack stems are in circulation, and they are quite a revelation. Here’s a nice walkthrough with Questlove and Motown executive Harry Weinger.
The first day of Contemporary Music Theories at the New School
Here are the tracks we listened to on the first day of Contemporary Music Theories at the New School. The class is a requirement for music majors, and as its name suggests, it is intended to give a broad-based understanding of music theory, not just Western tonal theory. We started things off with excerpts of …
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Why are D-sharp and E-flat considered to be two different notes
Why do the black keys on the piano each have two different names? If the posts on r/musictheory are any indication, this is a persistent point of confusion, especially when music theory teachers get all persnickety about using the correct name. This confusion applies to all of the black keys, but in this post, I’ll be …
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Bach’s mysterious Sarabande
While learning and learning about the Prelude to Bach’s G minor Lute Suite, I also came into contact with the suite’s Sarabande. This piece is famous among music theorists, because while it’s only forty measures long, those forty measures are action-packed, harmonically speaking. Here’s a performance by Evangelina Mascardi. I appreciate that Mascardi doesn’t play …
Bach’s Lute Suite in G minor
I don’t get a lot of music-related correspondence on LinkedIn, so I was surprised when a stranger wrote me a very nice message there about my deep dive into the Bach Chaconne. He mentioned that he was learning the prelude to the Lute Suite in G Minor, BWV 995, and that he liked Göran Söllscher’s …