Here it is, the most stupendous entry in The Art of Fugue. Its three themes are inversions of the ones in Contrapunctus VIII, meaning that they have the same rhythms and intervals but are upside down. Bach also added lots of subthemes and counterthemes. I used Ableton Live to visualize Angela Hewitt’s recording, drawing extensively …
Author Archives: Ethan
Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus VIII
In this post, I’m digging deeper into Bach’s The Art of Fugue with Contrapunctus VIII. It’s way more complex and intense than Contrapunctus I. I used Ableton Live to line up a MIDI file of the piece with Angela Hewitt’s recording, and then color-coded and annotated it to show the structure, the harmony, the subjects …
I am making my students write raps and I wrote one too
The hardest songwriting assignment I’m giving to the NYU Pop Music Practicum is to write and record a short original rap verse. The students come from classical, jazz and musical theater backgrounds, and while many of them enjoy listening to rap, almost none have tried making it. So we are all outside of our comfort …
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The Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus I
JS Bach’s last set of works, collectively titled The Art of Fugue, was published shortly after his death. It was not a big hit. Dense counterpoint was deeply unfashionable at that time, as Western European aristocratic tastes shifted toward singable melodies over block chords. The first published edition of The Art of Fugue only sold …
Teaching songwriting to music education students
This spring I’m having the pleasure of co-teaching the NYU Music Education Popular Music Practicum. This is an opportunity to enact my long-held belief that music teachers should know how to write songs. My method for teaching songwriting is to say, okay, go write some songs. But I don’t throw the students straight into the …
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Sonnymoon for Two
Sonny Rollins is a justifiably famous for his improvising, but he has also written several jazz standards that are as catchy as anything on top 40 radio: “St Thomas,” “Pent Up House,” “Doxy,” and the stickiest earworm for me personally, “Sonnymoon for Two.” Here’s an early studio recording: Here’s the really famous version, from the …
Groove melodies
Like harmony, melody works differently in grooves than it does in linear songs or Western classical compositions. In this post, I try to figure out what makes a good groove melody, and how to write one. Update: Joshua Horowitz made an interactive animation of this image! It’s so cool.
Repetition legitimizes, funk beautifies
David Bruce made a delightful video about the role of repetition in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. While this piece is hair-raisingly dissonant, it’s also remarkably popular (by classical music standards, anyway.) David explains this fact by showing how repetition makes the previously inexplicable seem more meaningful and less threatening. A crunchy chord might be …
My Favorite Things
My kids have been watching The Sound of Music a lot lately. I have known many of the songs since elementary school, but I somehow never got around to watching the movie until now. Apparently it was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s last musical, and boy did they leave it all on the stage. I was sitting …
Adam Neely video on “Hey Joe” and blues tonality
It’s a delightful sensation to be watching a new Adam Neely video and then being startled by hearing my own name. A commenter says, “he just humiliates you with terminology while looking through pages of his thick clever books and then casually quotes some random guy on the internet like yeah whatever.” That random guy …
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