It’s hard to figure out what key a piece of music is in. There are a lot of conflicting answers from different music theory texts. To make matters worse, it’s not at all unusual for a song to change keys, even within a section or phrase. Even rock songs written by totally naive songwriters can …
Author Archives: Ethan
Samples and community
The defining musical experience of my lifetime is hearing familiar samples in unfamiliar contexts. For me, the experience is usually a thrill. For a lot of people, the experience makes them angry. Using recognizable samples necessarily means having an emotional conversation with everyone who already has an attachment to the original recording. Music is about …
How do you have a career as a musician?
The odds of your making a living performing your own material are small, vanishingly small. But there are a lot of ways to make a living in music. If you do succeed at the singer-songwriter path using the tips listed in the other answers, mazel tov. In the likelihood that the singer-songwriter-musician thing doesn’t pay …
What is the creative process like when writing a song?
I’ve tried a variety of different songwriting methods. I’ve written a set of lyrics and then tried setting them, or been handed a set of lyrics and told to make them work. I’ve come up with melodies and then set lyrics to them, found chords for them and so on. I’ve worked out basslines or …
Continue reading “What is the creative process like when writing a song?”
Probability
Probability is a deeply weird and disturbing topic. The harder I look at it, the weirder and more disturbing it becomes. I find the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to be the least weird and disturbing way to think about it.
Check The Rhime
The other night Anna and I went to see Beats, Rhymes And Life: The Travels Of A Tribe Called Quest.
How is it possible to compose jazz when improvisation is an essential component?
Typical jazz compositions are written expressly as vehicles for improvisation. Mainstream jazz tunes since the 1940s take the form head-solos-head. The head is a written melody, and the solos are improvised around the chord changes of the head. Scores for these kinds of tunes take the form of lead sheets, like the ones found in …
Continue reading “How is it possible to compose jazz when improvisation is an essential component?”
Reggie Watts
Back in June we went to see the incomparable Reggie Watts perform at Central Park Summerstage. I think Reggie is one of the most exciting artists of our time, but it’s difficult to verbalize exactly what he does. His performances combine improvisational music and absurdist standup comedy into a free-associative yet oddly coherent and impactful …
How to groove
When teaching guitar, I find that my students need the most help with groove. Students come to me expecting to learn chords, scales, riffs and ultimately entire tunes. I do teach those things, but after a little guidance, anyone can learn them on their own just as well from books, videos, web sites and so …
Flute of Forgotten Dreams
I’m fascinated by the Stone Age, so Werner Herzog’s 3D documentary about cave paintings was catnip for me.