I’m delighted to announce that my new online music theory collaboration with Soundfly is live. It’s called Unlocking the Emotional Power of Chords, and it gives you a practical guide to harmony for creators of contemporary pop, R&B, hip-hop, and EDM. We tie all the abstract music theory concepts to real-world musical usages, showing how you can …
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At age four, Milo wrote a song! It was inspired by an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, where Stephen is lost in the old mine, and Sir Topham Hatt organizes a search party. The verses are a little confusing and are different every time he sings them, but the chorus is remarkably catchy.
Writing assignment for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson The Park Slope Coop (PSFC) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1973. It offers sustainably and ethically produced food and grocery items. Because it needs only to cover costs rather than turn a profit, the PSFC’s prices are substantially lower than a typical Brooklyn grocery …
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Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg The final reading for Learning of Culture is Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools by Amanda Lewis and John Diamond.
Public-facing note-taking for Philosophy of Music Education with David Elliott This week, I’m taking a look at two chapters from a new book on the red-hot topic of artistic citizenship, the social responsibility of artists and arts educators.
QWERTYBeats is a proposed accessible, beginner-friendly rhythm performance tool with a basic built-in sampler. By simply holding down different combinations of keys on a standard computer keyboard, users can play complex syncopations and polyrhythms. If the app is synced to the tempo of a DAW or other music playback system, the user can easily perform good-sounding …
Public-facing note taking for Philosophy of Music Education with David Elliott This week I’m reading about the social and ethical responsibilities of artists generally, and musicians and music educators in particular. That topic is especially relevant at the moment. Before we get to the moral philosophy aspect, let’s talk about this performance. Why is it so good? Movies …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvuM3DjvYf0 Some thoughts gathered from Twitter this morning: Inspired by Harry Belafonte, we’re reading this Langston Hughes poem in class right now. And listening to the Hamilton Mixtape. The mood in the Park Slope Food Coop this morning was like a New Orleans funeral–multiethnic people talking about genocide to a soundtrack of funky jazz.
Midterm paper for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg Max Weber locates the roots of capitalism in vestigial puritanical Protestantism. Émile Durkheim, in turn, gives a theory of how that Protestantism arose in the first place. In this paper, I ask two questions. First: can Weber’s and Durkheim’s theories of religion be extended to explain culture …
Public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class. Research into music psychology (and simply attending to your own experience, and to common sense) shows that music arouses emotions. However, there is no conclusive way to explain why or how. To make things more complicated, it’s perfectly possible to perceive an emotion in …
