I finally got around to watching Tár. Early in the movie, Lydia helps her wife Sharon through a panic attack by dancing with her to one of my favorite jazz recordings, Neal Hefti’s tune”Lil’ Darlin’” as recorded by Count Basie. Lydia says, “Let’s bring this down to sixty beats per minute.” Sharon corrects her: “Sixty-four.” …
Category Archives: Composition
Absolute Beginners
As my older kid’s Bowie obsession continues, he is digging deeper into the corners of the catalog and finding songs that I hadn’t even heard of. This week we’re learning “Absolute Beginners”, which Bowie wrote for the movie of the same name. The song is as richly weird as all Bowie songs are. The instrumentation …
Ashes to Ashes
My older kid continues to be deep into Bowie, and has been learning “Ashes to Ashes” on piano. This tune has not been a favorite of mine historically; as a young person, I found it hard to connect to its carsick decadence. However, the kid adores it, so I’m giving it more of a chance. …
Moonage Daydream
Over the weekend I went with the family to see the newly remastered 1973 David Bowie concert film, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The picture and sound quality are uneven at best, but Bowie is such a spellbinding performer that it doesn’t matter. One of the high …
Baby, I Love You
I continue to be severely stressed out about the state of America and the world, and I continue to reach to Aretha Franklin for emotional support. This week I soothed myself by studying “Baby, I Love You” from her 1967 album Aretha Arrives. The song is by Ronnie Shannon, who also wrote “I Never Loved …
The saddest chord progression ever (revisited)
First, let’s get this out of the way: the title of this post is a joke. No chord progression has any inherent emotional quality. Musical sadness is a matter of cultural convention, and even within a culture or subculture, sadness is the result of harmony interacting with melody, rhythm, tempo, timbre, phrasing, articulation and other …
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Rock Steady
I need a lot of reassurance that things are going to be okay. This Aretha Franklin groove reliably does the job for me. I say “groove” and not “song”, because while “Rock Steady” does have a minimal song structure, it’s all in support of helping you dance. The musicians on this track represent the gold …
Ahmad Jamal and hip-hop
One of my favorite rap songs is “The World Is Yours” by Nas from his classic Illmatic, produced by the great Pete Rock. Here’s Tracklib’s sample breakdown:
I made some music using modes of the harmonic series
It’s a cliche to say that the harmonic series is the basis of all of music. It is true that the first five harmonics are the basis of Western tuning. The first seven harmonics are a possible basis for the blues. You don’t tend to hear much music based on the higher harmonics, but they …
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As The World Falls Down
As kids, my siblings and I watched Labyrinth about eight billion times. It has been super gratifying that my own children love the movie too. Together with their separate David Bowie fandom, that has put “As The World Falls Down” into heavy rotation lately. When I was a kid, I didn’t especially love this song, …