I continue to refine my new groove pedagogy method: teach a complicated rhythm by presenting a very simplified version of it, then a less simplified version, then a less simplified version, until you converge on the groove in its full nuance. Imagine a pixelated image gradually gaining resolution. My goal with this is to have …
Category Archives: Composition
God Make Me Funky
Herbie Hancock’s band on his classic mid-70s funk albums went on without Herbie as The Headhunters. Their biggest hit, “God Make Me Funky”, has been sampled in several hundred rap songs, and rightly so, it’s an amazing groove.
Building the Funky Drummer beat
I’m developing some groove pedagogy for an instrumental method book I’m working on with Heather Fortune. The goal is to help people understand and create Black American vernacular rhythms, specifically blues, rock, funk, dance, and hip-hop. As we started collecting and transcribing grooves, we quickly ran into a problem: all the really good ones use …
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
David Bowie was a great admirer of John Lennon, and like Lennon, Bowie had the gift of making weird songwriting choices sound natural. You don’t necessarily pick up on the weirdness from casual listening, but then you try to learn a Bowie tune, and it is full of surprises. “Changes” is a case in point. …
St Stephen
St Stephen might be the most “Grateful Dead” of Grateful Dead songs, the one that (for better or worse) sounds the most like them and the most unlike anyone else. It’s a cliche with the Dead to say that the live version is better than the studio version, but in the case of “St Stephen”, …
A nice thing happened with my music theory songs
A Twitter acquaintance wrote me this series of DMs: I am so glad he had that reaction. I haven’t been pushing my music theory songs too hard because I wasn’t sure about their value to anyone other than me. I did use some of them in my New School music theory class last semester, but …
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Eye Know
Next fall, I’m teaching a class on musical copyright, ownership and borrowing at the New School. I will for sure be talking about De La Soul’s creative use of samples, including a deep dive into “Eye Know” from 3 Feet High and Rising. This magnificent groove was stitched together from five different records. I list …
Life On Mars?
I’m writing about this song at the request of my friend Benjie de la Fuente, but also because my kids like it. (They have liked David Bowie since seeing Labyrinth, but now they’re getting interested in his non-Labyrinth music too.) It makes sense that this tune would seize my son’s imagination, because he likes classical …
RIP Wayne Shorter
In 2013, Wayne Shorter said, “The word ‘jazz’ to me only means ‘I dare you.’” I love Wayne’s playing and writing without always understanding it. I got exposed to both via Miles Davis, who put Wayne’s tunes at the center of his late 1960s albums. Here’s “Orbits” from Miles Smiles. And here’s an orchestral arrangement …
For No One
The Beatles were not always a rock band, especially not when it came to the Paul songs. This is a frequently cited example of baroque pop, a cousin of “Eleanor Rigby” and “She’s Leaving Home.” Paul is playing piano and clavichord, Ringo plays drums and maracas, and the delightfully-named Alan Civil plays the French horn. …