Two big things happened in my academic life this year: I wrote a dissertation proposal (which is not quite done yet), and I developed and taught a music theory course at the New School. Both of these projects featured heavily on this blog. Here are some high points.
Category Archives: Key Musicians
Teaching dynamics and loudness
When I cover dynamics and loudness in music theory class, I only spend a small part of the time talking about forte/piano, crescendo/diminuendo and so on. Once you have the Italian translations, those terms are self-explanatory. They are also frustratingly subjective, and they refer only to unamplified acoustic music. To understand dynamics in the present …
Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 – Prelude
I’m teaching melody in music theory class this month, and nobody wrote better melodies than Bach. If you want to learn how to use single note lines to imply chord changes and counterpoint, the prelude to his first cello suite is a whole textbook worth of wisdom for you. My favorite interpretation is by Mstislav …
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Salsa in Central Park
Yesterday I went to a free concert by Johnny “Dandy” Rodriguez and his Dream Team by the Harlem Meer in Central Park. I don’t know a lot about salsa, but these guys sound to me like an excellent salsa band.
Donna Lee
Here’s a Charlie Parker recording that’s not widely known outside of jazz, but is absolutely foundational inside it: This recording features a very young Miles Davis on trumpet. Miles later said that he wrote the tune, and that its copyright attribution to Charlie Parker was a record label error. I believe him. It sounds more …
I Wanna Dance With Somebody
I was looking for some new acapellas to remix, and was delighted to come across Whitney Houston’s vocal stem from “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).” The 808-cowbell-laden production has undeniable charm, but the vocals by themselves are the real truth.
Remixing “A Day In The Life”
Back in 2009, Harmonix came out with The Beatles: Rock Band. In order to prepare the sound files for the game, the company needed the original multitrack stems for fifty Beatles songs. Someone at the company posted the stems online, and they remain in widespread circulation. (You can easily obtain them via a Google search.) …
Toni Blackman asks, why worry?
Toni Blackman was a guest on the Clinical BOPulations podcast to talk about her song, “Why Worry,” and to discuss her freestyle rap practice in the context of music therapy. I did a remix of the song interspersed with Toni and her hosts’ discussion of it, enjoy: https://soundcloud.com/ethanhein/toni-blackman-why-worry-clinical-bopulations-mix The track represents Toni’s first foray into …
Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music
As of this writing, the biggest song in America is “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. It might also be the most interesting pop song of the 21st century so far. “Old Town Road” defies genre categorization. Like Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” it sits entangled in a vast musical rhizome. Lil Nas X calls it …
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Remixing Monk vs covering Monk
I love Thelonious Monk more than just about any other musician in history. I enjoy learning and playing his tunes on the guitar, where they tend to sit well. I’m especially proud of my solo guitar arrangement of “Crepuscule with Nellie.” A jazz guitarist named Miles Okazaki, who is enormously better than me, also enjoys …