In this episode, I use “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” by Stevie Wonder (1973) as a jumping off point to contemplate the headache of naming notes and chords in keys with a lot of flats and sharps in them. The circle of fifths is a lie by Ethan Hein My struggles to learn “Don’t …
Category Archives: Music Teaching
Aretha Franklin sings “Bridge Over Troubled Water”
We’re coming up on blues melody day in aural skills class. I always like to do some close listening to Aretha Franklin for that session, especially her version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I hadn’t previously done any analysis of it; we just listen and let it speak for itself. But I thought, this semester, …
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I wrote a song about chromatic embellishments
There are two kinds of embellishing tones, the ones from inside the key and the ones from outside. The outside ones are called chromatic embellishments, and that name is appropriate; you get the most color from careful application of the “wrong” notes.
End-accented phrases make melodies sound cool
I learned the terms “beginning-accented melody” and “end-accented melody” from The Musical Language of Rock by David Temperley. The terms mean what they sound like: a melodic phrase whose accent is either at its beginning or its end. This seems like the definition of a purely academic theory concept, but it turns out that end-accentedness …
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Explaining suspensions
In a previous post, I listed examples of melodic suspensions. But I didn’t do a very good job of explaining how they work. So I will rectify that here.
Explaining embellishing tones
This week in aural skills, we are covering embellishing tones. This topic is tough, because I can never remember the difference between an appoggiatura and an escape tone without looking it up, but it’s on the syllabus, so I have to try. In previous semesters, I have approached it by having students identify examples from …
New online songwriting class with Synthase
Sometimes people ask me if they can take one of my classes without being enrolled at NYU or the New School. For these people, I have good news: this summer, I will be teaching Songwriter’s Lab, an eight week online songwriting course that I’m collaborating on with the good people at Synthase. I met their …
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Everybody Loves The Sunshine
For MusicRadar, I wrote an analysis of “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” to honor the passing of Roy Ayers. I have loved this tune for a long time, but I could never muster the energy to work out those chords until now.
My year in pop aural skills teaching
This year, in addition to teaching my first NYU pop music theory class, I also taught two semesters of pop aural skills. If you didn’t go through a university music program, you may not know what aural skills class involves. Traditionally, you identify chords and intervals by ear, practice sight-singing, and do dictation (meaning, you …
My year in pop music theory teaching
See also: my year in pop aural skills teaching This year I taught my first theory class in NYU’s new popular music sequence. It was not my first music theory class, or my first pop music class, but it was the first one in a university-level sequence dedicated specifically to pop. I think it mostly …