Aretha Franklin’s Gospel Blues by Dr. Ethan Hein Singing the song vs channeling the ancestors Read on Substack It’s blues melody week in theory and aural skills. That doesn’t just mean we’re looking at the blues genre, though; we’re covering all the genres that use what Richard Ripani calls “the blues system”: the characteristic pitches, …
Category Archives: Music Theory
A unified theory of rock harmony in one sentence
All the chords you need for rock by Dr. Ethan Hein can be found using a simple formula Read on Substack When I was learning guitar, I did a lot of studying and memorizing chord progressions. I did even more thinking about chords when I was learning to play jazz. When I shifted over to …
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The Weight
Take a load off, Fannie by Dr. Ethan Hein Take a load for free Read on Substack There is a truism that art makes the strange familiar and makes the familiar strange. The Band’s biggest hit is intimately familiar to every classic rock listener, but it is quite a strange song. The lyrics seem like …
What I learned from remixing “Dreams” over and over
I was planning to talk about “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac in class when we discuss modal harmony. Music theory teachers like to bring this tune up as an example of Lydian mode, but I don’t hear it as being in F Lydian. It’s also not clearly in C major, or A minor, or really any …
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Low end theory
How do you create a bassline? This question is not just for bass players. It’s for producers and songwriters, who are likely to be programming their own bass parts in their DAW. Keyboard players can do basslines in their left hand; guitarists do them with their thumbs. And even if you never create or play …
Satisfaction
I am normally resistant to writing about this kind of overexposed Boomer anthem, but it occurred to me that it would be an interesting tune to analyze on the first day of pop aural skills class, because it’s both simple and harmonically interesting.
The plan for Pop Theory II and Pop Aural Skills II this semester
This semester I am once again teaching pop theory and aural skills at NYU. I have done some previous reflections on these classes. The students are undergrads, mostly studying instrumental and vocal performance, songwriting and music technology. They range in stylistic background from pop to rock to jazz to R&B to hip-hop to musical theater, and there …
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Mr Tambourine Man
I grew up with a cassette copy of Bringing It All Back Home. It was the first Bob Dylan album that I remember hearing, and I knew that my Boomer parents and classic-rock-loving peers revered it. That said, people definitely respected Bob more than they enjoyed him. I did enjoy a lot of Bringing It …
Dancing in the Street
Now that my semester is done, it’s time to start thinking about the next one. I like to spend the first day of class on a song that encompasses all the big themes and topics we’ll be covering. For this spring’s pop theory kids, I chose “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha Reeves and the …
Portrait of Portrait of Tracy
While I was writing about fretless bass, I briefly mentioned Jaco Pastorius’ “Portrait of Tracy.” Now it’s time to dig into this tune properly.