So What

If you have never listened to jazz before, Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue is a great place to start. If you’re an obsessive jazz fan like me, it never gets old. The heart of the album is its first track, “So What.” Even before you press play, there’s a world of meaning in that title. …

Transcribing Noname

Having transcribed verses by KRS-One and Lil’ Kim, I wanted to take on something more current. I decided to do Noname‘s haunting neo-soul-infused song “Don’t Forget About Me.” The song evokes D’Angelo, and calls him out by name. In some ways, this Noname track was an easier transcription project than the verses by KRS-One or …

What is going on in this Noname beat?

Hip-hop in the post-Dilla era has been pushing the boundaries of rhythmic dissonance. The coolest and most mysterious groove I’ve heard in a rap song lately is “Sunny Duet” by Noname. The rhythms here are bananas and I struggled for quite a while to figure out what was going on. I got very excited for …

My favorite Jerry Garcia riff

Before he wrecked his brain with heroin in the 1980s, Jerry Garcia was my favorite guitarist in the world. I was so saturated in his music during my key guitar-learning years that now everything I play tends to sound like him, up to and including Bach violin partitas. Here’s my single favorite four-bar passage of …

Mothership Connection

In high school, my friend Aubin, who was much cooler than me, told me I needed to go listen to some Parliament. I bought a cassette of The Clones of Dr Funkenstein, probably just because of its title. I liked it immediately, how could you not? But thirty-ish years later, I am still struggling to …

Let’s rename the scales something more memorable

Music theory is hard. Its naming conventions make it harder. Scale names are especially confusing. For example, the diatonic modes are named after places in and around ancient Greece. I’m sure that Aristoxenes found these names memorable and meaningful in 300 BC, and maybe medieval European theorists felt that way too, but now they are …

Help on the Way -> Slipknot! -> Franklin’s Tower

In this post, I talk through my favorite Grateful Dead prog epic, the three-song suite of “Help on the Way,” “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower.” The Dead wrote many of these epic suites, which usually consist of a few short through-composed sections that act as anchor points within long open-ended modal jams. “Help>Slip>Frank” is the most …

What does the Well-Tempered Clavier sound like in actual well temperament?

First, some niche Twitter comedy: Twelve-tone equal temperament is socialism, Make Intonation Just Again — ethanhein.bsky.social (@ethanhein) June 26, 2020 The Well-Tempered Clavier is a book of JS Bach compositions for keyboard instruments in each of the twelve major and twelve minor keys. The name refers to Bach’s preferred tuning system, which made it possible …

Eleanor Rigby

In both music theory and music tech classes, I ask the students to pick songs and analyze their structure. This semester, one student chose “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles. She had a hard time with it–understandably! It’s not a complicated song, but it is an unconventional one. In this post, I’ll talk through the tune’s …