The Groove Pizza uses geometry to help visualize rhythms. The MusEDLab is planning to create a similar tool for visualizing music theory by merging the aQWERTYon with the Scale Wheel. When you put the twelve pitch classes in a circle, you can connect the dots between different notes in a chord or scale to form shapes. My …
Category Archives: Music Theory
New harmony course with Soundfly
My new online music theory class with Soundfly launches in a few weeks. It’s a six-week mentor guided journey through advanced harmonic concepts like extended chords and modal interchange, with examples drawn from contemporary pop, hip-hop and electronica. Soundfly does great work and I’m proud to be working with them.
The happiest chord progression ever
See also: the saddest chord progression ever. And also check out this deep dive into the groove of “I Want You Back.” We customarily think of descending melodies and chord progressions as being sad–they call it the “lament bass” for a reason. You may be surprised to learn, then, that the happiest song of all …
The fake and the real in Chance the Rapper’s “All We Got”
[I wrote this before Kanye went full MAGA; I have since lost some enthusiasm for him.] Every semester in Intro to Music Tech, we have Kanye West Day, when we listen analytically to some of Yeezy’s most sonically adventurous tracks (there are many to choose from.) The past few semesters, Kanye West Day has centered …
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Four bars of Mozart explains everything humans like in music
I’m not arguing here that everyone loves Mozart, or that I’m about to explain what all humans enjoy all the time. But I can say with confidence that this little bit of Mozart goes a long way toward explaining what most humans enjoy most of the time. The four bars I’m talking about are these, …
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The aQWERTYon pitch wheels and the future of music theory visualization
Update: we have implemented these changes to the aQWERTYon, try them here Try the scale wheel visualization here The MusEDLab will soon be launching a revamped version of the aQWERTYon with some enhancements to its visual design, including a new scale picker. Beyond our desire to make our stuff look cooler, the scale picker represents a …
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Philip Tagg’s Everyday Tonality
I complain a lot on this blog about traditional approaches to teaching music theory. Fortunately, there are some alternatives out there. One such is Everyday Tonality by Philip Tagg. Don’t be put off by the DIY look of the web site. The book is the single best resource I know of for how harmony works across …
Cranes in the Sky
Solange Knowles is Beyoncé’s artsier younger sister. “Cranes In The Sky” is her biggest hit so far. It manages the rare feat of being both extremely catchy and extremely weird. Solange helpfully explains her songwriting process on the invaluable Song Exploder podcast. https://soundcloud.com/hrishihirway/song-exploder-solange
Learning music from Ableton
Ableton recently launched a delightful web site that teaches the basics of beatmaking, production and music theory using elegant interactives. If you’re interested in music education, creation, or user experience design, you owe it to yourself to try it out.
Toward a Methodological Stance
Final paper for Approaches To Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson Section 1: Reflections on Received View of Research I was raised by two medical researchers and a former astrophysicist, surrounded by stacks of quantitative journals. I rarely questioned the assumption that quantitative empirical research is the gold standard of truth, and that while subjective accounts …