Music theory is hard. But we make it harder by holding on to naming and notational conventions that are hundreds of years old, and that were designed to describe very different music than what we’re playing now. Here are some fantasies for how note naming might be improved. Right now, the “default setting” for western …
Category Archives: Music Theory
The saddest chord progression ever
See also the happiest chord progression ever. The short-lived Russian composer Vasily Kalinnikov is best known (to the extent he’s known at all) for this piece of music: If you listen to this piece at 6:16, there’s a particularly beautiful and tragic chord progression. It’s in the key of E-flat, but I transposed it into C …
Music theory blues
I’m reading a lot Schenkerian analyses of blues right now in service of my forthcoming article about blues tonality. Each paper I read is wronger than the last. On the one hand, they fill me with righteous rage, but on the other hand, that rage does at least help me focus my arguments. Here are …
Blues tonality
See a more beginner-friendly blues primer here. Read this treatise in Spanish, translated by Jesús Fernández. Abstract The blues is a foundational element of America’s vernacular and art music. It is commonly described as a combination of African rhythms and European harmonies. This description is inaccurate. Blues follows harmonic conventions that are quite different from …
What is groove?
You hear musicians talk all the time about groove. You might wonder what they mean by that. A lot of musicians couldn’t explain exactly, beyond “the thing that makes music sound good.” The etymology of the term comes from vinyl records. Musicians ride the groove the way a phonograph needle physically rides the groove in …
Why is “Let It Go” such a big deal?
Anna posed this question, and I think it’s an excellent one: What is up with “Let It Go” and little girls? Why is this song such a blockbuster among the pre-K set? How did it jump the gap from presentational to participatory music? Is it the movie, or the song itself? In case you never …
Repetition defines music
Musical repetition has become a repeating theme of this blog. Seems appropriate, right? This post looks at a book by Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, called On Repeat: How Music Plays The Mind. It investigates the reasons why we love repetition in music. You can also read long excerpts at Aeon Magazine. Here’s the nub of Margulis’ …
Play With Your Rhythm
As we continue to flesh out the video content for Play With Your Music, I put together this series on rhythm.
Play with your music theory
Last week I put together a new set of music theory videos. These videos are aimed at participants in Play With Your Music, who may want to start producing their own music or remixes and have no idea where to start. I’m presuming that the viewer has no formal background, no piano skills and no …
Everyone can and should be making music
I have a strongly held belief about musical talent: there is no such thing. Every neurotypical human is born with the ability to learn music, the same way the vast majority of us are born with the ability to learn to walk and talk. We still have to do the learning, though; otherwise the capacity …