One of the best discoveries I made while researching the Groove Pizza is the mathematician Godfried Toussaint. While the bookshelves groan with mathematical analyses of Western harmony, Toussaint is the rare scholar who uses the same tools to understand Afro-Cuban rhythms. He’s especially interested in the rhythm known to Latin musicians as 3-2 son clave, …
Category Archives: Music Theory
Can science make a better music theory?
My last post discussed how we should be deriving music theory from empirical observation of what people like using ethnomusicology. Another good strategy would be to derive music theory from observation of what’s going on between our ears. Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson has attempted just that in his essay, Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory …
Toward a better music theory
Update: a version of this post appeared on Slate.com. I seem to have touched a nerve with my rant about the conventional teaching of music theory and how poorly it serves practicing musicians. I thought it would be a good idea to follow that up with some ideas for how to make music theory more …
Against Music Theory – some commentary
My fellow music tech student Laura Dickens had some thoughts about my recent music theory rant. This is a lightly edited version of our Facebook conversation. Laura: Have you ever read any Susan McClary? I feel like you could probably get into that… Me: Yes! Susan McClary is the best! She shares my belief in …
Against music theory
I am mercifully finished with music theory in grad school and couldn’t be happier about it. You may find this surprising. My blog is full of music theory. How could a guy who enjoys thinking about music in analytical terms as much as I do have such a wretched time in my graduate music theory …
Why isn’t repetitive music boring to listen to?
A Quora user asks why we don’t get bored when listening to repetitive music. This is related to the equally interesting question of why we can play repetitive music without getting bored. Why is there so much joy in repetition? Humans are pattern recognizers. You’d think that once you’d learned the pattern of a repetitive …
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What is polyphony?
The word is from Greek, “poly” meaning many and “phony” meaning voice. This is as opposed to monophony — one voice. Originally, polyphony literally meant multiple people singing together. Over the course of musical history, the term has become more abstracted, referring to multiple “voices” played on any instrument. And usually, polyphony means that the …
The Nirvana effect
I’m currently working on a book chapter about the use of video games in music education. While doing my research, I came across a paper by Kylie Peppler, Michael Downton, Eric Lindsay, and Kenneth Hay, “The Nirvana Effect: Tapping Video Games to Mediate Music Learning and Interest.” It’s a study of the effectiveness of Rock Band …
Friends don’t let friends clap on one and three
Here’s my final project for NYU’s Psychology of Music class, enjoy. Feel free to download this presentation or the full paper. Friends Don’t Let Friends Clap on One and Three: a Backbeat Clapping Study
There’s joy in repetition
Susan McClary “Rap, Minimalism and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture.” in Audio Culture, Daniel Warner, ed, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004, pp 289 – 298. This essay is the best piece of music writing I’ve read in quite a while. McClary articulates my personal ideology of music perfectly. Also, she quotes Prince! Here …