One of the most powerful music theory concepts you can learn is how to make chords from scales. If you learn a few scales, then you get a whole bunch of chords for free. The specifics of all the chord names can be complicated and daunting. But the concept of constructing them is very simple. …
Category Archives: Music
Waiting For Benny
The Genius of the Electric Guitar is an aptly-named compilation of studio recordings that Charlie Christian made with Benny Goodman between 1939 and 1941. The album includes a couple of informal studio jams recorded while Goodman’s band was waiting for their leader to show up. Both jams have self-explanatory titles: “Blues in B” and “Waiting …
The politics is in the drums: Producing and composing in the music classroom
This post was published in the Journal of Popular Music Education! Pierre Schaeffer and DJ Premier Introduction Digital audio workstation software, recording equipment and MIDI controllers have become steadily less expensive and easier to learn over the past two decades. As a result, it has become possible for schools at all levels to offer “an …
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Spoonful
One of the most intense and arresting recordings I have ever heard is Howlin’ Wolf’s recording of “Spoonful” by Willie Dixon. This is on my list of classic songs with no chord changes, along with “Chain of Fools” by Aretha Franklin, “India” by John Coltrane, “I’m Bad Like Jesse James” by John Lee Hooker, “Papa Was …
No, Rolling Stone, D minor is not the saddest of all keys
We all love This Is Spin̈al Tap, but you’re not supposed to take it literally. Nevertheless, this very silly Rolling Stone article tries to prove Nigel right. The author is a doctoral student in quantitative methods. She should probably have asked a music theorist about this before publishing it, or really any musical person. I …
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Lightnin’ Hopkins – “My California”
I’m spending this month in California with my in-laws, and so naturally I went searching my iTunes for thematically appropriate songs. One of the results was this exquisite Lightnin’ Hopkins recording. Here’s my visualization using Ableton Live. I tuned the recording up a half step so that it’s in A rather than A-flat, which makes …
Nature Boy
There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy. His name was eden ahbez, he was a hippie decades before that was a common thing to be, and he wrote “Nature Boy“, which Nat King Cole turned into a major hit. The tune has become a jazz and pop standard, and has been recorded uncountably …
Starfish and Coffee
My kids love “Starfish and Coffee”, and rightly so. The version on Sign o’ the Times is fine and all, but for me, this is the canonical recording, both musically and visually: According to the Genius annotation, Cynthia Rose was a real person who Susannah Melvoin knew growing up. All the details are taken from …
Here is a web based music education tool that I wish existed
It is awesome that you can embed interactive Noteflight scores in a web page, like so: But for optimal music education results, I also want to be able to show that same example in MIDI piano roll view too. Imagine if the Noteflight embed included a pane that showed this:
I Want You Back
Why is “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 such an uncontainable explosion of joy? It has the happiest chord progression ever, which I wrote about in a previous post. But the harmony is just the icing on the cake. The real heart of this tune is the groove. Let’s have a look! I …