I’ve been doing so much explaining basic music theory that I thought it would be fun to dig into something advanced: “Naima” by John Coltrane, from his all-killer-no-filler album Giant Steps. There are as many interpretations of this tune’s chord changes as there are transcriptions of it. The ones in the Real Book are real …
Category Archives: Music
Toni Blackman asks, why worry?
Toni Blackman was a guest on the Clinical BOPulations podcast to talk about her song, “Why Worry,” and to discuss her freestyle rap practice in the context of music therapy. I did a remix of the song interspersed with Toni and her hosts’ discussion of it, enjoy: https://soundcloud.com/ethanhein/toni-blackman-why-worry-clinical-bopulations-mix The track represents Toni’s first foray into …
Developing an intro-level music theory course
In the fall of 2019, I started teaching Fundamentals of Western Music at the New School’s Eugene Lang College. It combines the usual Music Theory I content with a broader, more ethnomusicological perspective that brings in various forms of pop, non-Western musics, and (most excitingly for me) the blues. It’s an existing course, but I …
Continue reading “Developing an intro-level music theory course”
Talking whiteness on the So Strangely podcast
Fellow NYU doctoral student and possessor of fabulous blue hair Finn Upham hosts a podcast called So Strangely that interviews music science researchers. (The podcast is named for the sublimely weird speech-to-song illusion.) Finn recently interviewed Juliet Hess, who is fearlessly examining the whiteness of university-level music education, and invited me along for additional music …
Continue reading “Talking whiteness on the So Strangely podcast”
Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music
As of this writing, the biggest song in America is “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. It might also be the most interesting pop song of the 21st century so far. “Old Town Road” defies genre categorization. Like Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” it sits entangled in a vast musical rhizome. Lil Nas X calls it …
Continue reading “Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music”
Remixing Monk vs covering Monk
I love Thelonious Monk more than just about any other musician in history. I enjoy learning and playing his tunes on the guitar, where they tend to sit well. I’m especially proud of my solo guitar arrangement of “Crepuscule with Nellie.” A jazz guitarist named Miles Okazaki, who is enormously better than me, also enjoys …
The Groove Pizzeria
For his NYU music technology masters thesis, Tyler Bisson created a web app called Groove Pizzeria, a polyrhythmic/polymetric extension of the Groove Pizza. Click the image to try it for yourself.  Note that the Groove Pizzeria is still a prototype, and it doesn’t yet have the full feature set that the Groove Pizza does. …
Why can’t you tune your guitar?
Short answer: because math. Longer answer: because prime numbers don’t divide into each other evenly. To understand what follows, you need to know some facts about the physics of vibrating strings: When you pluck a guitar string, it vibrates to and fro. You can tell how fast the string is vibrating by listening to the …
Rob Walker on The Art of Noticing
Rob Walker has a new book out. I’m in it! You should buy and read it. Rob interviewed me about critical listening, that is, listening closely to music to try to mentally isolate the different instruments/sounds, and understand their relationships to each other, and to the whole. Critical listening can reveal whole new dimensions to …
Toni Blackman on the wisdom of the cypher
Toni Blackman is one of the three hip-hop educators I’m studying for my dissertation. She teaches freestyle rap as a way to build authentic confidence, and she gave a talk and a workshop on the subject at Ableton’s 2018 Loop Summit. Ableton recently posted the video of Toni’s talk. She concludes it with a freestyle, …
Continue reading “Toni Blackman on the wisdom of the cypher”