Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg This week, we read another cornerstone of the sociology canon: Émile Durkheim on where religion comes from. The book is very much a product of its time, with continual and annoying references to “primitive” religions and peoples. No question that Durkheim’s methodology doesn’t pass contemporary muster. But his theoretical insights are …
Continue reading “Émile Durkheim – Elementary Forms of the Religious Life”
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg Our first reading in the class was Ta-Nehisi Coates. The second one is Max Weber. The transition between their prose styles is like gliding downhill on a bike into a brick wall. Nick Seaver calls it “the 1-2 relatable-canonical punch.” David Foster Wallace likes to tell this parable: There are these …
Continue reading “The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
This post is public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class.
I’m taking a sociology class called Learning Of Culture with Lisa Stulberg. It could just as easily be called Culture Of Learning, since it views school as just one cultural setting among many. Our first assignment was to read Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I agree with Toni Morrison’s cover blurb. After …
Update: I’ve turned this post into an academic article. Here’s a draft. The title of this post is also the title of a tutorial I’m giving at ISMIR 2016 with Jan Van Balen and Dan Brown. Here are the slides: Why Hip-Hop Is Interesting from Ethan Hein The conference is organized by the International Society for Music Information …
The same Disquiet Junto project that spawned this wildly recursive remix also involved a few more people remixing my remix. Here’s a family tree of the three first generation source tracks, the seven second generation remixes of those tracks, and the three third generation remixes of the second generation remixes. You can hear the three third-generation metaremixes below.
This summer, I’m teaching Cultural Significance of Rap and Rock at Montclair State University. It’s my first time teaching it, and it’s also the first time anyone has taught it completely online. The course is cross-listed under music and African-American studies. Here’s a draft of my syllabus, omitting details of the grading and such. I welcome your questions, comments …
Continue reading “Prepping my rap and rock class at Montclair State”
My youngest private music production student is a kid named Ilan. He makes moody trip-hop and deep house using Ableton Live. For our session today, Ilan came in with a downtempo, jazzy hip-hop instrumental. I helped him refine and polish it, and then we talked about his ideas for what kind of vocal might work on top. He wanted an …
I use a project-based approach to teaching music technology. Technical concepts stick with you better if you learn them in the course of making actual music. Here’s the list of projects I assign to my college classes and private students. I’ve arranged them from easiest to hardest. The first five projects are suitable for a …
I’m currently working with the Ed Sullivan Fellows program, an initiative of the NYU MusEDLab where we mentor up and coming rappers and producers. Many of them are working with beats they got from YouTube or SoundCloud. That’s fine for working out ideas, but to get to the next level, the Fellows need to be making their …
