St Stephen

St Stephen might be the most “Grateful Dead” of Grateful Dead songs, the one that (for better or worse) sounds the most like them and the most unlike anyone else. It’s a cliche with the Dead to say that the live version is better than the studio version, but in the case of “St Stephen”, it’s true. The version on Aoxomoxoa is too fast and has some awkward arrangement choices. The canonical recording is the one from Live/Dead.

This is a mess, but it’s a lovable mess. A few things I particularly enjoy: the feedback from (I think) the bass at 0:21; Jerry’s off-mic yell of satisfaction at 3:37; the crowd yelling “sing it!” and so forth at 3:59; the guitar/guitar/bass trio emerging out of chaos at 4:40.

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A nice thing happened with my music theory songs

A Twitter acquaintance wrote me this series of DMs:

Screenshot of Twitter DM: "I'm trying to learn theory and basic keyboard skills (to justify my purchase of a synth) and I've been searching and searching for EXACTLY the resource inside the Music Theory Songs album on Bandcamp. 'It would be cool if as I walked around with headphones on I could...hear...the chords in context' I thought to myself many times. 'That would help me learn.' And of course HERE's GOOD OLD ETHAN HEIN having created a really solid pedagogic resource accessible in the form of music, right there in Bandcamp. Thank you!"

I am so glad he had that reaction. I haven’t been pushing my music theory songs too hard because I wasn’t sure about their value to anyone other than me. I did use some of them in my New School music theory class last semester, but I was hesitant about using the whole thing. This message was a helpful indication that I’m onto something and should lean into it. 

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Eye Know

Next fall, I’m teaching a class on musical copyright, ownership and borrowing at the New School. I will for sure be talking about De La Soul’s creative use of samples, including a deep dive into “Eye Know” from 3 Feet High and Rising.

This magnificent groove was stitched together from five different records. I list them here in their order of appearance in “Eye Know.” Continue reading “Eye Know”

The Man Who Sold The World

One of my older kid’s hipster friends introduced him to “The Man Who Sold The World” and he is super into it at the moment. I have been a Bowie fan since forever, but this song was slow to win me over.

I have learned to love the song, but I struggle to connect to the weirdly airless original recording. I originally connected more to the Nirvana cover, which I talk about below.

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Life On Mars?

I’m writing about this song at the request of my friend Benjie de la Fuente, but also because my kids like it. (They have liked David Bowie since seeing Labyrinth, but now they’re getting interested in his non-Labyrinth music too.) It makes sense that this tune would seize my son’s imagination, because he likes classical piano, and this is the most classical-sounding Bowie song.

“Life On Mars?” is one of the coolest songs of all time, so it is very surprising that it shares an origin story with “My Way”, arguably the most uncool song of all time.

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RIP Wayne Shorter

In 2013, Wayne Shorter said, “The word ‘jazz’ to me only means ‘I dare you.’” I love Wayne’s playing and writing without always understanding it. I got exposed to both via Miles Davis, who put Wayne’s tunes at the center of his late 1960s albums. Here’s “Orbits” from Miles Smiles.

And here’s an orchestral arrangement of the same tune recorded 36 years later on Wayne’s album Alegría. (It includes Brad Mehldau on piano.) Check out Wayne’s multiphonics at 1:55!

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For No One

The Beatles were not always a rock band, especially not when it came to the Paul songs. This is a frequently cited example of baroque pop, a cousin of “Eleanor Rigby” and “She’s Leaving Home.”

Paul is playing piano and clavichord, Ringo plays drums and maracas, and the delightfully-named Alan Civil plays the French horn. (He also played in the orchestra on “A Day In The Life.”) John and George were not involved.

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What is the difference between analog and digital recording?

All microphones are analog. They convert pressure waves in the air into electricity. Pressure waves in the air vibrate a little piece of metal, and that generates a fluctuating electrical current. Different kinds of mics have different specific ways of doing this. In dynamic mics, the air vibrates a magnet. This magnet is wrapped in wire, and its motion produces a current in the wire. In condenser mics, the air vibrates a metal plate that’s part of a capacitor with an electrical current already flowing through it. As the plate moves, it blocks or admits more of the current, making the current fluctuate. There are other kinds of mics with other physical setups, but they all do the same thing: they send out an electrical current whose fluctuations match (are an analog for) the fluctuations of air pressure.

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Building Hip-Hop Educators – new book chapter abstract

Oliver Kautny, a professor of music education at the University of Cologne, Germany, and founder of the Cologne Hip Hop Institute, invited me to contribute a chapter to a book that the Institute is planning to publish, an edited volume on hip-hop and music education as an open access book by Transcript Publishing. I’m co-writing my chapter with Toni Blackman, a central figure in my dissertation. Our working title is Building Hip-Hop Educators. Here’s the abstract.

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Where do jazz standards come from?

My Song Factory class is coming up on the Standards and Showtunes unit, covering the Great American Songbook. I mainly relate to these tunes via jazz.

In this post, I collect standards of the ones that appear in movie musicals, and I pair each one with a well-known jazz interpretation. (Note that most of these songs had appeared in stage musicals many years before the films were made.) Enjoy! Continue reading “Where do jazz standards come from?”