If you flatten the seventh note of the major scale, you get Mixolydian mode. It’s like a bluesier version of major.
Mixolydian is a medieval mode that fell out of favor with “art” music composers during the Baroque era. However, it stayed alive and well in various European folk traditions before having an explosion in popularity during the rock era, helped by its resemblance to the blues.
Last week in music tech class, we talked about audio recording, and how the placement of microphones relative to the voices or instruments can shape the sound of a recording. Mics don’t just pick up the sound of the voice or instrument itself. They also pick up the sound of the voice or instrument bouncing off the walls, floor, and ceiling. Depending on where the mic is relative to the sound source, it might pick up more direct sound or more indirect sound. The specific blend tells the listener a lot about the environment that the sound was recorded in, and carries information about style and genre too.
Here’s a highly simplified diagram of sound in an environment. The solid line represents direct sound, pressure waves going straight from the guitar into your ear. The dotted lines are indirect sound, pressure waves that bounce off the walls, floor and ceiling before reaching your ear.
In a recording, microphones are a stand-in for your ears, receiving pressure waves and converting them into electrical fluctuations. If the mic is close to the sound source, it will mostly pick up direct sound. If the mic is far away from the sound source, it will mostly pick up indirect sound.
My daughter is getting deep into the Beatles, so I’m listening to them a lot with her. I don’t usually listen to the Beatles all that much, because I know their songs backwards and forwards and inside out. But it’s always nice to come back to the songs in a new context, and it’s rare to listen through them closely and repeatedly with someone who has never heard any of them before. One of the ones that piqued the kid’s interest was “In My Life.” When I was a teenager, I loved that tune without really knowing why. Now I have the tools to find out. So let’s find out!
I wrote this explainer for my New School students; maybe you will find it useful too.
The white keys on the piano don’t just have to play C major. If you play the white keys over a droning or repeated A, you get a very different-sounding scale. It has a few different names: the A diatonic minor scale, the A natural minor scale, or A Aeolian mode. I prefer to call it natural minor.
But this is only one of several minor scales in widespread use. The minor-key world is more complicated than the major-key world. But that also makes for a lot of musical variety. Let’s dig in!
I am committed to teaching my students something about the history of tuning in Western European music. I don’t expect them to retain any details or do any math, I just want them to know that the history exists. In preparation, I continue to refine my explanation of this history to myself.
Before the year 1400 or so, Western Europeans mainly tuned their instruments in three-limit just intonation, which they called Pythagorean tuning. (Don’t be fooled by the name; this system was in use in Mesopotamia centuries before the Greeks described it.) Three-limit just intonation is based on the first three harmonics of a vibrating string. Western Europeans really like the pitch ratios produced by these harmonics, as do people from many other cultures (though not all of them). In this post, I will explain why Europeans liked three-limit just intonation, why they nevertheless eventually abandoned it, and what came after.
For a discussion of musical form in Contemporary Music Theories, we talked about Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On.”
The multitrack stems are in circulation, and they are quite a revelation. Here’s a nice walkthrough with Questlove and Motown executive Harry Weinger.
Here are the tracks we listened to on the first day of Contemporary Music Theories at the New School. The class is a requirement for music majors, and as its name suggests, it is intended to give a broad-based understanding of music theory, not just Western tonal theory. We started things off with excerpts of the Chaconne from the Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in or near 1720, performed by the guitarist Christopher Parkening.
Continue reading “The first day of Contemporary Music Theories at the New School”
Why do the black keys on the piano each have two different names? If the posts on r/musictheory are any indication, this is a persistent point of confusion, especially when music theory teachers get all persnickety about using the correct name.
This confusion applies to all of the black keys, but in this post, I’ll be talking about the one between D and E. You could think of it as a raised D, in which case it’s called D-sharp. You could also think of it as a lowered E, in which case it’s called E-flat. Guitars don’t have black and white keys, so when I was a feral self-taught musician, I just thought of that note as the eleventh fret on the E string, the sixth fret on the A string, the first fret on the D string, etc. I pretty much always called it E-flat, regardless of context. I have since learned to use the correct name, but it still feels arbitrary sometimes, especially outside of diatonicism. If you are in B major, the note is supposed to be called D-sharp, and if you are in B-flat major, the note is supposed to be called E-flat, that makes sense. But what if you’re in A blues? How are you supposed to spell it then? And what difference does it make anyway?
Continue reading “Why are D-sharp and E-flat considered to be two different notes”
While learning and learning about the Prelude to Bach’s G minor Lute Suite, I also came into contact with the suite’s Sarabande. This piece is famous among music theorists, because while it’s only forty measures long, those forty measures are action-packed, harmonically speaking. Here’s a performance by Evangelina Mascardi.
I appreciate that Mascardi doesn’t play it with too much melodrama or rubato. Note that, like most lutenists, she’s using Baroque tuning, so it sounds like she’s playing in F-sharp minor.
I don’t get a lot of music-related correspondence on LinkedIn, so I was surprised when a stranger wrote me a very nice message there about my deep dive into the Bach Chaconne. He mentioned that he was learning the prelude to the Lute Suite in G Minor, BWV 995, and that he liked Göran Söllscher’s recording of it. He pointed out that the piece shares some DNA with the Chaconne. That made me want to learn it too.
Regardless of what this album cover art might suggest, Göran Söllscher is playing the guitar. If you want to hear the piece played on an actual lute, I recommend Stephen Stubbs‘ recording. Stubbs is using Baroque tuning, which is quite a bit lower than the standard tuning reference pitch we use today.
Here’s Thomas Dunford playing the suite on an archlute. He’s too free with his time for my taste, but it’s cool to see what he’s doing.
I like non-guitar fretted instruments, and over the years I have learned to play the mandolin, mandola, banjo, and ukulele. So I naturally got curious about learning the lute. However, I got discouraged quickly, because there are uncountably many configurations of lute strings tuned in uncountably many different ways. It seems like you would either have to pick one at random and commit to it, or be able to adapt to whatever instrument setup you happen to encounter. So I’ll stick to playing Bach on the guitar for now.
