Is music getting dumber?

For the first time, MusicRadar asked me to write about a couple of scientific papers rather than a song or album. The basic argument of both papers is that popular music is getting simpler over time. 

The papers have some limits to their data sets and methodology that should lead you to take their sweeping conclusions with a grain of salt. The meta-level point is that anytime anyone else wants to pay me to critically explain academic papers in plain language, I am open to it.

Update: a colleague pointed out that this post is ableist, which is true. I was trying to satirize the clickbait-y framing of the MusicRadar assignment and don’t think I succeeded.

Terrapin Station

I took a break from analyzing the Grateful Dead while working on other things, but now it’s time to resume, with a tune that is deeply loved by Deadheads and not of conceivable interest to anyone else.

Terrapin Station is a weirdly disjointed album, reflecting the conflicted motivations behind its creation. After their record label collapsed, the Dead signed with Arista, and both the band and the label wanted to move some units. Clive Davis hired Keith Olsen to produce, in the hope that he would bring some of that Fleetwood Mac magic to the table. However, the band brought in all kinds of odd material: Bobby’s reggae song in 7/4, Phil’s sarcastic parody of slick LA rock, Donna’s first original song ever, and Jerry’s 16-minute orchestral prog-rock suite with impenetrable lyrics. That did not add up to a recipe for heavy radio airplay.

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Doechii on Colbert

I’m having a busy week on MusicRadar! They had already assigned me the Kraftwerk column, but then Doechii won her Grammy, and like everyone, I got all fired up about her. So I convinced my editor to publish my take on Doechii’s breathtakingly great performance of “Boiled Peanuts” and “Denial is a River” on Colbert.

This was my first opportunity to write about hip-hop for MusicRadar, and I hope it won’t be the last.

Fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn

My latest assignment from MusicRadar was to look at “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk. My studies of electronic music history have seriously neglected these guys, so it was nice to have a reason to dig into their music.

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Ray Charles sings “You Are My Sunshine”

I am mildly obsessed with this recording, both as a work of art and as a music teaching resource.

While I have mentioned this track several times on here, I haven’t really dug into the details. So it’s time to change that. There’s a lot to talk about: the genre, the chords, the melody, the rhythm. Let’s take them in order. Continue reading “Ray Charles sings “You Are My Sunshine””

Harmonic rhythm in two-chord shuttles

We devote a lot of attention in music theory pedagogy to chords. But it isn’t enough to look at what the chords are; you have to consider when they are too. The placement of chord changes in musical time is called harmonic rhythm. The easiest way to understand this idea is to look at songs (or song sections) with only two chords. Philip Tagg calls these two-chord shuttles.

You can’t get much harmonic variety out of a two-chord shuttle by definition, but you can create interest by considering the timing of those two chords.

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Inside the Super MAGFest Jam Clinic

I spent this past weekend at Super MAGFest, where I led some sessions in their Jam Clinic. I was there at the invitation of Ashanti Mills, with whom I have had some great online conversations about participatory music cultures over the years.

Before I explain what I was doing there, I need to explain the video game music (VGM) scene, which I myself only found out about recently. It’s a thriving amateur community that gets together to play music from games, as well as game-adjacent genres like anime themes and vocaloid. The format resembles a jazz or blues jam, but with much wider stylistic variety. Continue reading “Inside the Super MAGFest Jam Clinic”

New MusicRadar column on Music For Airports

Like all nerds, I revere Brian Eno. When MusicRadar asked for a column about him, I jumped on it. They wanted something about his generative music, and Music For Airports was the obvious choice.

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Subterranean Homesick Blues

I have Bob Dylan on the brain, because my socials are saturated with ads for the Timothee Chalamet movie, and because MusicRadar used the movie as the news hook for a column about Bob. I rewatched Don’t Look Back for the first time in forever. It’s a sign of my advancing age that Bob came across as unnecessarily obnoxious, especially to the poor Time Magazine reporter. But the music still sounds fantastic. “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is a knockout, as is “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” The best thing in the film is the proto-video that starts it off.

This was apparently Bob’s idea, and it was a good idea! It was shot in an alley near the Savoy Hotel in London. The two guys talking in the background are Allen Ginsberg and Dylan’s friend and road manager, Bob Neuwirth.

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I want to write a book about the Grateful Dead

I wrote a lot of posts about the Grateful Dead last year. I started doing it for my own enjoyment and interest, and was pleasantly surprised by how many enthusiastic responses I got. I have also been surprised by how interested my students have been in hearing about these songs. I started thinking that I had enough to say for a book, and that there might be an audience for such a thing.

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