Who is Heinrich Schenker and why should you care?

Everyone’s favorite music theorist is back in the news. If you are curious about the controversy surrounding him and don’t have a music theory background, I wrote a Twitter thread for you:

However, maybe you don’t feel like wading through a long Twitter stream of consciousness, and would rather read a coherent blog post instead. Read on!

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Swing primer

“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah” – Duke Ellington

Hear a seamless collage of several varieties of swing:

Hear a track where the timefeel gradually changes from straight to swing and back. Here’s an explanation of what you’re hearing.

Aside from the blues, swing is the United States’ most significant musical innovation. People typically associate its rubbery, sensual feel with jazz, but swing is everywhere in the musics descended from the African diaspora: ragtime, blues, musical theater, country, R&B, rock, funk, reggae, hip-hop, electronic dance music, and so on. The best way to learn about swing is through aural and hands-on experience. The Groove Pizza is a good way to get started.

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Miles Davis – In a Silent Way

In a Silent Way is my favorite Miles Davis album, possibly my favorite jazz album, and one of my favorite works of music generally. Most of Miles’ music of this era is ornery and angular, but In a Silent Way is like slipping into a warm bath. The music hardly sounds like “jazz” at all. It has elements of rock and funk, but it doesn’t really sound like those either. With its three keyboard players, ultra-minimal drums and static harmonies, the album sounds more like ambient electronic music than anything else. Two of the three “songs” were built from tape editing in postproduction, effectively making them remixes of themselves. And while the music as performed was largely improvised, the album has clear large-scale organization.

How great is this album cover? Like the music itself, it’s deceptively simple and minimal, but bottomless in its implications.
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The Roots, “Don’t See Us”

I advocate for the study of hip-hop because it shows that harmony is not the only aspect of music worth studying. However, hip-hop is also underappreciated as a source of harmonic ideas in and of itself. The Roots’ “Don’t See Us” is a fascinating example of groove harmony.

The live version has an amazing acapella “turntablism” solo by Scratch:

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The NYU Music Education Popular Music Practicum

This year, for the first time, I’m co-teaching the NYU Steinhardt Music Education Popular Music Practicum with Dr Kimberly McCord. Kimberly is doing the first half of the semester, and I’m doing the second half. She’s covering live performance and improvisation in the rock and “modern band” idioms, and I’m doing songwriting and remixing in the hip-hop and dance music idioms. This is an opportunity to put some my long-standing theories into practice, so I am excited.

Here’s a summary of what we’re doing.

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The Roots – “The Lesson Part III (It’s Over Now)”

This is my favorite song by the Roots, and one of my favorite songs by anyone ever.

I got curious about it the last time it came up in iTunes shuffle, and did some searching. I was surprised to find out that, so far as I can tell, no one has ever written anything about this song, not in the blogosphere, and not in academic sources.

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Thelonius

If, like me, you are a Thelonious Monk fan, you will be sad to learn that this song has very little to do with Thelonious Monk. J Dilla compares his greatness as an emcee to Monk’s greatness as a pianist, and “Thelonious” kind of rhymes with “microphonist.” That’s the extent of the connection. Regardless, “Thelonius” is a pretty amazing track.

Common tells the story of its creation here:

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Soon may the wellerman come

For some reason, a corner of the internet has become obsessed with sea shanties, making for an unusually wholesome set of memes, a participatory music culture in action.

https://twitter.com/Beertheist/status/1348759849077714951

The tune in this delightful video is called “The Wellerman,” as sung by The Longest Johns.

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Rhythm-a-Ning

After doing “Straight, No Chaser,” I’m now diving into another one of Monk’s greatest hits, “Rhythm-a-Ning,” at the request of Christian Gentry. Monk’s take on the ubiquitous “I Got Rhythm” chord progression has a lot in common with “Straight, No Chaser.” They both use the most generic materials possible to produce something that still sounds fresh seventy years after they were composed. The melodies are catchy enough to whistle in the proverbial bathtub, but when you dig in intellectually, they reveal endless weirdness.

The name “Rhythm-a-Ning” is probably a playful mispronunciation of “rhythm-ing”, and that deliberate stumble sums up the tune’s aesthetic. My favorite recording is the relatively sedate version that Monk did in 1963. But this is only “sedate” by Monk standards. Listen to his comping behind Charlie Rouse’s tenor sax solo; no one else plays like that.

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