How do key signatures work?

Most of my students struggle with key signatures. This is understandable! Like the rest of the Western notation system, key signatures are based on a big assumption: that all of the notes will be within one of the twelve major keys, or within some scale that can be derived from a major scale (most often, the natural minor scale). This assumption makes an awkward fit with the music that the kids are making and listening to. Read on!

Several students have asked me if there is some shortcut or mnemonic for memorizing the key signatures. The answer is, yes, there are many, but I’ve never found them to be helpful. The only thing that worked for me was to learn, write and improvise a lot of music in every major and minor key until they were as familiar as the layout of my apartment. My method was slow, but effective.

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Live scoring with No Country for Old Men: update

This week in Fundamentals of Western Music class at the New School, we did an in-class improvisation exercise, where students created spur-of-the-moment scores to scenes from No Country for Old Men. I did this in response to being told by a faculty evaluator that I should have more music-making during class, a suggestion I strongly agree with. Students could choose between bringing their own instruments, playing synths from my computer, or using the piano in the classroom.

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Live film scoring with No Country For Old Men

My New School class was recently observed by another faculty member. She suggested that I have the students do more music-making during class (currently they make lots of music, just outside of class.) I like this idea. So my plan is to do a live film scoring exercise using No Country For Old Men by the Coen Brothers. Each member of the class will improvise music along with a scene from the film. They can perform using instruments in Ableton or GarageBand via my little MIDI controller or the aQWERTYon. They can also use the piano in the classroom, or bring an instrument of their own. This is an improvisation exercise, and I am not expecting anyone to prepare. However, they are free to watch the movie first if they want.

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How to record from the aQWERTYon

People ask us a lot if there’s a way to record the output of the aQWERTYon. We might introduce recording functionality some day, but in the meantime, there are two methods for recording your aQW performances.


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Learning minor key harmony from the Bach Chaconne

Major keys are easy to understand, at least in classical music, because a major key and a major scale are coextensive. Minor keys are harder, because you can’t just equate them to particular minor scales. To understand how chords work in minor keys, I’m going to walk you through a standard progression that happens throughout the final movement of Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, the famous Chaconne.

Here’s the complete performance by Viktoria Mullova, with MIDI visualization in Ableton Live created by me:

Read more about the Chaconne and hear the Afro-Funk remix. There’s a lot there to dig into! But right now, I’m just going to talk about the first few measures. The opening phrase is four chords: Dm, Eø7 with its 7th in the bass, A7 with its 3rd in the bass, and Dm again.

Together, the chords form a ii-V-i in D minor. In the remainder of this post, I’m going to talk through these three chords and their associated scales in detail. Try them for yourself on the aQWERTYon.

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Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 – Prelude

I’m teaching melody in music theory class this month, and nobody wrote better melodies than Bach. If you want to learn how to use single note lines to imply chord changes and counterpoint, the prelude to his first cello suite is a whole textbook worth of wisdom for you. My favorite interpretation is by Mstislav Rostropovich.

Music supervisors in movies and television have run this prelude into the ground, as evidenced by Bach’s colossal IMDB page. Noteworthy usages include The Pianist, The West Wing, Netflix’s Daredevil, If I Stay, The Hangover Part II, and, uh, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. My personal favorite is in Master and Commander, when they arrive in the Galapagos Islands.

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Announcing the Theory aQWERTYon

A few years ago, the NYU Music Experience Design Lab launched a web application called the aQWERTYon. The name is short for “QWERTY accordion.” The idea is to make it as easy to play music on the computer keyboard as it is with the chord buttons on an accordion. The aQWERTYon maps scales to the keyboard so that there are no “wrong notes,” and so that each column of keys plays a chord. Yesterday, we launched a new version of the app, the Theory aQWERTYon. It visualizes the notes you’re playing on the chromatic circle in real time. Click the image to try it! (Be sure to whitelist it on your ad blocker or it won’t work.)

Theory aQWERTYon

In addition to playing the built-in instruments, you can also use the aQWERTYon as a MIDI controller for any DAW or notation program. Just set the input to the IAC bus (Windows users will need to install MidiOX before this will work.)

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Salsa in Central Park

Yesterday I went to a free concert by Johnny “Dandy” Rodriguez and his Dream Team by the Harlem Meer in Central Park. I don’t know a lot about salsa, but these guys sound to me like an excellent salsa band.

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Sound writing with my New School students

I just completed the first week of Fundamentals of Western Music at the New School. We began the semester with critical listening. Before having the students analyze recorded music, I had them warm up by doing some writing about the sound of a mundane environment. As it turns out, New School students are terrific and imaginative writers, and I thought I would share some excerpts of their work here.

The internal ear

The assignment: Choose a physical location, and describe its soundscape in 500-1000 words. List all of the sound sources you can and describe them in as much detail as possible. Describe your emotional reactions to these sounds individually and collectively. If you like, review the sounds as if they are a musical work.

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