Simple songs

I’m interested in a particular kind of pop song: mainstream-ish tracks that are so minimal in their melodic or lyrical content that they barely qualify as “songs,” yet manage to still be musically compelling. My paradigmatic examples:

“That’s The Way (I Like It)” by KC and the Sunshine Band

“Around The World” by Daft Punk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yca6UsllwYs

“Turn Down For What” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon

“Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell” by Das Racist

Calling these songs “simple” is not totally accurate, since the first three in my list feature lavish production. Still, the parts you can sing yourself are simple.

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Dissertation update

For the past two years, I’ve been working on a doctorate in music education at NYU. I’ve finished my coursework, and after I do my candidacy exam this fall, I’ll be ABD (All But Dissertation, as the academics say.) (Update: I passed!) I’ve spent the summer laying the groundwork for the dissertation, and thought you guys might like to know how I’m approaching such a monumental task.

So, here are the steps I’m taking. The process has worked well for all my various publications, and I’m feeling confident in it. Maybe you’ll find it useful.

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Remixing Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1 with Ableton Live

Following up on Debussy’s “Claire De Lune”, I’ve taken on another of the greatest hits of the classical canon that my ear does not intuitively understand: Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No 1“.

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How to make drums and synths from literally any sound

This is one of my favorite Andrew Huang videos.

Beyond their jokey aspects, Andrew’s videos make a profound point about just how flexible recorded sound can be. This is useful information if you want to break out of the cliches, if you have bad source material to work with, or if you just enjoy pushing your software to its limits. Every semester, I assign my music tech students to record environmental sounds with their phones and then turn them into music. Phone recordings usually have poor sound quality and are loaded with noise. But if you’re a creative producer, you can make literally anything work.

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Jordan Peterson and Luke Skywalker

Ever since Jordan Peterson’s fans started getting in my face online, I’ve been exploring his work. He’s a fascinating and disturbing character. On the one hand, he’s a respected academic and clinical psychiatrist (or, he was until recently.) He dispenses valuable self-help advice, especially for depressed and anxious young men. This fan video gets across the core of his appeal. “Tell the truth and aim high”–who could argue with that?

On the other hand, Peterson has some ideas about gender politics and politics generally that range from old-fashioned to unhinged. He has a paranoid vision of Western civilization being undermined what he calls “postmodernism,” by which he appears to mean “egalitarianism.” Peterson’s understanding of actual postmodernism is as shallow as a puddle. His main point is that efforts toward social justice will inevitably result in Stalinism. Let’s dive in!

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My adventures among the alt-right

In my last semester of doctoral coursework at NYU, I took a class called Research On Urban And Minority Education, taught by Alex Freidus. For my final paper, I wrote about the racial politics of music education. I had written versions of this paper for other courses, but Alex supplied some key concepts and vocabulary I had been missing, and I felt like this was the first time I had really been able to get my arms around my core idea: that school music is a site where white privilege is reproduced. On May 8, I posted the paper on this blog, as I have with all of my grad school writing assignments. I got some gratifying rah-rah responses from other progressive music educators, with more Facebook and Twitter shares than usual, and that felt good.

I also got one strange comment:

The most interesting thing about this article is that it requires the reader to be familiar (and in agreement) with a very specific ideology (postmodernist relativism) in order to be understood according to the author’s intentions. To a normal educated person, the content of this article reads as shockingly racist, and deeply morally confused. In order for it to sound somewhat palatable, and not like the incredibly racist screed that it is, the author has had to torturously render the entire thing using a strict postmodernist vocabulary.

I’m used to cultural conservatives calling me racist for talking about racism. But I wasn’t sure why this guy was harping on the word “postmodernist.” It’s an accurate description of my scholarly approach, but it also describes every other mainstream academic in the world. It would be like disparaging me by calling me an American. This is before I found out that “postmodernism” is a Jordan Peterson buzzword.

Then, a couple of weeks later, the real excitement began.

Make Music Ed Great Again
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Some news

I’ve had an idea for a while to try writing an intro-level project-based music technology textbook. My friend Will Kuhn, the coolest high school music teacher in America, has been working on a book for people who want to start a project-based music technology program at their school (Will started an awesome one at his.) We recently decided to merge our efforts, Voltron-like, so I have put my thing on the back burner and am now the second author on Will’s thing. We emailed out the proposal today. Think warm thoughts!

Colbert typing

Scratching “This Is America”

One of my projects for this summer is to realize my decades-old ambition to learn how to scratch. I borrowed a Korg Kaoss DJ controller from a friend, downloaded Serato, and have been fumbling with it for a week now. The Kaoss DJ leaves much to be desired. The built-in Kaoss Pad is cool, but otherwise it’s too small and finicky. I will definitely want to upgrade to something with big chunky buttons and more haptic feedback in general. Still, the Kaoss DJ is enough to get started with.

For my first serious remix, I thought I would take on Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”–I have the acapella and the instrumental, and it feels like a timely song. I put the instrumental on one deck and the acapella on the other, and did my best to improvise a mix in real time. If you want to hear the result, email me.

I mostly approached this as “soloing” with the acapella, using the instrumental as my “rhythm section.” But I did some improvising with the instrumental too, by looping, and by jumping around between cue points. I don’t consider this to be a polished work of art or anything, but I discovered some pretty cool sounds even at my basic skill level. So I’m excited to see where this leads.

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Separating children from their parents at the border is morally wrong

Call your representatives, especially if they’re Republicans. Demand that this stop. “But what about Obama?” He’s not the president anymore. “But what about the laws?” This isn’t a law, it’s a policy instituted very recently, which can be reversed in an instant by Sessions or Trump. “But what about illegal immigration?” No harm done by illegal immigration can possibly outweigh the harm we’re doing to these kids and their parents. “But what about the Democrats?” I don’t want to hear any ignorant both-sides-ism. We are all morally culpable, but the people who control all three branches of the federal government are the most culpable. Call them.