Daniel Jacobson, a musician in Ireland, was inspired by this post to give the following speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfSrJnn1z9E
Circular rhythm visualization talk at Spotify
Today I got to talk about rhythm visualization in general and the Groove Pizza in particular at the Spotify Monthly Music Hackathon. Click the image to see my talk, I start at 1:23:47.
Here are my slides:
Want me to come to your school, company, meetup or whatever, and do this talk? Or something like it? Get in touch.
The harmonica explains all of Western music
If you want to understand the vast cultural struggle taking place in the study of Western harmony, you could do worse than to start with the harmonica. This unassuming little instrument was designed in central Europe in the 19th century to play the popular music of that time and place: waltzes, oom-pah music, and light classical. All of this music is “diatonic,” meaning that it’s based around the major scale, the do-re-mi you learned in elementary school. It’s also the harmony that you learn if you take a typical formal music theory class.
Continue reading “The harmonica explains all of Western music”
What even is digital art
The mighty river of social media recently brought an essay to my attention, The Arts Electric by Tom Uglow. His central point is that the computer has not yet fulfilled its potential as an art medium.
I started out agreeing with him, and ended thinking he’s missing the point. Let’s dissect! Continue reading “What even is digital art”
Lifelong general music
I’ve been blessed that both institutions where I teach music technology give me considerable freedom in how I do it. I find the music side to be quite a bit more interesting than the technology side, so I center my classes around creative music-making, and we address technical concepts as we encounter them. I’m learning that this approach is an unusual one, that music school is more about learning repertoire and technique and less about discovery and invention. I got some validation for my approach from The New Frontier: Secondary Project-Based General Music by Michael Hayden. His essay is basically proposing that all high school kids get to take my Music Tech 101 class.
How does jazz work? The up-goer five version
I rewrote this post using the up-goer five text editor. Enjoy.
How does cool music work? Rather than attempting the hard job of explaining how everything in cool music works, I will pick a usual song and talk you through it: “One Day My Son Of An Important Person Will Come” by Miles Davis, from the 1961 black round music thing by the same name.
First of all, here is the first time someone played the song, from Little Ice Pieces White.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0niwn2pOEno
Once you have the song in your head, listen to Miles Davis play it.
Continue reading “How does jazz work? The up-goer five version”
Music in a world of noise pollution
One of the great privileges of working at NYU is having access to the state-of-the-art Dolan Studio. Listening to music on top-end Lipinskis through an SSL console in a control room designed by Philippe Starck is the most exquisite audio experience I’ve ever had, and likely will ever have. Unfortunately, it’s also very far removed from the circumstances in which I listen to music in my normal life. It isn’t even an issue of the speakers or amps, though of course mine are nowhere near as good as the ones in Dolan. It’s more about the listening environment.
Music theory for the perplexed guitarist
I hear it all the time from my friends in the rock world, and see it all the time in internet discussions: guitarists are struggling with their music theory, or they’ve given up on it completely. This is not their fault! Music theory is taught pretty badly for the most part, and it rarely addresses the music that rock musicians are playing.
I’ve been working on rectifying that situation. If you play guitar, or any other rock-adjacent instrument, I hope that these posts are useful to you:
Continue reading “Music theory for the perplexed guitarist”
Scale necklaces and symmetry
While I was doing some examination of rhythm necklaces and scale necklaces, I noticed a symmetry among the major scale modes: Lydian mode and Locrian mode are mirror images of each other.
Does this geometric relationship mean anything musically? Turns out that it does. Lydian and Locrian are mirror images in feeling, not just as necklaces. Read on!
Music theory on Hacker News
This fascinating thread about music theory on Hacker News showed up recently in my blog pingbacks.
Two posts in particular caught my eye. Continue reading “Music theory on Hacker News”