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 …
Continue reading “Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 – Prelude”
Here’s a Charlie Parker recording that’s not widely known outside of jazz, but is absolutely foundational inside it: This recording features a very young Miles Davis on trumpet. Miles later said that he wrote the tune, and that its copyright attribution to Charlie Parker was a record label error. I believe him. It sounds more …
Back in 2009, Harmonix came out with The Beatles: Rock Band. In order to prepare the sound files for the game, the company needed the original multitrack stems for fifty Beatles songs. Someone at the company posted the stems online, and they remain in widespread circulation. (You can easily obtain them via a Google search.) …
I recently met a gentleman named Samuel Halligan, who, among other things, makes music education utilities using Max For Live. One of them is called Pop-Up Piano. If you use Max or Ableton and you could use some help learning music theory, you should go and download it immediately. It’s a Max For Live Device …
Continue reading “Samuel Halligan’s awesome Pop-Up Piano for Ableton Live”
Ableton just published the video of a panel I was part of at Ableton Loop 2017 with Dennis DeSantis, Jack Schaedler and Mel Uye-Parker. We talk about music tech and education. Very cool stuff. You can also read my detailed accounts of Loop 2017 and Loop 2018.
This Vox explainer video about John Coltrane’s most iconic tune is making the rounds right now. It’s well made and engaging. You should watch it! “Giant Steps” is a beautiful tune, one that rewards as much scrutiny as you care to give it. But it also had some negative effects on jazz as an art …
“Blind Alley” by The Emotions is a funk/soul tune best known as a crucial source of breakbeats for golden age rap songs. Beyond its sampling value, “Blind Alley” is also a fabulously useful tool for teaching how you make chords in the key of F major.
I’m recently home from Ableton’s stupendous “summit for music makers,” and I’m still mentally unpacking it all. Loop was quite a different experience from last year, when Ableton held it in their home city of Berlin. This year, they moved it to Los Angeles to make it easier for people in Latin America and the …
Every semester, I have my music technology students do a project using found sound. They record environmental sounds with their phones, and then they create tracks that incorporate those sounds somehow. The only rule is that they have to use at least one found sound–it doesn’t have to be their own. Otherwise, they can use …
In my continuing quest to learn the classical canon through remixing with Ableton Live, I’ve taken on Bach’s Minuet in G major. Which is apparently not by Bach at all, but rather by some guy named Christian Petzold. Live and learn. A minuet is a dance, but in 2018, it’s hard to dance in triple meter. …
