Many of the Beatles’ most memorable ideas are variations on boilerplate riffs from rock, country, blues or R&B. The riff from “Day Tripper” derives from boogie-woogie. John Lennon cited Bobby Parker’s 1961 song “Watch Your Step” as the inspiration for both “Day Tripper” and “I Feel Fine.”
Tag Archives: blues
Musical simples: Come Together
Presumably you’re familiar with this song? If not, run out and get Abbey Road and don’t deprive yourself for another minute. As far as I’m concerned, you can have Revolver and Sergeant Pepper and whatever else; Abbey Road is the best Beatles album. It opens with the funkiest, baddest bass and drum riff in their …
Prepping my rap and rock class at Montclair State
This summer, I’m teaching Cultural Significance of Rap and Rock at Montclair State University. It’s my first time teaching it, and it’s also the first time anyone has taught it completely online. The course is cross-listed under music and African-American studies. Here’s a draft of my syllabus, omitting details of the grading and such. I welcome your questions, comments …
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Inside the aQWERTYon
Update: try the Theory aQWERTYon! The MusEDLab and Soundfly just launched Theory For Producers, an interactive music theory course. The centerpiece of the interactive component is a MusEDLab tool called the aQWERTYon. You can try it by clicking the image below. (You need to use Chrome.) In this post, I’ll talk about why and how we developed the …
Compound musical simples
As I’ve been gathering musical simples, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to categorize them. There are melodic simples, otherwise known as riffs, hooks, and licks. There are rhythmic simples, otherwise known as beats, claves, and rhythm necklaces. And then there are the simples that combine a beat with a melody. Alex …
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 …
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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 …
Do you need music theory to create music?
This question gets asked a lot. It’s really four questions: 1) What is music theory? 2) Does music theory really teach you what music is? 3) Does music theory teach you how to create music? And 4) how do you learn music theory? Let’s take these questions one at a time.
BB King gives us a guitar lesson
Did you know that the man has some guitar lessons online? I did not. They are invaluable. Let him show you how it’s done. https://youtu.be/AVe24YFGoiM
How to tell funk from disco
Funk and disco overlap broadly, but they are not the same thing. Funk lovers like me instinctively know what the difference is. But how do we know? One thing we could do is point to the beat. Disco uses that iconic four-to-the-floor pattern, and funk doesn’t, so case closed, right? Well, it’s not so simple. …