Here are the tracks we listened to on the first day of Contemporary Music Theories at the New School. The class is a requirement for music majors, and as its name suggests, it is intended to give a broad-based understanding of music theory, not just Western tonal theory. We started things off with excerpts of …
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While learning and learning about the Prelude to Bach’s G minor Lute Suite, I also came into contact with the suite’s Sarabande. This piece is famous among music theorists, because while it’s only forty measures long, those forty measures are action-packed, harmonically speaking. Here’s a performance by Evangelina Mascardi. I appreciate that Mascardi doesn’t play …
As I work toward my future book on the theory of groove-based music, I’m reading up on the existing literature. There is not a whole lot of it! Most of the scholarly work about groove is about the social side rather than the music side. That’s why I was excited to find Mark Abel’s book, …
In preparation for making a bunch of new YouTube videos, I have been thinking about Anne Danielsen’s distinction between songs and grooves. It’s a useful scheme for thinking about pop, but it doesn’t cover everything in Western music. We need a third category for linear through-composed music. So here’s my proposal: all of the music …
A passacaglia is a Baroque dance that is a lot like the chaconne. One of Bach’s greatest hits is his Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. Like the Chaconne, the Passacaglia is a long series of variations on a short, simple dance form. Also like the Chaconne, it’s pretty awesome. Bach got the first half …
As a kid growing up in New York City in the 80s, I loved rap, especially Run-DMC. In my teens, I moved away from it under the pressure of my rockist peers and other white nonsense. I found my way back into rap fandom as an adult, thanks in large part to Missy Elliott’s music …
Beethoven is famous for writing huge epic structures. But he could write memorable tunes, too, and the second movement of the “Pathétique Sonata” contains a particularly good one. It’s best to known to my age cohort from Schroder’s performance: Here’s my Ableton Live visualization:
I’m continuing my journey through rhythmic analyses of canonical classical works with Metrical Displacement and Metrically Dissonant Hemiolas by Channan Willner. One of the pieces that Willner analyzes is the Gigue from Bach’s English Suite No. 5 in E minor, played here by Glenn Gould.
In trying to learn (and learn about) the Bach Chaconne, I’m facing a struggle that’s familiar from trying to learn about jazz. The chaconne is a dance form originating in the Americas, or among African people who were brought to the Americas. Spanish and Portuguese colonists brought the chaconne to Europe in the early 1600s, …
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.
