This is me, rehearsing an Allman Brothers song with my stepbrother Kenny for my stepdad’s funeral last summer. If you are a music theory teacher interested in reaching guitarists, here’s some background on my own music learning that might be illuminating. My journey is a pretty typical one for a rock guitarist, except for the …
Tag Archives: jazz
The three diminished chords: blues, jazz and classical
Diminished seventh chords are strange creatures: a cliche for Dracula’s castle, but also a cornerstone of the blues. They are also difficult to understand. The good news is that in any given key, there are only three possible diminished seventh chords: the one whose root is the tonic of the key, the one whose root …
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The Kronos Quartet play Jimi Hendrix
I have mixed feelings about the Kronos Quartet arrangement of “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix. On the one hand, it’s cool that they even attempted it. On the other hand, is the attempt successful? It’s great that they’re taking advantage of the violin’s pitch continuum to do all the blue notes and guitaristic bends and …
Chords and modal interchange
One of the most powerful music theory concepts you can learn is how to make chords from scales. If you learn a few scales, then you get a whole bunch of chords for free. The specifics of all the chord names can be complicated and daunting. But the concept of constructing them is very simple. …
Waiting For Benny
The Genius of the Electric Guitar is an aptly-named compilation of studio recordings that Charlie Christian made with Benny Goodman between 1939 and 1941. The album includes a couple of informal studio jams recorded while Goodman’s band was waiting for their leader to show up. Both jams have self-explanatory titles: “Blues in B” and “Waiting …
Nature Boy
There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy. His name was eden ahbez, he was a hippie decades before that was a common thing to be, and he wrote “Nature Boy“, which Nat King Cole turned into a major hit. The tune has become a jazz and pop standard, and has been recorded uncountably …
I was weirdly obsessed with this jazz tune when I was twelve
I mainly grew up in a classical radio type of household, but my folks had a couple of jazz albums too, including Duke’s Memories by Abdullah Ibrahim. It included an obscure Ellington tune called “Way Way Back.” The melody is elegantly simple, and reveals greater depth with each listen. When I was in sixth grade, …
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Pieces vs Songs vs Grooves
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 …
What if the Bach Chaconne was modal jazz?
As I struggle my way through the Bach Chaconne on guitar, I’m having to work around the fact that I am great at music theory but terrible at note reading. So before I could play the piece, I had to completely understand it and be able to feel it by ear. The only way I …
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Sonnymoon for Two
Sonny Rollins is a justifiably famous for his improvising, but he has also written several jazz standards that are as catchy as anything on top 40 radio: “St Thomas,” “Pent Up House,” “Doxy,” and the stickiest earworm for me personally, “Sonnymoon for Two.” Here’s an early studio recording: Here’s the really famous version, from the …