I’m rewatching Curb Your Enthusiasm and very much enjoying the work of music supervisor Steven Rasch. In season five, episode eight, Larry pretends to be an Orthodox Jew to win over the head of the Kidney Consortium. To soundtrack the scene where Larry first meets the guy, Rasch chose a classic klezmer tune, “Tanz Tanz …
Tag Archives: klezmer
No, Rolling Stone, D minor is not the saddest of all keys
We all love This Is Spin̈al Tap, but you’re not supposed to take it literally. Nevertheless, this very silly Rolling Stone article tries to prove Nigel right. The author is a doctoral student in quantitative methods. She should probably have asked a music theorist about this before publishing it, or really any musical person. I …
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Music is not a universal language and this klezmer song proves it
My man Adam has a word: Music is the universal language the same way English is, in that it isn't — Adam Neely (@its_adamneely) May 3, 2021 I can prove this with an example from my own life. When I was younger I got interested in my Jewish heritage and spent a couple of years …
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Scales, keys and modes on the circle of fifths
If you want to understand Western music theory, the circle of fifths is an invaluable tool. For one thing, it can help you understand how key signatures work. But it also helps explain how the major scale and diatonic modes relate to each other, and gives a possible explanation for why they sound good. Here’s …
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Chord pizzas
The Groove Pizza uses geometry to help visualize rhythms. The MusEDLab is planning to create a similar tool for visualizing music theory by merging the aQWERTYon with the Scale Wheel. When you put the twelve pitch classes in a circle, you can connect the dots between different notes in a chord or scale to form shapes. My …
Intro to minor keys
Minor keys are way more complicated than major keys. But the effort is worth it; all that complexity gives a richer array of expressive possibility. The best place to start with minor keys, paradoxically, is with the major scale modes. The pitches in E-flat major are the same as the ones in C natural minor. …
Blues for the Jews
December is always a complex month for half-Jewish mutts like me. When pressured to self-identify, I usually just go with “Jewish” for the sake of simplicity, but this is in spite of not having being bar mitzvahed, not knowing any Hebrew, having only the vaguest idea what all the holidays and rituals mean, and having …
Authenticity
When I was younger I was obsessed with authenticity in music. I wouldn’t even play electric guitar because it felt too easy, like cheating somehow. I expended a lot of energy and attention trying to figure out what is and isn’t authentic. Now, at the age of 34, I’ve officially given up. I doubt there’s …