Today in pop aural skills, we identified suspensions, that is, melodies that place unexpected non-chord tones on strong beats, before resolving to the expected chord tones. These are melodic suspensions, which are not the same thing as sus4 or sus2 chords, but they are related concepts. Western European classical theory has a lot of clear …
Tag Archives: Parliament
The minor key universe
In a previous post, I suggested that we think of an expanded major key universe that includes the major scale, Mixolydian mode, Lydian mode, and maybe also Mixolydian b6. In this post, I present a similar approach to minor keys, by extending the logic of Western European tonal theory to cover some additional minor scale …
What is tempo?
The basic idea of tempo is simple: how many beats there are per minute. More beats per minute means the music is faster, fewer beats per minute means the music is slower. The image below shows a tempo map of “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles that I made with Ableton Live. The song’s tempo ranges …
Identifying the diatonic modes
In Aural Skills class we continue our sprint through harmony concepts with the diatonic modes. These are an advanced topic in classical theory, but for popular music, you need to deal with them up front, especially Mixolydian and Dorian. Here are the tunes I’m giving the class to practice distinguishing the modes from each other.
Rap before hip-hop
For the hip-hop unit in the Song Factory class at the New School, I want to start things off by clarifying the difference between hip-hop and rap. People use these terms interchangeably, but they really describe two different things: hip-hop is a culture, and rap is a musical expression of that culture. But rapping is …
Dorian mode
Dorian mode is such a cool scale. It evokes medieval chant and the blues. Its characteristic minor sixth chord is almost a diminished chord. And it’s unique among the diatonic modes for being symmetrical, meaning that it uses the same sequence of intervals going up and down. When you write Dorian on the chromatic circle, …
Burning Down The House
Here is the closest Talking Heads ever came to a legitimate pop hit, their only song to crack the Billboard Top Ten. It isn’t as conceptually or musically groundbreaking as “Once In A Lifetime“, but it contains depths of its own.
Groove harmony
See also a study of groove melody Chords work differently in grooves than they do in songs and linear compositions. In his book Everyday Tonality, Philip Tagg proposes that chords in loops are mainly there to signpost locations in the meter. By his theory, the metrical location of a chord matters more than its harmonic …
Children of Production
My four-year-old daughter is currently super into “Children of Production” from Parliament’s classic 1976 album The Clones of Dr Funkenstein, their followup to Mothership Connection. If that album called down the holy mothership, this one introduces you to its occupants. This is the kind of groove that sounds effortless until you try playing it. Here’s …
Mothership Connection
In high school, my friend Aubin, who was much cooler than me, told me I needed to go listen to some Parliament. I bought a cassette of The Clones of Dr Funkenstein, probably just because of its title. I liked it immediately, how could you not? But thirty-ish years later, I am still struggling to …