This week in pop theory class, we are talking about the melodic-harmonic divorce, where the chords and melody to a song are all from the same major or minor key, but do not necessarily agree with each other at the local level. This is a common feature of current pop. It’s so common, in fact, …
Tag Archives: songwriting
The 32-bar AABA song form
I am approaching my New School songwriting class differently this semester: rather than having students write songs in particular styles, I am having them write using particular forms and structures. For example, for the blues unit, they don’t have to write in a blues style, but they do have to use the twelve-bar blues form. …
Identifying melodic motives
Motivic development is more of a classical music thing than a rock/pop thing. If you want to hear a motive carried through a series of elaborations and variations, you should look to Beethoven rather than the Beatles. Pop songs are a few riffs, repeated or strung together. But there are some songs out there whose …
Identifying standard pop chord progressions
This week in aural skills, we are practicing identifying pop schemas, that is, chord sequences and loops that occur commonly in various kinds of Anglo-American top 40, rock, R&B and related styles. We previously covered the permutations of I, IV and V and the plagal cadence. Now we’re getting into progressions that bring in the rest …
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Things I wrote in 2023
This year I wrote a bunch of groove pedagogy, including a book proposal and related materials aimed at future publications and teaching. So far, the only published part of all that work is 5 Pop Grooves for Orff Ensembles, a collection of educational music that I composed with Heather Fortune. But lots more is coming, …
Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing
Every ten years it occurs to me to learn this tune, and then I come up against the fact that it’s in E-flat minor, I get discouraged, and I give up. Well, not this time! This time I decided to take the coward’s way out: I put the tune in Ableton and transposed it up …
If I Fell
Is this the coolest pre-Revolver Beatles song? In terms of notes on the page, it very well could be. My daughter and I managed to sing the harmony parts together the other night. She has a good ear for a seven year old, but also, the harmonies in that song are so clear and intuitive, …
As The World Falls Down
As kids, my siblings and I watched Labyrinth about eight billion times. It has been super gratifying that my own children love the movie too. Together with their separate David Bowie fandom, that has put “As The World Falls Down” into heavy rotation lately. When I was a kid, I didn’t especially love this song, …
For No One
The Beatles were not always a rock band, especially not when it came to the Paul songs. This is a frequently cited example of baroque pop, a cousin of “Eleanor Rigby” and “She’s Leaving Home.” Paul is playing piano and clavichord, Ringo plays drums and maracas, and the delightfully-named Alan Civil plays the French horn. …
Althea
Here’s a Grateful Dead song that I loved as a teenager. As with many things I loved as a teenager, I did not know why this spoke to me. Now I do, so I get to share that knowledge with you.