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Blues basics
Since I’m teaching the twelve-bar blues to some guitar students, I figured I’d put the lessons in the form of a blog post. Blues is a big topic and this isn’t going to be anything like a definitive...
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Diminished chords and the blues
The blues is a good entry path for beginner guitarists. If you learn the standard fifteen chords and the blues scale, you’ll be well on your way. However, there’s one crucial piece of additional music...
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Remixing Duke Ellington
There’s no music I love more in the world than Duke Ellington’s. When I was a kid, the New York Transit Museum had a commercial in heavy rotation on local TV that used “Take The A Train” and I remember...
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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing
Today is the Fourth of July, and I can’t think of anything more patriotic than a post about our most significant contribution to world musical culture: swing. The title of this post refers to the...
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How is it possible to compose jazz when improvisation is an essential component?
Typical jazz compositions are written expressly as vehicles for improvisation. Mainstream jazz tunes since the 1940s take the form head-solos-head. The head is a written melody, and the solos are...
View ArticleWhat goes on neurologically when a song gets stuck in your head?
The phenomenon of annoyingly persistent earworms is a great introduction to the meme theory: the idea that songs (and all other forms of cultural expression) are self-replicating informational...
View ArticleWhat are the greatest basslines ever?
The bassline is neglected by most non-musicians. But if you want to write or produce music, you quickly find out how important it is. The bassline is the foundation of the whole musical structure, both...
View ArticleThe best jazz versions of classical pieces
For my tastes, you can’t beat the Ellington Nutcracker. [iframe_loader width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ONknTGUckKc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen] Ellington’s Peer Gynt...
View ArticleWhat makes jazz great?
Improvisation Charlie Christian – “Waiting For Benny” [iframe_loader width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PHnBiT1Jp_4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen] Composition Duke Ellington...
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My top 100 jazz tracks
A while ago I wrote a post explaining how jazz works. In response, someone asked me to name my favorite hundred jazz tracks. So here’s my list. It’s totally subjective and necessarily incomplete, but I...
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Musical simples
The NYU Music Experience Design Lab is putting together a new online music theory resource, and I’m writing a lot of the materials. We want to keep everything grounded in real-life musical practice. To...
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The Great Cut-Time Shift
I’ve been transcribing a lot of beats for the MusEDLab‘s forthcoming music theory learning tool. Many of those beats require swing, and that has been giving me a headache. In trying to figure out why,...
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Rohan lays beats
The Ed Sullivan Fellows program is an initiative by the NYU MusEDLab connecting up-and-coming hip-hop musicians to mentors, studio time, and creative and technical guidance. Our session this past...
View ArticleHappy 100th birthday to Thelonious Monk
Here’s Monk playing four Duke Ellington tunes, followed by his own “Crepuscule with Nellie” and a blues. Here’s Monk playing one of his greatest hits, “Blue Monk.” A weirder and less approachable tune,...
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Theorizing sound writing
Writing assignment for Ethnomusicology: History and Theory with David Samuels Deborah Kapchan, editor (2017) Theorizing Sound Writing. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. My doctoral advisor Alex...
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Duke Ellington, Percy Grainger, and the status of jazz in the academy
Final paper for The History of the African-American Freedom Struggle with Thomas Sugrue On October 25, 1932, Percy Grainger invited Duke Ellington and his orchestra to perform “Creole Love Call” as...
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The orchestra hit as a possible future for classical music
In my paper about whiteness in music education, I tried to make a point about sampling classical music that my professor was (rightly) confused about. So I’m going to use this post to unpack the idea...
View ArticleSimple songs
I’m interested in a particular kind of pop song: mainstream-ish tracks that are so minimal in their melodic or lyrical content that they barely qualify as “songs,” yet manage to still be musically...
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Ableton Loop 2018
I’m recently home from Ableton’s stupendous “summit for music makers,” and I’m still mentally unpacking it all. Loop was quite a different experience from last year, when Ableton held it in their home...
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How do key signatures work?
I put off Western notation in my New School Fundamentals of Western Music class as long as I could, but the semester is almost over and we can’t avoid it any more. As expected, most students are...
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