Friday, February 17, 2012
Here are three stories about the relationship of funk to the avant-garde. Meshell Ndegeocello at Tonic In my twenties, I forced myself to experience a lot of very highbrow avant-garde music: free jazz, experimental electronica, and various combinations thereof. One such experience was a show at Tonic. I forget who was on the bill exactly, [...]
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music
|
Also tagged atonality, bb king, free jazz, funk, fusion, ira newborn, jazz, meshell ndegeocello, miles davis, soul
|
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Improvisation Charlie Christian – “Waiting For Benny”
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music
|
Also tagged art blakey, charlie christian, clifford brown, Composition, count basie, duke ellington, herbie hancock, Improvisation, jazz, john coltrane, max roach, miles davis, quora, soul
|
Why does folk music collector Alan Lomax have a copyright interest in “Takeover” by Jay-Z? I learned the answer from Creative License: The Law And Culture Of Digital Sampling by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola. It’s a companion book to the invaluable documentary Copyright Criminals. The story of Jay-Z and Alan Lomax isn’t quite as [...]
Filed in Composition, Copyright and Authorship, Music, Music Business, Politics, Recording, Sampling
|
Also tagged alan lomax, chain gangs, copyright, digging the crates, folk, funk, grand funk railroad, hip-hop, jay-z, krs-one, rock, Sampling, the animals
|
It’s hard to figure out what key a piece of music is in. There are a lot of conflicting answers from different music theory texts. To make matters worse, it’s not at all unusual for a song to change keys, even within a section or phrase. Even rock songs written by totally naive songwriters can [...]
Filed in Music, Music Theory
|
Also tagged classical, hall and oates, harmonic minor, jazz, keys, major scale, melodic minor, Music Theory, pop, rock, scales
|
I have a new harmonica student starting today, so while I gather materials for him, I figured I’d put them in a blog post too. I started learning harmonica in high school. It was the first instrument I learned voluntarily, not counting my ineffectual middle school attempt at classical cello. As a teenager, my obsession [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
|
Also tagged bob dylan, deford bailey, folk, grateful dead, harmonica, howard levy, jazz, little walter jacobs, major scale, mixolydian, Music Theory, sonny terry, stevie wonder, toots thielemans
|
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
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 vocabulary you need to do the blues justice, and that’s diminished chords. To make a diminished chord, you start on [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
|
Also tagged bob dylan, chords, duke ellington, ella fitzgerald, fats waller, jazz, lambert hendricks and ross, Music Theory, robert johnson, roots, symmetry, thelonious monk
|
Saturday, January 22, 2011
When you first set out to learn your scales, it can be discouraging. There are so many of them, and their names are so bewildering. The good news is that when you learn one scale, you get a bunch of other scales that you get “for free.” This is because many scales share the same [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
|
Also tagged beatles, benny golson, bjork, classical, dizzy gillespie, jazz, lynyrd skynyrd, miles davis, modes, Music Theory, rock, samuel barber, scales
|
Expanding on a post about blues basics. When you’re first learning to improvise, it’s daunting to be confronted with all the scales. Fortunately, there’s one scale that sounds good in any situation: the blues scale. It’s a universal harmonic solvent. I haven’t encountered a chord progression yet that didn’t fit with the blues scale. It [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
|
Also tagged charles mingus, chords, dave brubeck, guitar, harmony, henry mancini, jazz, miles davis, Music Theory
|
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 guide. Think of it more as a tasting menu. Blues is a confusing term. You probably have [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
|
Also tagged aretha franklin, batman, chords, country, duke ellington, Emotion, flatt and scruggs, guitar, hank williams, harmonica, herbie hancock, jazz, john coltrane, john lee hooker, louis armstrong, memes, modules, muddy waters, Music Theory, race, thelonious monk, tritones
|
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 [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music, Music Theory, Race and Identity
|
Also tagged Autobio, dave tarras, history, judaica, klezmatics, klezmer, microtones, naftule brandwein, nyc, scales
|