Update: we have implemented these changes to the aQWERTYon, try them here Try the scale wheel visualization here The MusEDLab will soon be launching a revamped version of the aQWERTYon with some enhancements to its visual design, including a new scale picker. Beyond our desire to make our stuff look cooler, the scale picker represents a …
Continue reading “The aQWERTYon pitch wheels and the future of music theory visualization”
Recently someone posted this performance of the Chaconne from Bach’s violin partita in D minor on an eleven-string guitar by Moran Wasser. My favorite interpretation by an actual violinist is Viktoria Mullova’s. I appreciate her straightforward and unsentimental approach. I also enjoy the version from Morimur, and I’m not alone. It’s one of the most …
Continue reading “Teaching myself the Bach Chaconne with Ableton Live”
See also an analysis of this tune’s amazing drum groove. If you have even a passing interest in funk, you will want to familiarize yourself with Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon.” If you are preoccupied and dedicated to the preservation of the movement of the hips, then the bassline needs to be a cornerstone of your practice.
I’m working on a new music theory course with the good folks at Soundfly, a continuation of Theory For Producers. We were looking for contemporary songs that use modal interchange, combinations of different scales to create complex blends of emotion. Soundfly producer Marty Fowler suggested a Frank Ocean song, which I was immediately on board …
Since George Michael died, I’ve been enjoying all of his hits, but none of them more than this one. Listening to it now, it’s painfully obvious how much it’s about George Michael’s struggles with his sexual orientation. I wonder whether he was being deliberately coy in the lyrics, or if he just wasn’t yet fully in touch …
Jazz musicians think of chords and scales as two different ways of looking at the same thing: a group of pitches that sound good together. If you organize the pitches sequentially and play them one at a time, you get a scale. If you stack them up and play them simultaneously, you get chords. Here’s …
There’s a broad diversity of harmonic practices being used out there in the world of blues-based popular music, rock in particular. While a given song may not use a lot of scales and chords, the relationships between those scales and chords is rarely simple or obvious. You really just need to learn all of them. …
Continue reading “How the heck do you know what scale you’re supposed to use for lead guitar?”
See also the happiest chord progression ever. The short-lived Russian composer Vasily Kalinnikov is best known (to the extent he’s known at all) for this piece of music: If you listen to this piece at 6:16, there’s a particularly beautiful and tragic chord progression. It’s in the key of E-flat, but I transposed it into C …
When I was a kid, I’d listen to music and wonder, why is this chord progression so much more satisfying than that one? Now I know the answer: secondary dominants, chords that temporarily change the key in a logical-sounding way. If you want to take your songwriting in a more sophisticated direction, you definitely want …
I studied music theory for a good long time before it dawned on me that you can read the major scale right off the circle of fifths. Here’s the C major scale on the circle. The white notes are the ones in the scale and the black ones are the ones outside the scale. The …
