NYU Steinhardt is assigning this blog in its music theory and aural skills core classes

Last night I went to a holiday party for NYU Steinhardt’s music education program, where I got my PhD and where I have been teaching the Technology and Pop Practicum courses for several years now. Steinhardt has been overhauling its core music theory and aural skills curricula, and while I am highly interested in this process, I have not been involved in it. I have a lot of opinions about this, but not much credentialing in music theory pedagogy. At the party, a student told me that her theory and aural skills teachers are assigning her a lot of material from this blog. This was news to me. I’m flattered, of course, but also sad, because no one has talked to me about it, much less invited me to teach any of the classes. Like I said, I know my formal CV doesn’t really support that, but if the blog is good enough to assign…

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I made a new track for teaching swing

I just finished my Groove Theories book proposal and sent it out, that was about twenty years of very slow work followed by two weeks of very fast work. So fingers crossed on that. I included two sample chapters, one on blues tonality, and one on swing. For the swing chapter, I wanted to find examples of the same piece of music played with and without swing for ease of comparison. In class, I usually play “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the Nutcracker Suite and “Sugar Rum Cherry” by Duke Ellington. This isn’t an exact comparison, though, because Ellington does more than change the time feel; he also changes the instrumentation and structure. I wanted to find an example where the same music repeated identically with and without swing. The problem is that so far as I can tell, no such piece of music exists. But then I realized that it would be easy to make this piece of music myself, by warping something out in Ableton Live and applying different groove settings.

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There Was A Time (I Got To Move)

Being a fan of James Brown can be a challenge, because his classic songs have all been recorded multiple times in different versions with different names on different labels. “I Got To Move” is a case in point.

It was first released on In The Jungle Groove in 1986, but was recorded back in 1970. The strangely tacked-on intro is an excerpt from a different song, “Give It Up Or Turnit a-Loose.” Except that the specific version of “Give It Up Or Turnit a-Loose” they took the excerpt from was titled “In The Jungle Groove,” which is where they got the name of this compilation. Except that the full song “In The Jungle Groove” was not on this compilation, and has actually never been released. Like I said: confusing! Anyway, the point is, once “I Got To Move” proper starts at 0:29, it’s unbelievably funky.

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Here is a web based music education tool that I wish existed

It is awesome that you can embed interactive Noteflight scores in a web page, like so:

But for optimal music education results, I also want to be able to show that same example in MIDI piano roll view too. Imagine if the Noteflight embed included a pane that showed this:

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Boogie Chillen

Here’s one of the heaviest and most wonderful recordings ever made.

The song is so mysterious, so intense, so ancient-sounding yet so fresh. John Lee Hooker recorded it in 1948 at United Sound Systems in Detroit. (He re-recorded it many more times afterwards.) It went to number one on the R&B chart, which is pretty impressive for a song whose only percussion is Hooker’s foot stomping on a miked-up shipping pallet. When I was an ignorant teenager, I assumed that Hooker recorded this way because it’s how he was used to playing on his back porch in Mississippi. In fact, Hooker usually played with a band at the time, and he only recorded solo at the suggestion of his producer, the breathtakingly sleazy Bernie Besman.

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Oye Como Va

Santana’s recording of “Oye Como Va” is one of the most outrageous grooves I’ve ever heard. David Welna describes it as “a Cuban cha-cha composed by a Puerto Rican New Yorker and performed by a Mexican immigrant and his San Francisco rock band.” It’s red-hot from its opening seconds. As the organ starts the montuno, someone in the band says “Brrrrrr, sabor”, meaning flavor, and that is definitely the word.

The song is a cover of a 1950s cha-cha-chá by Tito Puente.

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Swing primer

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah” – Duke Ellington

Hear a seamless collage of several varieties of swing:

Aside from the blues, swing is the United States’ most significant musical innovation. People typically associate its rubbery, sensual feel with jazz, but swing is everywhere in the musics descended from the African diaspora: ragtime, blues, musical theater, country, R&B, rock, funk, reggae, hip-hop, electronic dance music, and so on. The best way to learn about swing is through aural and hands-on experience. The Groove Pizza is a good way to get started.

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Thelonius

If, like me, you are a Thelonious Monk fan, you will be sad to learn that this song has very little to do with Thelonious Monk. J Dilla compares his greatness as an emcee to Monk’s greatness as a pianist, and “Thelonious” kind of rhymes with “microphonist.” That’s the extent of the connection. Regardless, “Thelonius” is a pretty amazing track.

Common tells the story of its creation here:

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Transcribing Lil’ Kim

Toni Blackman recommends a rap writing exercise: take an existing flow and replace the lyrics with your own. In order to do this with my music education students in the spring, I’m going to provide them with notated transcriptions as well as recordings. I’ve transcribed a couple of Toni’s recommended verses. The first was KRS-One’s “Step Into a World (Rapture’s Delight.)” The second is Lil’ Kim’s feature on Mary J Blige’s “I Can Love You.”

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