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, blues, chords, country, duke ellington, Emotion, flatt and scruggs, guitar, hank williams, harmonica, herbie hancock, jazz, john coltrane, john lee hooker, louis armstrong, memes, muddy waters, Music Theory, race, thelonious monk, tritones
|
I’ve had a lot of music teachers, formal and informal. The best one has been the computer. It mindlessly plays anything I tell it to, over and over. Hearing an idea played back on a continuous loop tells me quickly if it’s good or not. If the idea is bad, I immediately get annoyed, and [...]
Filed in Composition, Math, Music, Music Teaching, Recording, Sampling
|
Also tagged beatles, country, dance, electronica, fela kuti, hip-hop, jazz, looping, memory, recursion, remixes, rza, structure, symmetry, theodor adorno
|
Saturday, November 28, 2009
If you’re in a band, chances are you feel like you’re supposed to be writing your own material. If you write your own songs, you can make more money from the publishing rights in addition to your album sales (should you, improbably, be selling albums.) Writing your own stuff isn’t just a financial consideration. The [...]
Filed in Autobio, Composition, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music, Sampling
|
Also tagged arrangement, big band, chet baker, copyright, count basie, duke ellington, frank sinatra, harmony, Improvisation, jay-z, jazz, john coltrane, lego, looping, memes, miles davis, Music, Music Theory, my favorite things, originality, reharmonization, remixes, Sampling, swing, symmetry, the sound of music
|