Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Thelonious Monk’s beautiful ballad “Round Midnight” is said to be the most widely recorded and performed jazz tune — that is, a tune that was written specifically for jazz, not an adaptation of a showtune or pop song. It’s a testament to its popularity that it’s one of exactly two songs that Dave Chappelle knows [...]
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music
|
Also tagged ballads, bebop, bud powell, carmen mcrae, Composition, cootie williams, dave chappelle, dizzy gillespie, ella fitzgerald, hip-hop, jazz, john coltrane, krs-one, linkedin, miles davis, oscar peterson, Sampling, singing
|
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
For me it’s a tie between two John Coltrane recordings. First, the Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings, featuring some of Eric Dolphy’s finest work.
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 improvised around the chord changes of the head. Scores for these kinds of tunes take the form of lead sheets, like the ones found in [...]
Filed in Composition, Improvisation, Music
|
Also tagged benny goodman, Composition, dizzy gillespie, duke ellington, Improvisation, jazz, john coltrane, miles davis, quora
|
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 blues, bob dylan, chords, duke ellington, ella fitzgerald, fats waller, jazz, lambert hendricks and ross, Music Theory, robert johnson, roots, symmetry
|
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, modules, muddy waters, Music Theory, race, tritones
|
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
I’ve picked up some new guitar students lately, so I’m once again doing a lot of explaining what a tritone is and why people should care. Whenever I find myself explaining something a lot, I like to encapsulate it as a blog post. So here we go. A tritone is the interval between the notes [...]
Filed in Emotion, Math, Music, Music Theory
|
Also tagged blues, busta rhymes, chords, irrational numbers, Math, melodic minor, michael jackson, miles davis, Music Theory, psychology, scales, simpsons, sonny rollins, stevie wonder, tritones
|
Thursday, February 11, 2010
When I was younger I was obsessed with authenticity in music. I wouldn’t even play electric guitar because it felt too easy, like cheating somehow. I expended a lot of energy and attention trying to figure out what is and isn’t authentic. Now, at the age of 34, I’ve officially given up. I doubt there’s [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music, Race and Identity
|
Also tagged acoustic, alicia keys, authenticity, autotune, bebop, big chill, bill monroe, bluegrass, blues, electronica, Emotion, harmonica, herbie hancock, howlin wolf, jay-z, jazz, john coltrane, judaica, klezmer, led zeppelin, lipsynching, michael jackson, motown, nyc, purists, rnb, Sampling, soul, synths
|
Now that I have an office job, I’m spending a lot of time under headphones while I correct people’s grammar. It’s a good opportunity to explore the outer reaches of my music tastes. The office has some networked iTunes libraries heavy on the Pitchfork 500, and I have whatever I’m bringing from home. I’ve also [...]
Filed in Internet, Music, Music Business, Software
|
Also tagged algorithmic composition, bjork, database, dj, herbie hancock, hip-hop, internet radio, itunes, kanye west, napoleon dynamite, netflix, pandora, random, remixes, shuffle
|