This semester I am once again teaching pop theory and aural skills at NYU. I have done some previous reflections on these classes. The students are undergrads, mostly studying instrumental and vocal performance, songwriting and music technology. They range in stylistic background from pop to rock to jazz to R&B to hip-hop to musical theater, and there …
Continue reading “The plan for Pop Theory II and Pop Aural Skills II this semester”
Bob Weir’s organically quirky songwriting is one of the central building blocks of my musical understanding. Here’s a solo guitar rendition of my favorite of his tunes.
I took a long break from podcasting, not intentionally, just focusing on other things. I guess it makes sense to call the 30 episodes I did last year the first season, and the latest episode the beginning of the second season. Happy listening! Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new …
This year I did a lot of rewriting and refining things I had previously written: for my classes, for MusicRadar columns, and for this web site here. I started a podcast, too. Recording and editing it is a lot of work, but it is extremely satisfying creatively and I’m hoping it will find its audience. …
I grew up with a cassette copy of Bringing It All Back Home. It was the first Bob Dylan album that I remember hearing, and I knew that my Boomer parents and classic-rock-loving peers revered it. That said, people definitely respected Bob more than they enjoyed him. I did enjoy a lot of Bringing It …
My students and I tend to think of all pre-rock American popular songs as being “jazz”, because that’s the context in which we tend to encounter them. However, jazz was an artistic outgrowth of popular song, and it’s worth seeing how those tunes existed before jazz musicians began interpreting them. The jazz pianist, composer and …
Now that my semester is done, it’s time to start thinking about the next one. I like to spend the first day of class on a song that encompasses all the big themes and topics we’ll be covering. For this spring’s pop theory kids, I chose “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha Reeves and the …
The other night, the family and I went to a Handel’s Messiah singalong at Lincoln Center. This is an enjoyable holiday tradition where professional singers, conductors and musicians perform the Messiah, and the audience sings along for all the choral parts. You have to bring your own score, and this attracts a very specific kind …
Continue reading “Is there a way to teach counterpoint that is less of a drag?”
I just concluded my first semester teaching Advanced Popular Music Transcription in NYU’s new pop theory and aural skills sequence. The students transcribe recorded music into notation, and also analyze production techniques and timbre. Learning by ear is an essential skill for pop musicians. Even when you are using charts, accurate ones are rarely available. …
One of my back burner writing projects is a book chapter about generative AI in music education and why I think it’s a Bad Thing. In preparation, I reread Ted Chiang’s New Yorker essay about why AI isn’t going to make art, which I completely agree with. To put ourselves in the right frame of mind …
