Someday I want to write something long about Bach. (Maybe I’ll call it Bach to the Future, ha ha.) I have been slowly building toward it by doing a lot of Bach analysis here on the blog. My pandemic project has been learning movements from the D minor, G minor and E major violin partitas …
Category Archives: Composition
Led Zeppelin and the folkloric integrity of the blues
There is a fascinating moment in “When The Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin where Robert Plant plays a very flat ninth on the harmonica. I love this note, because there is so much music theory and history encoded within it. Listen at 0:41. Before we can get into the details of this note and what …
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Groove: an aesthetic of measured time
As I work toward my future book on the theory of groove-based music, I’m reading up on the existing literature. There is not a whole lot of it! Most of the scholarly work about groove is about the social side rather than the music side. That’s why I was excited to find Mark Abel’s book, …
Human Behaviour
Here’s a Björk song that is both maddeningly catchy and relentlessly weird. That’s true of so many of them! This was the first single on Björk’s first solo album (as an adult.) It was a bold choice! It’s not the weirdest song on the album, but it is far from the most conventional. The video …
I Wanna Be Your Lover
In addition to drumming with the Roots, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is a brilliant DJ, and he wrote a Twitter thread about his top ten most reliable dance floor fillers. Prince figures heavily in the thread, first because he once tipped Quest $100 for having the audacity to slip Miles Davis’ “Milestones” into a DJ set. …
Crosseyed And Painless
Since I’m stuck in my apartment with Covid for a while, looks like I have plenty of time to continue my Talking Heads series. Here’s one of their funkiest and most Afrobeat-sounding tracks. David Byrne always speak-sings to an extent, but this song has an actual rap verse (“Facts are simple and facts are straight…”) …
Making Flippy Floppy
Somebody suggested that I transcribe all the Talking Heads songs. I won’t do that, but I do seem to be in the process of analyzing all of my favorites. There are a bunch! Here’s one. I assume that the title is a sexual euphemism? If so, it’s a weird one. In addition to the four …
Burning Down The House
Here is the closest Talking Heads ever came to a legitimate pop hit, their only song to crack the Billboard Top Ten. It isn’t as conceptually or musically groundbreaking as “Once In A Lifetime“, but it contains depths of its own.
Once In A Lifetime
Here is what might possibly be my single favorite song in the world:
Lonely Woman
I have always had a hard time with Ornette Coleman, but I love “Lonely Woman”, because it manages to be both extremely weird and extremely catchy. Notice that at 2:09 during Ornette’s solo, someone goes “Woo!” Rightly so.