A friend texted me to tell me that he was listening to a jazz show on public radio in Denver, and that they referenced an old blog post of mine about “Freedom Jazz Dance” by Eddie Harris. That was a pleasant surprise, and it made me want to go back to the post and freshen …
Category Archives: Composition
Artificial intelligence in music
We are kicking off my Musical Borrowing class at the New School with a discussion of artificial intelligence in music. I decided to start here because 1) we are covering concepts in reverse chronological order; 2) the students are going to want to talk about it anyway; and 3) this is the least interesting topic …
Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing
Every ten years it occurs to me to learn this tune, and then I come up against the fact that it’s in E-flat minor, I get discouraged, and I give up. Well, not this time! This time I decided to take the coward’s way out: I put the tune in Ableton and transposed it up …
Dies irae
This fall I’m teaching Musical Borrowing from Plainchant to Sampling at the New School. For the plainchant part of that, my example is the Dies irae sequence, which is to Western European classical music what the Funky Drummer break is to hip-hop. Dies irae (Latin for “the day of wrath”) is a medieval poem describing …
Bach’s Duet in E minor BWV 802
I did a bunch of posts on here a while back about how I like it when Bach gets chromatic and weird, and ever since then, people have been recommending me more of his weird chromatic music. Somebody on Twitter recommended that I check out the Duet No. 1 in E minor from the third volume …
Pusherman
I am always on the lookout for clear examples of blue thirds, pitches in between the standard equal-tempered major and minor thirds. I heard Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” recently, and the vocal melody grabbed my ear. (Be advised that the first verse uses the n-word.) You can hear the pitches in the vocal melody even more …
Lil’ Darlin’
I finally got around to watching Tár. Early in the movie, Lydia helps her wife Sharon through a panic attack by dancing with her to one of my favorite jazz recordings, Neal Hefti’s tune”Lil’ Darlin’” as recorded by Count Basie. Lydia says, “Let’s bring this down to sixty beats per minute.” Sharon corrects her: “Sixty-four.” …
Absolute Beginners
As my older kid’s Bowie obsession continues, he is digging deeper into the corners of the catalog and finding songs that I hadn’t even heard of. This week we’re learning “Absolute Beginners”, which Bowie wrote for the movie of the same name. The song is as richly weird as all Bowie songs are. The instrumentation …
Ashes to Ashes
My older kid continues to be deep into Bowie, and has been learning “Ashes to Ashes” on piano. This tune has not been a favorite of mine historically; as a young person, I found it hard to connect to its carsick decadence. However, the kid adores it, so I’m giving it more of a chance. …
Moonage Daydream
Over the weekend I went with the family to see the newly remastered 1973 David Bowie concert film, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The picture and sound quality are uneven at best, but Bowie is such a spellbinding performer that it doesn’t matter. One of the high …