In high school, my friend Aubin, who was much cooler than me, told me I needed to go listen to some Parliament. I bought a cassette of The Clones of Dr Funkenstein, probably just because of its title. I liked it immediately, how could you not? But thirty-ish years later, I am still struggling to …
Category Archives: Key Musicians
Greensleeves
In fifth grade, my class studied the Middle Ages, which my fantasy-nerd self adored. I have a memory from that time of playing “Greensleeves” on the recorder. This memory is probably not accurate, though, because “Greensleeves” was much too hard for me to play. There are some tricky non-diatonic notes, and the two halves of …
Help on the Way -> Slipknot! -> Franklin’s Tower
In this post, I talk through my favorite Grateful Dead prog epic, the three-song suite of “Help on the Way,” “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower.” The Dead wrote many of these epic suites, which usually consist of a few short through-composed sections that act as anchor points within long open-ended modal jams. “Help>Slip>Frank” is the most …
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Jazzy harmony and crazy tuplets in Chopin’s Nocturne Op 9 No 1
Aside from Bach, Chopin is my favorite dead white European male composer. He isn’t as overtly “jazzy” as Debussy or Ravel, but his music shares many of the qualities of jazz that I like: miniature-scale forms densely packed with rhythmic and harmonic excitement, in the service of organic-sounding melodies. Chopin’s Nocture Op 9 No 1 …
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Fugue as sample flip
Here’s a question from the always insightful Debbie Chachra: @ethanhein I just realized you are the right person to ask this–are there great analyses that make the connection between Bach's Art of Fugue and sampling in hip-hop? — Deb Chachra is mostly not here (@debcha) June 12, 2020 @ethanhein [Query prompted by hearing DJ Dahi …
What does it mean to remix the classical canon
Here’s an exciting thing that happened recently. https://twitter.com/olabscott/status/1270192351215005697 I didn’t have an explicitly anti-racist motivation when I started making the remixes, but if they’re being received that way, I’m delighted. In this post, I’m going to do some thinking out loud about what it all means.
Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude
Let’s get the name out of the way first. Chopin didn’t title the piece “Raindrop,” nor did he give catchy nicknames to any of his other preludes. The names were given later by a fan named Hans von Bülow. Chopin’s actual title of this piece is “12 Préludes, Opus 28 Number 15 in D-Flat Major.” …
Remixing Bartók’s Mikrokosmos No 133 – Syncopation
Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos (not the BTS song) is a six-volume collection of short pedagogical piano pieces. The early volumes are beginner-level exercises, and the later ones are professional-level challenges. They’re all pretty strange. My favorite is number 86, “Two Major Pentachords,” a counterpoint exercise where the right hand plays in C major and the left …
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Two hundred Disquiet Junto submissions
Since January 2012, I have created over two hundred (!) pieces of music for the Disquiet Junto. That represents thirteen hours of recordings, which is more music than I have produced for every other creative undertaking in my life combined. In honor of this milestone, I’ve compiled my best submissions on Bandcamp. Disquiet Junto Projects …
Eleanor Rigby
In both music theory and music tech classes, I ask the students to pick songs and analyze their structure. This semester, one student chose “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles. She had a hard time with it–understandably! It’s not a complicated song, but it is an unconventional one. In this post, I’ll talk through the tune’s …