MusicRadar has so far mostly only asked me to write about music that I like, but once in a while I have to put my own preferences aside. I did it for Wonderwall, and this week I did it again for ABBA.
Category Archives: Music
Everybody Loves The Sunshine
For MusicRadar, I wrote an analysis of “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” to honor the passing of Roy Ayers. I have loved this tune for a long time, but I could never muster the energy to work out those chords until now.
What key is “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac actually in?
Here’s a simple-seeming song that is a subject of a lot of music-theoretic controversy. “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac only has two chords (plus a third chord that only appears once), so it seems like it would be easy to analyze its harmony. And yet, no one can agree what key it’s in. The two chords …
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Bring It On Down To My House
I came to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys through my dad. He had the first volume of The Tiffany Transcriptions on CD, a series of live recordings that the Texas Playboys made for radio syndication. My dad was an impeccably highbrow opera fan, and aside from the Elvis Christmas Album, Bob Wills was the …
Visualizing secondary dominants
In my MusicRadar column honoring Roberta Flack, I thought of a new analogy for secondary dominant chords, and I figured that I should work it into a new explainer with some new graphics. So, if you are having trouble understanding how these chords work, read on. Secondary dominant chords solve a specific problem: how to …
RIP Roberta Flack
I asked MusicRadar if I could do a Roberta Flack column in honor of her passing, and they agreed, so here’s an analysis of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” along with a broader appreciation of her. Before researching the column, I did not know her music beyond the greatest hits, how funky and political …
Terrapin Station
I took a break from analyzing the Grateful Dead while working on other things, but now it’s time to resume, with a tune that is deeply loved by Deadheads and not of conceivable interest to anyone else. Terrapin Station is a weirdly disjointed album, reflecting the conflicted motivations behind its creation. After their record label …
Fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn
My latest assignment from MusicRadar was to look at “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk. My studies of electronic music history have seriously neglected these guys, so it was nice to have a reason to dig into their music.
Ray Charles sings “You Are My Sunshine”
I am mildly obsessed with this recording, both as a work of art and as a music teaching resource. While I have mentioned this track several times on here, I haven’t really dug into the details. So it’s time to change that. There’s a lot to talk about: the genre, the chords, the melody, the …
Harmonic rhythm in two-chord shuttles
We devote a lot of attention in music theory pedagogy to chords. But it isn’t enough to look at what the chords are; you have to consider when they are too. The placement of chord changes in musical time is called harmonic rhythm. The easiest way to understand this idea is to look at songs …