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 …
Category Archives: Music
Dancing in the Street
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 …
Is there a way to teach counterpoint that is less of a drag?
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 …
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Advanced Pop Transcription wrap-up
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. …
AI transcription on MusicRadar
This week I wrote my first software review for MusicRadar, assessing a web app that promises to create sheet music from audio recordings. TL;DR it doesn’t do a great job.
Portrait of Portrait of Tracy
While I was writing about fretless bass, I briefly mentioned Jaco Pastorius’ “Portrait of Tracy.” Now it’s time to dig into this tune properly.
Fretless bass
In Advanced Pop Transcription, we continue to talk about instrument timbres that are widespread but not easy for most listeners to identify. Fretless bass is a case in point. Few people even listen to the bass intentionally, and even fewer distinguish between acoustic, electric and synth bass. That’s understandable! The bass isn’t usually supposed to …
Electric and electronic instruments of 20th century pop
We’re spending the last chunk of Advanced Popular Music Transcription talking about the sonic and timbral aspects of pop production. This week we’re focusing on identifying various instrument timbres and talking about their stylistic associations. I won’t be talking (much) about the guitar, because my students already know what guitar sounds like. Instead, I’ll focus …
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Amen break listening guide
In Advanced Pop Transcription class, we are entering the part of the semester where we turn our focus away from notes and rhythms and toward sound. One of the most important sounds in the past five decades of dance and hip-hop is the Amen break. In this post, I give context for the break and …
Uncharted Territory, The Number Ones, 500 Songs, and a different 500 songs
This post discusses a book, a web column, a podcast, and an academic research project that all have the same goal: to get their arms around the past 50 to 100 years of Anglo-American popular music. There have been plenty of surveys of rock and pop history, but data analysis and online platforms are making …
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