I don’t have much to add to what everyone else is saying, except that I really love her music, more than just about anything.
Category Archives: Music
How to make drums and synths from literally any sound
This is one of my favorite Andrew Huang videos. Beyond their jokey aspects, Andrew’s videos make a profound point about just how flexible recorded sound can be. This is useful information if you want to break out of the cliches, if you have bad source material to work with, or if you just enjoy pushing …
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My adventures among the alt-right
In my last semester of doctoral coursework at NYU, I took a class called Research On Urban And Minority Education, taught by Alex Freidus. For my final paper, I wrote about the racial politics of music education. I had written versions of this paper for other courses, but Alex supplied some key concepts and vocabulary I …
Scratching “This Is America”
One of my projects for this summer is to realize my decades-old ambition to learn how to scratch. I borrowed a Korg Kaoss DJ controller from a friend, downloaded Serato, and have been fumbling with it for a week now. The Kaoss DJ leaves much to be desired. The built-in Kaoss Pad is cool, but otherwise …
Learning Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” with Ableton Live
This video recently made the rounds on Facebook: I was thinking about “Clair de Lune” and how strange and complicated the rhythm is. I was humming it to myself and couldn’t figure out where the downbeats were. I have previously used Ableton Live to help me learn a classical piece aurally, so I figured I …
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The orchestra hit as a possible future for classical music
In my paper about whiteness in music education, I tried to make a point about sampling classical music that my professor was (rightly) confused about. So I’m going to use this post to unpack the idea some more. I was arguing that, while we should definitely decanonize the curriculum, that doesn’t mean we need to …
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This Is America
If you’re the kind of person who reads my blog, then by now you’ve probably seen the video for Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” If you haven’t seen it, watch now. Be warned that it’s upsetting. Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, is best known as a comedian, a writer, and an actor. He’s an intelligent …
Teaching whiteness in music class
Update: evidence that racism is an urgent problem. Further update: the online alt-right has some feelings about this post. Music education is in a ”crisis of irrelevancy” (Reimer, 2009, p. 398). Enrollment in school music has declined precipitously for the past few decades. Budget cuts alone can not explain this decline (Kratus, 2007). School music …
Participant ethnography of a hip-hop cypher
In this paper, I discuss a rap cypher held during a session of NYU’s CORE Music Program on March 3, 2018. A cypher is a group performance where rappers take turns performing improvised verses. Freestyling is to rap what jam sessions are to jazz: an improvisational form that demands both technical proficiency and a relaxed, …
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RIP Cecil Taylor
When I was nineteen, I was flipping channels on TV late at night, and I stumbled on this: I had no idea what I was seeing, but I was spellbound. I still can’t exactly verbalize what this music means to me, but I know it means something.