This year I did a lot of rewriting and refining things I had previously written: for my classes, for MusicRadar columns, and for this web site here. I started a podcast, too. Recording and editing it is a lot of work, but it is extremely satisfying creatively and I’m hoping it will find its audience. Here are some of the episodes that I think came out the best:
I taught a new aural skills class at NYU, Advanced Popular Music Transcription. Here’s how it went. I also continued teaching other pop theory and aural skills classes. There was a lot of overlap between things we talked about in class and things I wrote about here and talked about on the podcast.
I grew up with a cassette copy of Bringing It All Back Home. It was the first Bob Dylan album that I remember hearing, and I knew that my Boomer parents and classic-rock-loving peers revered it. That said, people definitely respected Bob more than they enjoyed him. I did enjoy a lot of Bringing It All Back Home, though I had no idea what any of the songs were supposed to be about. I liked the melodies, though, and Bob’s singing didn’t put me off. I thought “Mr Tambourine Man” was intriguing, seemingly weighted with some deep countercultural significance that I wasn’t privy to.
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 educator Ethan Iverson has a great resource on the repertoire of core standards. Iverson recommends that you start your journey by looking at the original sheet music, and he includes a bunch of representative examples.
“All of Me” is from the third decade of Iverson’s collection. That meant that it was a “modern” tune at one time, compared to truly archaic standards like “My Melancholy Baby” or “Tea For Two.” The sheet music for “All of Me” is full of delightful surprises. First, there’s the helpful tuning chart for ukulele or “Banjulele Banjo”. Then there’s this verse: “You took my kisses and you took my love, you taught me how to care…” The part of the tune we all know, the “chorus”, finally starts at the bottom of the second page.
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 Vandellas (1964).
I was reminded of this timeless banger by Andrew Hickey’s 500 Songs podcast episode on “Heatwave”, which gives much better background on the song and the people behind it than I could. The episode mentions that this song was unusual for its era because it sits on one chord for long stretches, well before James Brown or Parliament started using single-chord grooves. The song is musically interesting for many other reasons too. Here’s an annotated listening guide. Continue reading “Dancing in the Street”
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 of person, which my wife is proud to be. The Hallelujah chorus is the famous part but “All We Like Sheep” is the real musical high point.
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. There are some AI tools that promise automated transcription, but so far, they are hilariously terrible. So students need to learn to rely on their ears.
One of my back burner writing projects is a book chapter about generative AI in music education and why I think it’s a Bad Thing. In preparation, I reread Ted Chiang’s New Yorker essay about why AI isn’t going to make art, which I completely agree with. To put ourselves in the right frame of mind for this discussion, let’s enjoy some beautiful patriotic AI output.
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 be the focus of your attention. But musicians know that the bass is the cornerstone of the groove, and its sound can make a big difference in how the music feels, even if you aren’t conscious of it. Sometimes you hear a bass part that sounds especially mysterious or vocalistic, and that’s because it was played on a fretless.
If you are not a stringed instrument player, you will need a little background. Non-fretted stringed instruments like violin, cello and upright bass are so difficult because if your fingers are not in exactly the right place, then your notes won’t be in tune. Also, plucked notes on these instruments don’t sustain very long. Frets are little metal ridges on the fingerboard that provide two benefits: easier in-tune playing and longer sustain. If you press the string down anywhere in the general area behind the fret, it will produce in-tune notes that ring out much longer. This gives you a lot more ergonomic freedom. The Fender Precision Bass, introduced in 1951, was named after the precise intonation that the frets provide.
Convenient though frets are, some bass guitarists discovered that the instrument nevertheless sounds better without them. Your soft, round finger produces more nuances of tone and envelope than the metal fret, and you can do nice smooth slides and glissandos. And because bass guitar is amplified, note sustain isn’t such an issue.
The Rolling Stones – “Paint It Black” (1966)
I have seen it claimed that this song was the first recording to feature a fretless bass guitar, and I have no idea whether that’s true. It hardly matters, the bass isn’t a foreground element anyway. Great song, though. Continue reading “Fretless bass”
