Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music

As of this writing, the biggest song in America is “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. It might also be the most interesting pop song of the 21st century so far.

“Old Town Road” defies genre categorization. Like Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” it sits entangled in a vast musical rhizome. Lil Nas X calls it country-trap. It’s definitely not a rap song–Lil Nas X sings throughout, with a clear country twang. The beat sounds like hip-hop, but then, the beat of almost every slow or medium-tempo pop song sounds like hip-hop right now. The banjo suggests country, but as we’ll discuss below, that suggestion was unintended by the track’s producer. There’s a lot going on here! Before we take a look at its broader cultural significance, then, let’s take a close look at the musical details of “Old Town Road.”

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Remixing Monk vs covering Monk

I love Thelonious Monk more than just about any other musician in history. I enjoy learning and playing his tunes on the guitar, where they tend to sit well. I’m especially proud of my solo guitar arrangement of “Crepuscule with Nellie.” A jazz guitarist named Miles Okazaki, who is enormously better than me, also enjoys working out solo guitar arrangements of Monk. So much so, in fact, that he took it upon himself to record every single Monk tune for solo guitar. All seventy of them!

(Okazaki has also turned his obsessive-compulsive mind to a beautiful guitar book and an invaluable transcription and analysis of Charlie Christian’s solo on “Stompin’ at the Savoy.”)

As if the basic idea of this epic project wasn’t enough, Okazaki also imposed some constraints on himself: he played everything in its original key, and he didn’t use any overdubs or other digital trickery. There’s no question about how impressive this all is. However, “impressive” is not the same thing as “good.”  Are Okazaki’s recordings good?

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The Groove Pizzeria

For his NYU music technology masters thesis, Tyler Bisson created a web app called Groove Pizzeria, a polyrhythmic/polymetric extension of the Groove Pizza. Click the image to try it for yourself.

Note that the Groove Pizzeria is still a prototype, and it doesn’t yet have the full feature set that the Groove Pizza does. As of this writing, there are no presets, saving, or exporting of audio or MIDI. However, you can send MIDI via the IAC bus to the DAW of your choice (Mac OS Chrome only). You can also record the Groove Pizzeria’s output using Audio Hijack.

Like the Groove Pizza, the Groove Pizzeria is based on the idea of the rhythm necklace, a circular representation of musical rhythm. The Groove Pizza is a set of three concentric rhythm necklaces, each of which controls one drum sound, e.g. kick, snare and hi-hat. The Groove Pizzeria gives you two sets of concentric rhythm necklaces, each of which can have its own time duration and subdivisions. This means that you can use the Groove Pizzeria to make polyrhythm and polymeter.

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Why can’t you tune your guitar?

Short answer: because math. Longer answer: because prime numbers don’t divide into each other evenly.

To understand what follows, you need to know some facts about the physics of vibrating strings:

  • When you pluck a guitar string, it vibrates to and fro. You can tell how fast the string is vibrating by listening to the pitch it produces.
  • Shorter and higher-tension strings vibrate faster and make higher pitches. Longer and lower-tension strings vibrate slower and make lower pitches.
  • The scientific term for the rate of the string’s vibration is its frequency. You measure frequency in hertz (Hz), a unit that just means “vibrations per second.” The standard tuning pitch, 440 Hz, is the pitch you hear when an object (like a tuning fork or guitar string) vibrates to and fro 440 times per second.
  • Strings can vibrate in many different ways at once. In addition to the entire length of the string bending back and forth, the string can also vibrate in halves, in thirds, in quarters, and so on. These vibrations of string subsections are called harmonics (or overtones, or partials, they all mean the same thing.) Continue reading “Why can’t you tune your guitar?”

Rob Walker on The Art of Noticing

Rob Walker has a new book out. I’m in it! You should buy and read it.

Rob Walker - The Art of Noticing

Rob interviewed me about critical listening, that is, listening closely to music to try to mentally isolate the different instruments/sounds, and understand their relationships to each other, and to the whole. Critical listening can reveal whole new dimensions to a song, even if it’s one that you’ve heard a thousand times. The entire book is devoted to similar methods for seeing or thinking about familiar things in new ways. It’s a combination meditation guide and practical arts method resource. It’s lovingly written and beautifully designed, and I’m super proud to be a part of it.

Toni Blackman on the wisdom of the cypher

Toni Blackman is one of the three hip-hop educators I’m studying for my dissertation. She teaches freestyle rap as a way to build authentic confidence, and she gave a talk and a workshop on the subject at Ableton’s 2018 Loop Summit.

Toni Blackman at Ableton Loop 2018

Ableton recently posted the video of Toni’s talk. She concludes it with a freestyle, as she does all of her talks. This is the level of authentic confidence that I aspire to.

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The “Rockit” rhizome

I have come to believe that Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” is the most interesting musical recording of all time. It touches every form of twentieth century American music, from blues to jazz to rock to techno, and it’s one of the founding documents of global hip-hop. Not bad for a last-ditch effort to keep Herbie’s label from dropping him!

Here’s the album version:

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The longest sample chain

Music evolves the way life does: through change in the heritable characteristics of populations over successive generations. Most of the heritable characteristics of music are abstractions like rhythm patterns and chord progressions. However, you can also see heritability at work more obviously in the form of sampling. It’s especially illuminating when a song samples a song which in turn samples yet another song. The longest such chain that I know of: “Workin’ On It” by Dwele (2008) samples “Workinonit” by J Dilla (2006), which samples “King of the Beats” by Mantronix (1988), which samples “Pump That Bass” by Original Concept (1986), which samples “Close (To The Edit)” by Art of Noise (1984), which samples “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes (1983), which samples Stravinsky’s ”Firebird Suite: Infernal Dance of All the Subjects of Kastchei.” I made a DJ mix of all of these tracks for my dissertation mixtape, enjoy:

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Toni Blackman’s hip-hop meditation

Toni Blackman‘s hip-hop education practice resembles music therapy as much as it does traditional music teaching, so it makes perfect sense that she would release a hip-hop meditation album. I did a remix of my favorite parts for my dissertation mixtape:

Toni argues that freestyling builds authentic confidence that comes from the soul, and that it you access to vulnerability and creativity. I’m not a rapper, but I’ve played enough jazz and other improvised music to know what she’s talking about. Improvisation might be the most valuable personal and professional skill that I possess. Continue reading “Toni Blackman’s hip-hop meditation”

Samuel Halligan’s awesome Pop-Up Piano for Ableton Live

I recently met a gentleman named Samuel Halligan, who, among other things, makes music education utilities using Max For Live. One of them is called Pop-Up Piano. If you use Max or Ableton and you could use some help learning music theory, you should go and download it immediately. It’s a Max For Live Device that you can place on any MIDI track in Ableton, or just open as a Max standalone. The concept is simple: as you play notes on a MIDI controller, or as MIDI plays back from a clip, the Pop Up Piano shows you the note names, and notates them on the staff. It also shows them on a cool pitch wheel. You can also set a particular key and scale, and then the Pop Up Piano will show you whether the notes you’re playing fall within that scale.

Samuel made this thing to help pianists navigate the Ableton Push. But I could see this being useful for any musician. I’m going to use it in my intro-level music theory course that I’m teaching at the New School this fall. I’d be interested to hear from any theory pedagogues out there how you would structure lessons or assignments around this tool. Continue reading “Samuel Halligan’s awesome Pop-Up Piano for Ableton Live”