While learning and learning about the Prelude to Bach’s G minor Lute Suite, I also came into contact with the suite’s Sarabande. This piece is famous among music theorists, because while it’s only forty measures long, those forty measures are action-packed, harmonically speaking. Here’s a performance by Evangelina Mascardi. I appreciate that Mascardi doesn’t play …
Tag Archives: Bach
Bach’s Lute Suite in G minor
I don’t get a lot of music-related correspondence on LinkedIn, so I was surprised when a stranger wrote me a very nice message there about my deep dive into the Bach Chaconne. He mentioned that he was learning the prelude to the Lute Suite in G Minor, BWV 995, and that he liked Göran Söllscher’s …
Bach Anxiety
Someday I want to write something long about Bach. (Maybe I’ll call it Bach to the Future, ha ha.) I have been slowly building toward it by doing a lot of Bach analysis here on the blog. My pandemic project has been learning movements from the D minor, G minor and E major violin partitas …
Warp factor
In this post, I dig into a profound and under-appreciated expressive feature of Ableton Live: warp markers, the “handles” that enable you to grab hold of audio and stretch it precisely. Warp markers have practical applications for getting your grooves sounding the way you want, but they also open up unexpected windows into the nature …
The Well-Tempered (and not-so-well-tempered) Clavier
Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier as a showcase for a new tuning system that could play in all twelve major and all twelve minor keys. Up until that point, the various European tuning systems only worked for some keys, not all of them. If you were in or near the key of C, you were …
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Just intonation and key changes
Western people like two things in harmony: intervals derived from the natural overtone series, and the ability to play in multiple keys. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to do both of these things within the same tuning system. If you want to use just intonation intervals derived from harmonics, then they will not work in every …
The three diminished chords: blues, jazz and classical
Diminished seventh chords are strange creatures: a cliche for Dracula’s castle, but also a cornerstone of the blues. They are also difficult to understand. The good news is that in any given key, there are only three possible diminished seventh chords: the one whose root is the tonic of the key, the one whose root …
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Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor
A passacaglia is a Baroque dance that is a lot like the chaconne. One of Bach’s greatest hits is his Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. Like the Chaconne, the Passacaglia is a long series of variations on a short, simple dance form. Also like the Chaconne, it’s pretty awesome. Bach got the first half …
What if the Bach Chaconne was modal jazz?
As I struggle my way through the Bach Chaconne on guitar, I’m having to work around the fact that I am great at music theory but terrible at note reading. So before I could play the piece, I had to completely understand it and be able to feel it by ear. The only way I …
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Deep dive into the Bach Chaconne
You can now read this post in Spanish on Deviolines I have been spending much of my free time during the pandemic learning how to play the Bach Chaconne on guitar, drawing heavily on Rodolfo Betancourt’s transcription. Here’s Christopher Parkening doing my favorite interpretation by a guitarist (I do not sound remotely like this): This …