I hear it all the time from my friends in the rock world, and see it all the time in internet discussions: guitarists are struggling with their music theory, or they’ve given up on it completely. This is not their fault! Music theory is taught pretty badly for the most part, and it rarely addresses …
Tag Archives: blues
Do you need music theory to create music?
This question gets asked a lot. It’s really four questions: 1) What is music theory? 2) Does music theory really teach you what music is? 3) Does music theory teach you how to create music? And 4) how do you learn music theory? Let’s take these questions one at a time.
BB King gives us a guitar lesson
Did you know that the man has some guitar lessons online? I did not. They are invaluable. Let him show you how it’s done. https://youtu.be/AVe24YFGoiM
How to tell funk from disco
Funk and disco overlap broadly, but they are not the same thing. Funk lovers like me instinctively know what the difference is. But how do we know? One thing we could do is point to the beat. Disco uses that iconic four-to-the-floor pattern, and funk doesn’t, so case closed, right? Well, it’s not so simple. …
What’s missing from music theory class?
In a recent comment, a reader posed a good question: I’m classically trained (I do recognize a blues progression when i hear it though) so i would like to hear more of your insights into the forms, styles and methods of pop music — your observation that “most of the creativity in pop lies in …
Pop musicians in the academy
Together with Adam Bell, I’m planning some in-depth writing about the phenomenon of pop musicians (like me) teaching in formal, classically-oriented institutional settings. This post is a loosely organized collection of relevant thoughts. What even is “pop music?” As far as the music academy is concerned, all music except classical or folk is “popular.” People …
The saddest chord progression ever
See also the happiest chord progression ever. The short-lived Russian composer Vasily Kalinnikov is best known (to the extent he’s known at all) for this piece of music: If you listen to this piece at 6:16, there’s a particularly beautiful and tragic chord progression. It’s in the key of E-flat, but I transposed it into C …
Music theory blues
I’m reading a lot Schenkerian analyses of blues right now in service of my forthcoming article about blues tonality. Each paper I read is wronger than the last. On the one hand, they fill me with righteous rage, but on the other hand, that rage does at least help me focus my arguments. Here are …
Blues tonality
See a more beginner-friendly blues primer here. Read this treatise in Spanish, translated by Jesús Fernández. Abstract The blues is a foundational element of America’s vernacular and art music. It is commonly described as a combination of African rhythms and European harmonies. This description is inaccurate. Blues follows harmonic conventions that are quite different from …
Internet blues
Recently, WNYC’s great music show Soundcheck held a contest to see who could do the best version of the 100 year old song “Yellow Dog Blues” by WC Handy. Marc Weidenbaum had the members of the Disquiet Junto enter the contest en masse. I did my track, put it on SoundCloud, and promptly forgot all …