The twelve-bar blues is not the only blues form. There is also a whole world of one-chord blues grooves over drones, pedal tones and static riffs. Howlin’ Wolf has several classic songs that follow this model, including “Spoonful“, “Wang Dang Doodle“, and “Smokestack Lightning.” Guitarist Hubert Sumlin came up with the iconic riff. The track …
Tag Archives: Grateful Dead
Defining key centers with rhythm
Let’s say you have two chords, G7 and C. According to Western classical theory, these two chords establish that you are in the key of C. The G7 is tense and unresolved, and it makes you yearn for the calm stability of C. Music theory resources are full of language about how dominant seventh chords …
Spoonful
One of the most intense and arresting recordings I have ever heard is Howlin’ Wolf’s recording of “Spoonful” by Willie Dixon. This is on my list of classic songs with no chord changes, along with “Chain of Fools” by Aretha Franklin, “India” by John Coltrane, “I’m Bad Like Jesse James” by John Lee Hooker, “Papa Was …
Lightnin’ Hopkins – “My California”
I’m spending this month in California with my in-laws, and so naturally I went searching my iTunes for thematically appropriate songs. One of the results was this exquisite Lightnin’ Hopkins recording. Here’s my visualization using Ableton Live. I tuned the recording up a half step so that it’s in A rather than A-flat, which makes …
Brokedown Palace
My stepfather died a year and a half ago, but thanks to the pandemic, we’re only now able to have a memorial service for him. My sister, stepsiblings and I are going to sing a Grateful Dead classic: For me, “Brokedown Palace” represents the high point of the Dead’s acoustic folkie side. On American Beauty, …
Swing primer
“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah” – Duke Ellington Hear a seamless collage of several varieties of swing: Music Theory Songs by Ethan Hein Aside from the blues, swing is the United States’ most significant musical innovation. People typically associate its rubbery, …
John Oswald said he likes my Stevie Wonder/Laurie Anderson mashup
I got an unexpected email today from the legendary composer/remixer John Oswald, whose Plunderphonics project was a major inspiration for me. (For example, check out “Dab,” “Power,” and the terrifying “Pretender.”) He told me that in the course of researching the connection between the second movement of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 and the haunting …
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Remixing the Grateful Dead
There is no corpus of music I know better than the albums and concert recordings of the Grateful Dead. Some people memorize the works of Shakespeare; I, for better or for worse, spent my youth memorizing the works of Jerry. This puts me in a great position to sample and remix them. However, while I’ve …
My favorite Jerry Garcia riff
Before he wrecked his brain with heroin in the 1980s, Jerry Garcia was my favorite guitarist in the world. I was so saturated in his music during my key guitar-learning years that now everything I play tends to sound like him, up to and including Bach violin partitas. Here’s my single favorite four-bar passage of …
Help on the Way -> Slipknot! -> Franklin’s Tower
In this post, I talk through my favorite Grateful Dead prog epic, the three-song suite of “Help on the Way,” “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower.” The Dead wrote many of these epic suites, which usually consist of a few short through-composed sections that act as anchor points within long open-ended modal jams. “Help>Slip>Frank” is the most …
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