David Bruce made a delightful video about the role of repetition in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. While this piece is hair-raisingly dissonant, it’s also remarkably popular (by classical music standards, anyway.) David explains this fact by showing how repetition makes the previously inexplicable seem more meaningful and less threatening. A crunchy chord might be …
Tag Archives: harmony
My Favorite Things
My kids have been watching The Sound of Music a lot lately. I have known many of the songs since elementary school, but I somehow never got around to watching the movie until now. Apparently it was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s last musical, and boy did they leave it all on the stage. I was sitting …
You Are What I’m All About
I fell down a WhoSampled rabbit hole and landed on “You Are What I’m All About” by The New Birth, produced by the great Harvey Fuqua. The album cover might suggest some kind of goth techno, but the actual music is gospel-inflected R&B. This track has been sampled many times, mostly the clave part from …
Who is Heinrich Schenker and why should you care?
Everyone’s favorite music theorist is back in the news. If you are curious about the controversy surrounding him and don’t have a music theory background, I wrote a Twitter thread for you: Okay! Clearly, you people want to read about Schenker! Here, I will add some context to this NY Times article so you can …
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The Roots, “Don’t See Us”
I advocate for the study of hip-hop because it shows that harmony is not the only aspect of music worth studying. However, hip-hop is also underappreciated as a source of harmonic ideas in and of itself. The Roots’ “Don’t See Us” is a fascinating example of groove harmony. The live version has an amazing acapella …
The Roots – “The Lesson Part III (It’s Over Now)”
This is my favorite song by the Roots, and one of my favorite songs by anyone ever. I got curious about it the last time it came up in iTunes shuffle, and did some searching. I was surprised to find out that, so far as I can tell, no one has ever written anything about …
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Soon may the wellerman come
For some reason, a corner of the internet has become obsessed with sea shanties, making for an unusually wholesome set of memes, a participatory music culture in action. https://twitter.com/Beertheist/status/1348759849077714951 The tune in this delightful video is called “The Wellerman,” as sung by The Longest Johns. Between Wind and Water by The Longest Johns
Rhythm-a-Ning
After doing “Straight, No Chaser,” I’m now diving into another one of Monk’s greatest hits, “Rhythm-a-Ning,” at the request of Christian Gentry. Monk’s take on the ubiquitous “I Got Rhythm” chord progression has a lot in common with “Straight, No Chaser.” They both use the most generic materials possible to produce something that still sounds …
Let’s ditch “The Star-Spangled Banner” and make “Lean On Me” our national anthem instead
Over the summer, with the BLM protests raging, my fellow music educators were doing a lot of soul-searching about the more problematic items in the traditional repertoire. The conversation inevitably turned toward “The Star-Spangled Banner,” with some questions about its appropriateness as a national anthem. Francis Scott Key owned slaves, and the third verse of …
Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata
Beethoven is famous for writing huge epic structures. But he could write memorable tunes, too, and the second movement of the “Pathétique Sonata” contains a particularly good one. It’s best to known to my age cohort from Schroder’s performance: Here’s my Ableton Live visualization: