Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos (not the BTS song) is a six-volume collection of short pedagogical piano pieces. The early volumes are beginner-level exercises, and the later ones are professional-level challenges. They’re all pretty strange. My favorite is number 86, “Two Major Pentachords,” a counterpoint exercise where the right hand plays in C major and the left …
Continue reading “Remixing Bartók’s Mikrokosmos No 133 – Syncopation”
In the face of ongoing protests against police brutality in the US, I’m seeing some music educators fretting about the relevance of their work. I believe that Eurocentric music education can validate and perpetuate white supremacy, and that our responsibility is to dismantle it. Here’s an excerpt of my dissertation in progress. I hope you …
I made a big spreadsheet with all the chords in it. It’s not all the possible chords, but it’s the ones you most commonly encounter in Western classical, jazz, rock and pop. I also made some videos explaining how chords work, with handy aQWERTYon visualization. Enjoy!
Partially to prepare for remote teaching my courses, and partially to keep myself from losing my mind, I’m putting a bunch of new videos on YouTube. I’m starting with material I’ve done many times in classes and conference presentations, and then will be branching out into newer stuff as I go. I imagine that these …
Continue reading “I’m making a bunch of music teaching videos”
This week I begin another iteration of my NYU class, a music technology crash course for future music teachers. Given the vastness of the subject matter and the constraints of a one-semester course, the challenge is always to figure out what to put in and what to leave out. I continue to take a project-based …
Continue reading “NYU Music Education Technology Practicum syllabus”
In the fall of 2019, I started teaching Fundamentals of Western Music at the New School’s Eugene Lang College. It combines the usual Music Theory I content with a broader, more ethnomusicological perspective that brings in various forms of pop, non-Western musics, and (most excitingly for me) the blues. It’s an existing course, but I …
Continue reading “Developing an intro-level music theory course”
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 …
Continue reading “Samuel Halligan’s awesome Pop-Up Piano for Ableton Live”
It looks as though I’ll be teaching Fundamentals of Western Music at The New School’s Eugene Lang College for the next two semesters. If ever there was a place that aligns with my personality and approach, that is it. They showed me a music theory quiz that uses an image from this very blog. That’s …
I’m currently working with Techrow Fund to develop an afterschool music technology program called The Producer Club. We’re doing the pilot program at New Design Middle School in Harlem with a group each of sixth graders, seventh graders, and eighth graders. Techrow had approached me to teach, but I suggested that, rather than hiring a middle-aged …
I have a longstanding musical relationship with Michael Jackson. There’s nothing remarkable about that; many people do. Like the rest of my age cohort, Michael entered my consciousness with Thriller in the early 1980s. Aside from a period in my teens and young adulthood, he has rarely been out of my ears since. The relationship …
