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The Makossa diaspora
The first time I heard Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” was courtesy of Motorcycle Guy, a prominent Brooklyn eccentric who drives around on a tricked-out motorcycle bedecked with lights and equipped with...
View ArticleWho are some musicians whose work got better with age?
Ella Fitzgerald lost some of her range as she got older, but her soul and phrasing got deeper and deeper. The series of duet albums she did with Joe Pass late in her life are exquisite. [iframe_loader...
View ArticleHighbrow musicians need to bring the funk
Here are three stories about the relationship of funk to the avant-garde. Meshell Ndegeocello at Tonic In my twenties, I forced myself to experience a lot of very highbrow avant-garde music: free jazz,...
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Visualizing song structures
There’s no single standard method for notating pop, rock and dance songs. Some musicians write everything out in standard western notation; some don’t write anything down at all; many fall somewhere in...
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Sonic analysis of “Tightrope” by Janelle Monáe
The most fun Music Technology class I’m taking this semester is Advanced Audio Production with Paul Geluso. A major component of the class is learning how to listen analytically, and to that end, we...
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The Schizophonia of David Byrne, Brian Eno and The Orb
For Paul Geluso’s Advanced Audio Production midterm, we were assigned to choose two tracks from his recommended listening list, and compare and contrast them sonically. I chose “Regiment” by David...
View ArticleTop tracks of 2012
Because I’m old and out of touch, most of these are pre-2012 songs that were new to me this year. Nas — “The World Is Yours” In 1994 I was not paying attention to hip-hop at all. My loss. Blackalicious...
View ArticleIs it boring to play repetitive music?
Quora user Andrew Stein asks: Musicians: How do you deal with playing songs that have very monotonous parts? I’m going to use James Brown’s Sex Machine as an example. Don’t get me wrong, I love the...
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The backbeat: a literature review
This is part of a research project I’m doing for my Psychology of Music class at NYU, thus the formal tone. Update: here’s the finished product. The backbeat is a ubiquitous, almost defining feature of...
View ArticleFriends don’t let friends clap on one and three
Here’s my final project for NYU’s Psychology of Music class, enjoy. Feel free to download this presentation or the full paper. Friends Don’t Let Friends Clap on One and Three: a Backbeat Clapping Study...
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Analyzing the musical structure of “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel
We’re asking participants in Play With Your Music to create musical structure graphs of their favorite songs. These are diagrams showing the different sections of the song and where its component...
View ArticlePlay With Your Rhythm
As we continue to flesh out the video content for Play With Your Music, I put together this series on rhythm. The first video takes you through the basics of counting in 4/4 time, along with some...
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Repetition defines music
Update: there’s a lively discussion of this post happening on Synthtopia’s Facebook page. Musical repetition has become a repeating theme of this blog. Seems appropriate, right? This post looks at a...
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Tabla Breakbeat Science is dropping an album
My new studio band has an album nearing completion. It’s called Music Information Retrieval, because our studio time was sponsored by NYU’s Music and Audio Research Lab — we contributed to a database...
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Composing improvisationally with Ableton Live
I just completed a batch of new music, which was improvised freely in the studio and then later shaped into structured tracks. I thought it would be helpful to document the process behind this music,...
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What is groove?
You hear musicians talk all the time about groove. You might wonder what they mean by that. A lot of musicians couldn’t explain exactly, beyond “the thing that makes music sound good.” The etymology of...
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Blues tonality
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 characterization is...
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How to tell funk from disco
Here’s a short excerpt from my blues tonality paper that I thought would stand alone well on its own. How do we decide that a song is rock, or folk, or country, or country-rock, or folk-rock? Nearly...
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Musical simples part two
Here’s an explanation for why I’m gathering these things. Wagner, “Ride of the Valkyries” I’m no great fan of Wagner, but there’s no denying that this is a killer hook. You don’t have much occasion to...
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Compound musical simples
As I’ve been gathering musical simples, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to categorize them. There are melodic simples, otherwise known as riffs, hooks, and licks. There are rhythmic...
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