Since I have this opportunity, I'd like to show the single I'm releasing today. It's called Sambience 2, and it's an instrumental track with cavaquinho, percussion, keyboards and loops. I hope you like it!
Olá João, gostei muito da sua música. Eu sou Americano mas moro em Portugal e estou a aprender português. Eu toco violão e estudo samba e bossa nova com um brasileiro aqui em Lisboa. A música brasileira é o melhor!
Great single! Love the simple arrangement and the video is very well done too. I'm curious how you tracked the Güiro? Live in your home Logic based studio or in another setting? The sound is crisp and polished!
Well, that was super! I also had the pleasure of listening to Sambience 1, it was also a delight! Fortuitously, I’ve been on a Samba music kick for weeks now. This fits in perfectly with my musical mood 😁❤️👍
Ted, would love to know more about the principles of how you manage your time in a highly effective manner, especially relevant given that you have managed to achieve success in the disparate worlds of management consulting and jazz piano.
When do you wake? How much time do you allocate to practicing piano, writing articles, reading and research, etc. and on what schedule? Do you do your best work in the am or at night? How much is too much when it comes to music practice? Writing practice?
If you had to articulate these rules for your adult child a la Lord Chesterfield, how would you do so to ensure maximum compliance with minimal misunderstanding? Thanks in advance!
I am 63 years old. Have I earned the right to be a grumpy old man or should I wait another decade? I am embarrassed by the outlandish statements made by politicians on both sides of the aisle in recent years. I am even more embarrassed by the tens of millions of people who believe this nonsense and seem to be willing to die for silly rhetoric as if it were foundational truth. We seem to keep electing people who love to stir up conflict without any ability to discern the difference between what is real and inflammatory slogans. All of this increases tribalism and division. I feel that our nation has become unstable. I long for the peace of mind provided by the common belief that being the UNITED States was bigger than politics.
The ideals that inspired the American Experiment remain unimpeachable. Full implementation was always a long shot. But we are better when we try. Experienced Americans should speak up more, I think, and sanely. Civilized exercise of free speech and honest listening promote good faith and workable compromise. So yeah, speak your mind to fellow citizens, just as respectfully as you did. I think it helps.
Gordon, 63 doesn’t qualify as “grumpy old man” - have to wait at least another 10 years or more. But longing for a civil discourse in politics has no age limit.....
Lately, I worry that the problem with parliamentary democracy in general is its tendency to treat the floor of the legislature as a platform for social media. It's being used for continuous, non-stop campaigning rather than government policy. Transparency is great, but we need to find a way to separate the job interview that is the election from actually doing the job of politics.
Politicians from every angle are clowns, but I worry most of them are, in this climate, too afraid not lie or manipulate, even if they know what they're involved in is insanity.
I read a very interesting treatese that conjectured that the source of said performative tribalism is too much transparency, which engenders bullying and influence from constituents and special interests. Fascinating perspective still taking it in.
Hunh, interesting article. It's very particular to the American context, but it makes some excellent arguments, as well as some interesting ones.
On special interests and the influence of money on politics, I feel a more direct remedy would be campaign finance reform. I liked the system we used to have in Canada (before Harper) where parties received grants based on the number of votes they received in the last election, which, while imperfect, tied the campaign war chest to the one-person one-vote principal. Having this be the principal funding mechanism also limits the total amount of money wasted campaigning.
As I see it, the work of drafting laws, and the procedural mechanisms around legislation have no business being televised. No more than we should feel entitled to rifle through the research notes of academics, or their rough drafts, looking for something to argue with. I feel that which laws are proposed, and who votes for what are both necessary information for evaluating politicians, but also, entirely sufficient. I think the party apparatuses themselves are more than capable of promotion, criticism, commentary, and debate outside the legislature, which needs to be focused on passing laws. Legislation is a technical exercise.
I think the article is a little hasty in rejecting the concept of promissory democracy. If, I hired a personal assistant to help me run my household or business, but they refused to follow my directions and ran it as they pleased, or worse, for their own benefit, I wouldn't want to wait four years to break the contract. Politicians should be encouraged to make at least some campaign commitments they're legally obliged to follow through on, and that even for closed door work, an ombudsman should be appointed for the exclusive purpose of monitoring compliance with those legal obligations. It's been argued politicians need more flexibility than that--but in my opinion, let voters decide how much flexibility they wish to entrust them.
I think more granular and specific representation would also help citizens to trust legislators behind closed doors. I prefer a notion of proportional representation that conceptualizes the parties themselves as the constituency or ridings. Instead of your vote being lumped in with that grump neighbor, citizens could choose to sort themselves into the riding that best represents the community they believe shares their interests. For instance, besides proposing specific platforms, parties could limit registration to specific regions, professional qualifications, incomes, ages, or minorities in order to ensure that group has a voice--although, you'd still need more general parties for anyone. Beyond that, you just need to ensure the parties themselves are internally democratic and their members participate. I don't want for the chunk of land I happen to be renting on to be represented by some party apparatchik lawyer, I want for my actual community to be represented by people like me. I think people would focus less on how much they hated the other guy if they had any enthusiasm for the people representing them.
I hate this both sides of the aisle nonsense. There are serious people mostly on the Democratic side. When you think of somebody like Jamie raskin or senator Sheldon Whitehouse. These are serious scholars, professionals and not sociopaths like so many on the other side of the aisle. Only one side is untethered to facts and truth. I understand there's interpretation and that can be discussed. Let's get real about where the problem resides.
I agree again. Biden played a tough hand well and has led toward the middle.
To your other points I would add that Republicans have by far worsened the national debt and weakened our fiscal position more severely than Democrats.
We need reasonable debate about policies. Independents, moderate Democrats, and what rational Republicans remain must form a “coalition of the sane” to move the country forward. I think compromise needs to be rediscovered as our special genius.
Joe Biden has been a master at negotiation and getting something done in this crazy environment.
I get what you're saying but
We kind of have a conservative party. There's a party that wants to conserve the environment, conserve the middle class, conserve resources, conserve medical Care. Conserve social security and on and on. I think the last actual good conservative was Eisenhower. He would make a great Democrat now!
No doubt there were Ten-Tousand Tings (as the Irish say) that Trump could’ve been impeached for but the Democrats chose to impeach him over Russia, which was no doubt the IC’s idea to drum into Merikan hearts and minds to prepare for the coming ballooning NATO budgets. Also, the Democrats turned out to be largely wrong about dealing with the pandemic - yes, there were many unknowns in the beginning but they doubled down on them even after data and new facts had come to light. There aren’t many in the GOP one can take seriously but the Democrats are daily losing credibility and are cracking down on free speech. The winner of the 2024 election will be fascism.
Part of the dysfunction is due to the weakness of the legislative branch, caused by legislator's fear of election results. The House of Reps, the most accountable to the people, end up punting/hiding, resulting in the executive and judicial far more powerful than they should be -- which creates incredible pressure in the system since the people don't have a voice. The founding fathers worried about that, that legislators would find the Capitol engaging enough to forget their constituents and cling to their jobs. This tendency appeared on steroids once a/c came to D.C. and made it a comfortable place to live. Ultimately the problem, as John Adams warned, is there's not enough civic virtue to make things work -- legislator's allegiances don't align with their constituents but with beltway interests.
Citzens need civic virtue too. A lot could change pretty dramatically if everybody voted regularly. Extremes can be blunted by moderate voices and more citizens voting. It need not be a big burden to vote regularly if we wanted to be serious about increasing democratic forces in the Republic, I think.
They are not there to solve problems; they are there to present themselves and be seen. We live in an age of performance. Politics is no different. The values we were taught as children were made by a generation that is now gone. Media, from radio on down, is where we see value and where modern norms have been created.
I’m 67, and have embrace my inner curmudgeon. I shake my fist at foolish drivers. I wear slip-over sunglasses that dangle from a cord. It’s refreshing,
I am 72, so my answer would be you have nine years to go.
However, to your point. Samuel Adams would most likely applaud what is going on today. John Adams, however, would be beside himself. John Hancock would enquire as to when his next box of Alaska Seafood Salmon would arrive.
Maybe some day I'll have the opportunity to chat with you face to face, and if I did, I'd want to talk about the balance in the arts between what I'd call "art" (the aesthetic impulse) and "craft" (the application of skills to bring that impulse to life).
My thesis is that we as a culture tend to over-emphasize "art" and undervalue "craft". The acclaim or criticism that we give to artists often seems to run on these axes. You can see this historically with Bach, who was (as I maybe poorly understand it) appreciated for his craft, but not thought of as a great artist until his rehabilitation by Mendelssohn. Or consider the sometimes lukewarm critical response to Oscar Peterson (who, regardless of how you determine "art" certainly was a master of the craft).
This! Totally agree. For me, the craft IS the art in this sense: without craft it doesn’t matter how amazing your concept, because it isn’t going to be fully realized. And I don’t mean some kind of standardized perfection. I mean part of craft is understanding that you have to pay attention to all of it, the philosophy and the ‘will it stand up’. That’s real craft, zooming in and out simultaneously
Music Theory is failing musicians. Let me clarify—capital "T" Music Theory, the kind that is codified in academic circles, and trickles all the way down to preschool classrooms, is ill-equipped to express the variety, depth, and nuance of various musical practices from different cultures, let alone the ones that the "Western" canon has subsumed. In fact, the rigidity it enforces is in fact counter to its own traditions, namely many classical and baroque composers were in fact prolific improvisers. Music Theory should be radically simplified, reduced to its bare components, and then in fact, positioned backseat in favor of providing students with a broader understanding of sound-making in different cultures.
You don't need music theory to make music. At all. You can learn basic music theory and use it or you can learn more advanced music theory. But there are touchstone amazing musicians who couldn't verbalize anything music whatsoever. Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery are two notable examples of people who were more or less musically illiterate but made harmonically complex music.
I think this is why its worth making a distinction between the capitalized and non-capitalized versions. Django and Wes had "theories" with a small "t", whether they conformed or not with big "T" Theory is another thing entirely. I would argue we need to make room for a plurality of approaches, including folk styles of theory—we do as much in linguistics!
So, I'm in the very strange position of having a Music Theory only education, which was never my intention. Can't sing, never learned in instrument, and didn't listen to much music growing up. But then I found Wikipedia.
The first thing I learned was how octaves work, which blew my mind. It took me a long time to understand basic things like 12-TET octave parity, and much, much longer to understand what intervals like 3rds and 5ths were and why they sounded so distinct regardless of the notes involved. It helps to understand how Harmonics are stacked, mathematically. It also helps to avoid some of the more fruitless debates as to the Westernness of Music when you understand that some rough hierarchy of consonance is universal at a psycho-acoustic level, and we all experience some kind of rhythm. It reminds us that, yes, we all have different music, but no, none of us are aliens (yet). Chords don't "work" because we're cultural insiders, they work mathematically because of what the harmonics are doing--it's how a tradition chooses to use those musical properties that changes.
The things I resent about Music Theory are the same as what I resent about academic Math. As a visual artist, I understand quite a bit about geometry and so on intuitively, and as a coder, I manage a lot of math-like things, but the terse miserly code of symbols preferred by Mathematicians seem calculated to keep outsiders out. As an example, you may have heard of the Tau Manifesto, or Reverse Polish Notation as simplifying alternatives to the ways things are done in math. Likewise, reading standardized sheet music is absolutely horrible to the uninitiated. Yes, children have nice plastic brains, but I think more learners would get farther without it. Piano Roll notation with some highlighting for octaves and fifths works so much better--and things like transposing become as simple as moving all the notes up and down.
Someday I'd like to compose. For instruments, I've got my ability to do digital signal processing programming--pure sine wave manipulation. For everything else, I kind of depend on my coding ability and Music Theory to guide me, and my own taste to judge my success--right now I'm working with "a Generative Theory of Tonal Music" by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff. Maybe I'll totally fail, but I promise, it will be a heroic and honorable failure.
That's correct - no one HAS take music Theory to play music. But as an instructor said to me many years ago "no, you don't have to learn all this, but think of the music you will NEVER play if you don't either read or have any understanding of the principles".
Over the years I have come to understand much of the truth of what he said.
"Oh ... listen Ma, listen to ME -I'makin' Music - & I didn't have to do anything that anyone said. Ya, all I gotta do is plug in this software & Listen Mom. I'm great"
I never once said no one should take a music theory course. That's besides the point—my issue is with the outdated modalities the system enforces. Without even trying to draw a conclusion about the relative quality of computer-mediated music that you're alluding to, I'm not sure the system even benefits musicians as much as it purports to—I'm talking about failed promise here, not abolishing music theory itself. I will point yourself back to your presupposition here—that reading and understanding the principles go hand in hand. I have spent time in pit orchestras, GB bands, etc.—there are plenty of incredible readers who don't know a diminished from an augmented. In fact, that's a much more common position, we have created the framework which produces good readers who have little to no compositional sense—understanding the principles, as you put it.
This is almost exclusively an elite issue that doesn’t translate smoothly into the industry at large. I think homie just meant that understanding how music theory can be used as a tool to enhance your understanding of what you can do can be useful.
Yeah and they're not wrong, I just think computer music isn't a joke/for kids though, so can you blame me for being a little salty? It's another can of worms and might be an unfair way to cement my point, unless we're getting into a discussion about what is "real" music (which I think I'm trying to avoid today!)
I’ll go one step further - Classical Performance degrees and “Music Academia” is fundamentally failing performance-focused musicians by not training/providing any practical working musician skills and suppressing performer agency by not training improvisatory/compositional/arranging skills.
Andy Edwards on YT has been on a tear for the last little while weighing in on this topic. I find his thoughts and critiques as thought-provoking as Ted's.
Music theory is like calculus in that it is required to understand certain specific aspects of mathematics. It is not required for general math. The same is true with music. The vast majority of us need only a little of it (usually in an organized band setting) to function. But I'll add that the more you know about the construction of what we consider instrument performed music, and how it is put together, the more you are able to extend your ability to improvise and explore. It isn't necessary, but it doesn't hurt to understand intervals, triads, and all the rest of it.
Been thinking about this one for a while and I believe what you argue for is equivalent of saying that writing doesn’t need grammar.
It’s true that one might not be conscious of many of the processes while composing, but they are there nonetheless and it can be bad advice for the average musician:
Music theory is one of the best skills we have and the tradition survived this far because it works empirically.
There’s no way you can manage a performer career at a high level with poor understanding of music theory and sight reading. It’s just a lot more work every time you have to interact with new material.
Solfège helps develop musical imagination as well, which many people might not be great at, and at any rate even if they are they can improve it with theory.
There are many composers that are intuitive but as a rule theory helps make great work consistent.
Much harder if you don’t know why it works. Intuition is great for the masters but the craft needs to be trained.
I'm glad you bring up the grammar point—a lot of my thinking is influenced by linguistics, particularly the viewpoint that linguistic analysis ought to be descriptive, not prescriptive. That is to say, if a particular set of speakers are communicating in a certain way, and are well understood by each other, the way they compose language *is* the grammar.
Now extending that to your idea, there are certainly languages which can hold on to baggage that doesn't make much sense anymore. English maintains five different distinct sounds for this letter grouping: "ough" (though, thought, tough, through, thorough). French is a briar patch of discarded sounds, abbreviations, and spellings that don't reflect modern usage. My argument is not "do not learn music theory" but simply that the main benefit of our music theory system is that it doesn't have the weight of being used as a primary mode of everyday communication like our native languages are. It's an abstract set of symbols used to describe sonic components, and we have far more control over how it looks than something like French—which to many speakers, is simply their primary survival skill.
I won't even really address the point about "career" because I think what I'm talking about transcends the success/failure mode of modern capitalism. Many others, even in this very thread, have made trite, but true arguments about musicians who have excelled financially or otherwise without a traditional or even common set of "Western" Theory principles under their belt. To me, that is also besides the point.
But you strike on something great with Solfège. I think it's a much more accessible system, but it still relies on a lot of baggage from the old. Even as far back as the Romantic era, chromaticism and modality were common, though a more common and shorter view of history sees serialism and jazz as the start of these being fixtures in "Western" music. In reality, the way in which much of this music is played, heard, and understood defies major diatonicism. And that is truly at the root of much of our woes, an insistence on enharmonic values, along with its double flats and double sharps (and technically infinite N-flats and N-sharps, though most theorists will deny they are mathematicians when presented with that fact). Solfège is great—until, due to this mistake, you have to then memorize two or three additional vowel sounds for each syllable.
Overall, you're correct, intuition is an incredibly useful tool, and plenty of musicians in fact intuit enough about the musical practices of their desired musical community such that they have long, fulfilling—let's not say "careers", but—experiences in those worlds (this may in fact include making money, for better or worse, though I'm certain music's intrinsic value lies somewhere else). My belief is in a plurality of music theories, and the ones "worth studying" may be better selected by the studying musician rather than an institution. At the very least, if a "Theory" which rests on its "explanatory" power, has no solution for, say, the blues—a genre which provides the basis for a large swath of modern musicking in this particular country—it is not a very useful one, in my book.
Now this is the good stuff. Our music education institutions seem to fail spectacularly at properly training direct musical sound interfacing as the mode of communication and instead fixate exclusively on reading sheet music. It’s like learning a formal written language without practicing speaking it.
Jazz schools seem to get more to the core of this over classical degrees in my experience, but I have a background in classical education and later cross-trained into jazz and folk.
Naturally, music’s value lies beyond financialization. However, in terms of labor, it is highly undervalued, and many trained in institutions seem to not be educated in practical working career skills.
I tend to think of “a plurality of music theories” as just being different genres or styles that people then use music theory to describe. But that’s because I don’t see “theory” as hegemonic, nor am I a cultural essentialist.
Well yes, but it depends on what you mean. Rhythm is mathematical ratios of sound waves heard in time, but you can also speed up a particular rhythmic pulse to the point that it becomes a pitch itself if it is made of a sound wave.
Chords are arrangements of pitch in relation to one another, so also yes. Generally the reference point for chords is the bass note.
I think the theory bit is referring to ways of organizing and interpreting what we do with sounds, but I wouldn’t call it skeptical. Music theory is descriptive - we’re describing how we do musical things and codifying them. There are performers and composers who introduce theoretical practices for how to approach creating and organizing music, but it’s still the medium we use to describe sound.
I don't think it is well named at all, because it exists on an entirely different axis than that of facts, whereas "harder" sciences might compose theories from available facts. The majority of those who practice Music Theory at the academic level, are rather doing a subjective analysis based on cultural norms.
I wouldn’t say it’s on a different axis from facts, it’s just not necessarily a skeptical process of hypothesis inquiry either. It’s a means of describing and codifying sound practices.
I’m not a fan of the way Music Theory™️ is often understood or portrayed by many academic elites either. It’s often as you describe in that setting, which obfuscates the foundation of what music theory practically is.
Surely - I found it hard (way back when) & I tried & studied it in College. But it still taught me much. I don't regret trying at all. I wish I would have been able to carry on at the time, but I also had to work. Had to leave school & hit the road in band- which also taught me so much.
Way back when, I was in College as a Jazz major. We had a performance class (jamming to standards reading the heads & then ....
So one day in come some young classical musicians in training. They had a Hell of a time playing spontaneously. But if it was written down ? Very good players. It just served to illustrate what so many here are saying. It taught me quite a bit as I was an aspiring sight reader who was not good at it. And it showed me there was much to know on Both sides of the street.
For example: By all accounts I have seen - Tommy Tedesco was a Phenomenal reader, but look how ferociously he could play & swing while reading ! He seemed to have mastered the best of both worlds.
Absolutely agreed. I think what frustrates people with my argument is that they seem to think if I'm critical of some component of Theory, then I'd like to throw the whole thing out. I'm all for improving the mental model that Theory gives students. I'm partially inspired by the language of jazz (particularly Barry Harris' "diminished families") and I believe there are ways to cut right to the heart of how such music works, without polluting it with presuppositions about key, cadence, movement that come along with particular classical traditions, and are often packaged alongside and presented as gospel.
The common style of notation works well for a thin slice of music, and only for a certain type of learner/performer. My own learning style makes it difficult to transpose, among other things (poor working memory), and that's not even touching the host of other ways that people's perspectives might diverge...
I think the issue that gets lost in translation is that sheet music was developed for specific purposes - to broadly propagate access to musical ideas for recreation, and eventually for translating more specific musical ideas by performers specialized in reading music.
The rub is that this is not how music was historically taught, applied, or learned for a long time - and even then it’s primarily been codified in academic training and public education programs more than anywhere else. I just went to a jazz workshop last week, and being able to read music was great for visualizing and practicing theory concepts, but the only things I really read for my combo were chord changes and the heads to my tunes. Even then I was training my ear for learning tunes more than anything else, my sheet music was just a reference point.
I think the problem is that music theory is often misconceptualized. It should be used as a tool to describe the ideas we’re trying to express, and not necessarily as an institution that houses specific theoretical concepts based on genre and style as if they are exclusive to them. There is no Classical Theory or Jazz Theory, it’s all just music theory. And we use theory to describe what we’re doing musically in classical or jazz or whatever, and to describe what the historical traditions of a given genre are to consider and practice to train in that style.
"sheet music was developed [...] to broadly propagate access to musical ideas for recreation"
Sheet music was developed by and for the church, in order to propagate fealty to religion. It doesn't mean that there weren't some good ideas in there! The Western notation system, in its most recognizable form, at least, dates back to Guido of Arrezzo b. 992, not the era you're talking about in which parlor pianos were a common fixture of the average household.
I appreciate what you're getting at though, but I think "Classical" and "Jazz" are merely two subunits of one particular music theory. Classical music from the Arab world, from the South Asian subcontinent, from East Asia—all look vastly different, including a variety of tuning systems, compositional styles, and even things as basic as meter. So I push back on the idea that our understanding of music theory in the West can encompass all of those distinct ideas. It's particularly rich, considering that 12-TET, the foundational tuning system of the West, was first calculated and documented in China.
So, to your point, I think of it more like a world of many, sometimes overlapping, sometimes entirely self encompassed "music theories", amongst which Western capital-T Theory sits.
I should have worded it “re-creation”, to re-create the desired musical idea. I wasn’t imposing any assumptions on how it was used from there. I didn’t mean recreation as in leisurely performance lol. I know music printing began with a strong foundation in the church, you’re right about that, sorry for the confusion mate!
I also became familiarized with the differences in codified music theories from places like the Middle East, India, and China in school. I get what you mean that classical and jazz come from a subset of “Eurowestern theory”. What I mean to express is that, broadly speaking, music theory is what we practice when we want to describe whatever methodology we have devised to perform a particular kind of music. “Western Music Theory” doesn’t and can’t encompass other cultural theories because that isn’t and shouldn’t be the intention, but when I refer to music theory broadly, I’m not making assumptions of what the cultural background or methodological basis is. I happen to be adept with the language of common practice 12-TET theory, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to envision having a common foundational language and understanding when discussing similarities and differences in pitch, rhythm, and interval arrangements between various musical styles and tonal organizations.
I think we’re getting at the same thing, just in different ways, because I agree with what you’re saying!
I think you're conflating descriptive and prescriptive. Music theory is, has always been, and always should be, descriptive. It is an attempt at explaining what happened musically already, finding logical patterns and concluding: if this is the sound/effect you want, you can achieve it by doing A, B, then C.
What you are talking about is prescriptive. Music MUST be made in a certain way, and you assume that those who teach theory only say there is only a few legitimate ways of making music. That's not at all the case. The top music theory experts in the world would never make such a claim. It is in fact the people who understand music theory the least who often make such claims and confuse description with prescription.
I agree that there is an over-emphasis on Western European systems in theory in academia, but there are also many people pushing back on this. There is an important reason though, which is this sort of self-sustaining cycle of the expectation that one be expert in these practices in order to compose, arrange, and teach in the dominant styles found in the West. That said, there are certainly many other systems which are just as complex and rich, and students of music should certainly learn about those.
However, it begs the questions of how useful Konakol and Raga (for example) systems knowledge would be for the average college music student in their careers. Certainly, counterpoint isn't much more useful in that respect, so an appropriate balance should be found.
You must not have met a large majority of music teachers even at the college level, many of whom do in fact, implicitly or otherwise, help propagate the belief that there are set ways to make music. Regardless, I think you betray your own true beliefs by your use of language here: "logical patterns"—unless you mean a piece of music's *internal* logic, but even these are rules determined by cultural context—I find the idea of "logical patterns" underlying music itself specious at best, a piece of music is not a formal proof. Many music theorists want to offer an appeal to natural sciences, e.g. "Western music is based on 'perfect' ratios" (which are no longer in common practice with 12-TET, go figure).
I'll let you decide for yourself whether or not I have any expertise, it doesn't matter to me. But don't you think its telling, that even by your own admission, the affect of imparting music theory on beginners results in confusion? Were it truly a logical discipline, it would be much like teaching mathematics, which starts and progresses naturally from an early age. A little bit of math education means you can do a little bit of math, a little bit of music theory education means you're worse off than knowing none.
> The top music theory experts in the world would never make such a claim.
I don't know if you're aware, but the academy is in exactly such a crisis at the moment over Schenker, who many have credibly argued (among them P. Ewell), that despite his achievements, he should be understood to have created a system which outlines a hierarchy of good and bad music based on exacting, but arbitrary, specifications. His beliefs in race "science" likely informed his favoring of music from a particular part of the world and a particular type of musical complexity over all else. No music theorist is above their own biases. Yet Schenkerian analysis remains one of the most prominent and ubiquitous tools in the academy.
In fact, it would be "begging the question" to make an argument, like Schenker, that European chamber music is more valuable than a Raga form because European chamber music contains more auxiliary cadences— ("begging the question" does not mean "it makes one wonder", FYI.)
I think there is a certain hollowness to the argument that is often put forward about "logic" underlying all musicking—it is brushed upon, but never extrapolated. It is meant to be accepted, not observed closely. Much how we shant interrogate how the "dominant styles found in the West" ended up dominant, or how certain systems might reproduce their values and shut out those who don't conform.
Music theory is excellent. However it is often not taught well. You don’t need music theory to become the Beatles. But music theory is the way to instantly hear what they are playing and to be able to play along.
I have met them, as I am one myself, and I don't know of a single music theory professor who would claim that there is one kind of internal logic that governs musical organization.
Ideas about "universal grammar" in music may have been prominent in the past, but they have been discredited time and again in the last 30 years, particularly by ethnomusicologists who have been publishing study after study showing that musical understanding is learned and cultural, and doesn't have anything to do with science or universal human nature, not to mention the recent trends of music and cognitive science, music and psychology, and music and anthropology/social science. These advancements in understanding have been undercut by amateurish drivel like "The Mozart Effect", perhaps because people who never studied music seriously tend to drift towards simplistic and convenient conclusions that align with their previously held beliefs, rather than engaging seriously with complex nuances that are contrary to those beliefs and which require deeper consideration.
Because music is so diverse and is cultural, not universal, any "music theory" will by default be descriptive, not prescriptive. Schenkerian analysis works for Western European Classical Music, but it doesn't work at all for Javanese Gamelan, modal jazz, Yoruba folk music, or Aleatoric Postmodern American music. There's not a single music theory professor in the world who would claim otherwise. Mainly it's the fault of the students and amateurs who think that learning music in music school is about learning "rules" and "what you should do" (prescriptive). That's a particularly immature, stubborn and close-minded way of viewing such a deep and diverse branch of study. Rather, those who have spent the most amount of time studying music, the music teachers, are actually the ones most aware of how complex and nuanced it all is.
The topic of music in academia having bias and failing to equip music students with the proper knowledge and tools to succeed in the real world of music making, however, is another topic. Again, all of the music teachers I know are well aware of this problem and many are working to address it. I don't know of anyone in academia these days who disputes that or who claims that contemporary music education is perfect as-is.
The main issue is not that music teachers and music schools are not aware of these problems. The issue is rather, if you get rid of something, you have to replace it with something else. If you make a claim that something isn't working and needs to be changed, then you need to propose a viable alternative.
So far I have only seen criticisms, but no realistic solutions. If you want to change music education, you have to come up with a plan of study that holds the students accountable, and which has specific, rigorous and quantifiable standards that can be objectively assessed. Otherwise, it becomes either a free-for-all where one can justify learning nothing for 4 years because "yeah man, music is anything, man" OR it becomes so bloated and disparate because we have to cram absolutely every kind of music and methodology about music into the curriculum that it becomes completely untenable for anyone to learn it all in 4 years. I hope that makes sense.
Frankly, it's funny that everything in your middle four paragraphs I have essentially argued verbatim in other contexts. We simply disagree about how widespread the thinking is, and how much cultural hegemony is acceptable. They do say someone cannot see something when their paycheck relies on them not understanding it. So then, prof, what reformist approaches to Western Music are you already familiar with and teaching your students, or is such a subject taboo? It's strange, I could have sworn you argued moments earlier that music theory is bounded by "logical" analysis, and now deny any professor would say such a thing here.
I will also point out, you've toed the line of directly insulting me, by doing weird subterfuge "people who do X" are amateurish, stubborn, close-minded, etc. Do you treat your students with the same level of respect? It doesn't seem like a particularly humanist approach. I might be willing to share more with you if I truly believed you could approach the subject without bias and animus.
I will say, this notion that everything has to be "specific, rigorous and quantifiable" is one of the least artistic sentiments I've heard in my life. My particular thesis lies in the topic of disability, and my own developmental disorder has led me to many alternative learning pathways. I'm grateful for that fact, since the academy has largely rejected me based on such difficulties, and I have grown and succeeded in my own goals in spite of that. That said, I'm not satisfied with leaving things in their current state (simple "awareness", as you put it) and one of my key focuses is how to make meaningful inclusions for disabled musicians (not through "special" education, but by including them in group musicking). To me, this requires going back to the drawing board re: the fundamental technological basis for music theory, one that fails large swaths of disabled and/or neurodivergent students. Sheet music in of itself fails people with visual disabilities and visual processing disorders, and those many students are more or less culled from meaningful music-making with their peers; then you, a music professor, simply concludes "that's the way it is". I suppose that is one more point of disagreement. You, by my understanding, believe in a "master-apprentice" model of education, that is essentially designed to maximize the amount of available "musical labor" for capital to extract value from. Your job is not to allow students to explore new ideas, as evidenced by the stoner-cum-would-be-philosopher strawman you have imagined, replete with "yeah man"s. Is it that terribly difficult to imagine designing your curriculum around your student's wants and desires (or god forbid, with your students)? I have to imagine a professor with your talents could handle such a premise. I doubt the "bloated and disparate" aspect, because there are programs that operate in such a manner today, although they are rarely considered "theory" programs, per se.
Frankly, if someone suggested to me that "anything is music" I might ask them, "how?" and then try to explore that conversation to its ends (or beginnings). I mean, learners deserve at least that—it should push us to our own limits of understanding to teach. Would that that result in learning nothing, I don't know, maybe it's just uncomfortable to do, when at the end of the day you judge your success by "How much monetary value have my graduated students produced?" as opposed to "How much meaning have we created?" "How many communities have we bridged?" "How have I enabled my students to celebrate each other?". If you are aware of "the problems" as you say, what are you doing today to address them?
I haven't taught the music theory classes for years, but when I have I begin with the caveat that what we are learning in the class is not prescriptive but rather descriptive, and a very limited descriptive aspect of how people think about music. First there's music, then comes theory, not the other way around (except in the atonal style of Schoenberg).
I now do more research and teach about different styles of music. I talk about cultural relativism a lot and I talk a lot in my classes about how different people make and conceive of music in different ways. You may be interested in a couple books about such topics. They are now quite old and classics in the literature: Philip Tagg, Everyday Tonality, and John Blacking, How Musical Is Man?
You frustrations (and arguments) all seem to be based on the idea that music education in college should foster artistic expression in a humanist approach. That is not the case currently. I don't think anyone working in academia would make that argument. Rather, music education as it stands today is about training the next generation of music educators and researchers, not creators, particularly at the graduate level.
Those educators and researchers do have some means of changing things for the next generation, but they are not in control of the curriculum, nor are they in control of the standards. So, all they can do in their limited capacity is say, in effect: I am teaching this, because that's what the curriculum and standards dictate. I don't believe this is the only way of making music. There are some elective classes that provide alternative modes, but the core requirements are heavily Western European Classical biassed. I'm just helping you to fulfill those requirements of the degree you are seeking.
If you don't want a degree in music, there are many alternatives. You don't have to go to college to learn music. I would argue that most people don't. College is just one way, and I think the biggest failure isn't teaching or fostering creativity and artistic expression, but failing to prepare students to succeed in the music business as working professionals. Can creativity be taught? I think it's an interesting question. Fostered perhaps. Does it need to be taught? My point of view is a 4 year degree should simply give the students a big bag of tools, and what they do with those is up to them.
If I had to proffer one up, I would argue for a dialectical materialist approach to understanding musical functionality and applied practices. An understanding of fundamental and descriptive terms that can be applied to any given musical or cultural context will be both considerate of variate methodological understandings of what music is, and capable of mediating between the material bases of sound production and the cultural practices that generate genre and style.
Though I can't say I think the term is good, I think "ethnomusicology" in some circles is meant to be or understood to attempt this, though I gather its not a field without faults or essentialism. Systematic musicology is another discipline that is more common in Europe from my understanding and might have some basis in this approach. Ultimately, I'd like to see a performance-oriented musicology take the place of theory dept.s at the college level, and let the 1800s Chamber Music be its own minor.
Huh, I’m not familiar with systematic musicology! I wouldn’t say ethnomusicology is what I’m describing, it sounds more to me like you’re trying to revamp ethnomusicology lol. Though, you could apply what I’m suggesting to an ethnomusicological context, it’s not my foundational focus as much as it’s considerate of those factors. I get wanting things to be performance-oriented, I think that would be a great change. It would be more practical to base theory and analysis on contemporary industry trends and applications for people interested in making a career of it imo, but I get why it’s been institutionally situated the way it has been for so long in a eurowestern classical background. Historical context and tradition can be really helpful, like I’ve found in Jazz (and ostensibly for different classical traditions), but the presentation is definitely backwards in classical scenes where it places their perspective as the “center of the world” for theory and analysis instead of how it’s situated in the broader context of music making. Classical styles would make way more sense as minor focuses imo.
You've got the goal ("Music Theory should be radically simplified, reduced to its bare components") but I don't see any details here. What are those "core components"? You're calling for other people to do the work?
For my part, I've developed a fixed, chromatic, solfege alternative called manepu. It operates on similar principles as those systems, except a note name always corresponds to a scientific pitch, and therefore is meant to be used as a verbal reference across various instruments in different keys. It eliminates sharps and flats, and focuses on a repetitive cycle of vowels that outline the three diminished tetrads. The caveat with this system is that it is in fact aligned with (and indebted to) my own musical background and culture—in other words, is very much is meant to accommodate 12-TET, Western musical thinking, but may have more utility in improvisatory-based musical systems, for musicians with visual processing, developmental, or vision-based disabilities. That said, I based it on an initial proposal which anyone could use to develop their own system. I think overreliance on written notation for an aural medium is just one problem, but I also believe we can't and shouldn't fully replace our current notation and nomenclature. Regardless, there are various attempts being made at alternative notation systems, which is not my area of expertise, and my own bias against it makes me unlikely to be its savior. But to answer your question, yes, I believe it will require more than just my own input to make any significant or radical changes.
I’m mostly joking. I don’t prefer Fixed Do theory because I like to simplify my pitch relationships based around where my tonic is. I feel more flexible when I know what my intervallic relationships are at any given time, even if harmonies move to a different tonic or become a bit more “out there” and “less functional”, because I can still map to the interval relationships around my horn.
Are you familiar with Barry Harris’s theories? He starts with the chromatic 12-TET scale as his basis and then proceeds to break things down into the two octatonic scales and three diminished chords from there before proceeding to anything diatonic. Cool stuff.
I'm great at starting projects, but not finishing them. Occasionally I find a way to blather on about myself like this, but looking to try and put a pin in it and put out an article or a book or something by the end of next year (realistically).
OK, if you don't mind a word of advice: get some collaborators, NOW. Maybe you can do it alone, but it sounds like you'll have a hard time pulling that off.
What are the societal implications of the vinyl resurgence, particularly among those without a record player? Will there be similar movements that reject AI? Will farm-to-table art go as big as Whole Foods? Will the Honest Broker become the Tiny Desk of music recommendations?
Feel like it will eventually reduce classic albums to a kind of coffee-table kitsch. Like, people buying Dark Side of the Moon purely because it matches their sofa.
Classic albums will always be popular as long as record labels keep recycling them. The big companies have stopped caring about new music. See my other post on this thread.
Here are two musical coincidences that you might find interesting, Ted. The first involves classical composer Edvard Grieg, who wrote one of his most famous pieces, the Piano Concerto in A minor, in 1868. On March 1, 1934, one great American composer, 18-year-old Billy Strayhorn, performed the piece with the Westinghouse High School (Pittsburgh) Senior Orchestra. Music director Carl McVicker said of the performance "I never heard a student play that way before or after." As you know, Billy actually had dreams of becoming a concert pianist, but his race precluded such ambitions, and so he gravitated to Jazz, and his eventual partnership with Duke Ellington became one of the most extraordinary in the history of American music. A little over two months later, on May 14, 1934, another great American composer, 16-year-old Leonard Bernstein, performed the first movement of the Concerto in A minor at Roxbury High School, with the Boston Public School Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of T. Francis Burk.
The other coincidence involves a landmark Jazz recording, the October 11, 1939 version by Coleman Hawkins of "Body And Soul." This was significant because it features Hawkins improvising during the entire take, not playing the melody at any point. It was considered a bridge between the popular, melody-based Jazz music of the Swing Era, and the more sophisticated, improvisation-based Jazz music of the Bebop Era that was to follow. Not many realize, however, that a very similar recording was made only eight days later, on October 19, 1939, by the trombonist Jack Jenny. His improvisation was over a similar standard, "Stardust," and just like Hawkins, at no point does he play the melody.
I have yet to read any assertion that these two recordings were related, but Jenny's contribution seems to have been mostly forgotten, as he unfortunately died from complications following an appendectomy in 1945. Nevertheless, I've heard parts of either solo quoted by musicians since, as a tribute, or even incorporated in some way into big band arrangements.
That's it! Whether anything I've just said is significant in any way is questionable, but I just thought the coincidences were interesting, at the very least. Thank you!
Here's another fun coincidence I just discovered. When Jimi Hendrix moved to London, he lived directly next door to G.F. Handel's old home. It's now a museum.
Jack Jenny was in the Artie Shaw band which had a huge hit recording of “Stardust”. Jenny played a gorgeous solo on the Shaw recording, which he quotes on his own band’s recording you post above. Great trombone sound and lovely melodic ideas. Thanks for sharing this.
Assuming the list is a ranking of BOC's albums, I would put their debut in first place. In his "The Rough Guide to Rock" Peter Buckley rightly calls the album,
"Heavy metal for people who hate heavy metal; sleek, primal rock and roll music, filtered through unsettling, if thrilling, images of Altamont, drug-dealing and murder."
At the end of the 1950s, the LP itself was only about a decade in, and "stereo" was more of a buzzword than an actual day-to-day reality for most people.
Dad was an electronics tech, and he built our first stereo by hand. It may have been from a hobbyist kit, but it was good quality. He fitted the turntable, the pre-amp, the amplifier, the tweeter speakers, and two downward-facing woofers all into one nice walnut cabinet.
When the stereo was ready for testing, he went out and bought five LPs of completely different characteristics: one was a test demonstration record, designed to push a stereo to its limits, with a narrative for each particular track, alerting us to we were supposed to listen for; the second one -- I don't remember the name -- was an enjoyable mix of musical styles also designed to showcase your stereo's capabilities, but without the accompanying narrative; the third was "Italia Mia," the lush orchestrations of Mantovani (what we would probably call "elevator" music today); the fourth was " 'sWonderful" by the Ray Conniff Orchestra, and -- last, but to me certainly not least -- 1959's "Stereo Concert" by the Kingston Trio !!!
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THAT RECORD !!!
In 1960 I was a high school freshman. Every day, I would come home from school, put "Stereo Concert" on the turntable, lie down on the floor with my head between the woofers, and just luxuriate. I listened to it so many times that I could pantomime the chatter between songs, the laughs, and even the throat-clearings before starting the next song. Many of the jokes would not play well in today's society, drunken driving jokes, ethnic jokes, but the trio's energy and humor shines through every single second of this album.
There were only ten tracks instead of the obligatory twelve, and most of the songs had been previously recorded on the trio's first two LPs, neither of which I had yet heard at that time. It had obviously been recorded at a large venue, with large-venue acoustics, and everything about it was crystal clear. What amazed me most was the realism of the audience applause.
It was not much later that I asked Dad to buy me a banjo, so that I could become a clone of Dave Guard. Dad was an untrained but proficient play-by-ear musician. He had failed to interest me in electronics, I was lackadaisical at sports, and this was the first thing I had really shown any great interest in. He did buy me a pretty good banjo, and he bought himself a cheap guitar as well, to show me how to get started playing music on my own.
This was a major turning point in my life. By the time I finished high school, some friends and I had formed a Kingston Trio copy band -- striped short-sleeved shirts and all -- and we performed at our senior class talent show. We called ourselves "The Lemonliters" -- LOL.
Unfortunately, Dad died young, before my graduation. Now, as Fathers' Day approaches, I can't help but wish that I'd been able to show him the results that his faith in me produced.
Jim, my dad loved the Kingston Trio and that's how I was raised. My mom LOVED the Kingston Trio when she wasn't listening to Russian composers. There is certainly the Dave Guard/John Stewart argument to be had. I would recuse myself because I became close to John during his solo career. That being said, Dave Guard was always the heart and soul of the group. Bob Shane, a very nice man, was Guard's Mike Love. Which really sounds like an insult to Bob Shane. I'll have one Scotch and Soda, please.
I will never forget the day that a high school classmate came over to my house with two records. The Kingston Trio at the Hungry Eye and the second Weavers at Carnegie Hall. Literally, it changed my life. I think Tom Paxton said that a similar experience “changed my DNA.” The power of music is awesome!
Your dad's toil at the the stereo rig mirrors mine, right down to the randomized selection of test records (minus the KT). Great big reel to reel machines were part of the hardware array. I remember also his custom-formed rubber wheels for driving the turntable – he had various ways of calibrating the turn rate (turntable speed). Great big reel to reel machines were part of the hardware array as well.
All this was part of his jump from mono to stereo, with the usual stereo demo records that were pretty close to awful.
These are my three most anarchic, (playfully) abrasive opinions:
- Any Johnny Depp movie would be immeasurably improved if Depp was replaced with Guy Pearce.
- Bob Dylan's skills as a songwriter vastly, vastly outstrip the aesthetic appeal of his music: without context or someone explaining why it's good, most Bob Dylan songs won't "sound good" to a new listener.
- House music and Gospel are the best genres of American music. Don't ask for quantifiable or logical proof, I have none.
I welcome disagreement! And also want to shill a recent essay I'm proud of: "Simplicity, Expertise, and Bullshit" where I argue that we conflate deep understanding with the ability to explain understanding, and lose a lot because of it! https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/simplicity-expertise-and-bullshit
Thank you for sharing, I really enjoyed your essay! One of tlmy favourite aspects of Ted's substack is all the opportunities to discover other delightful people and places.
My wife, who hates almost all music post 1969, LOVES Tom Waits. She patiently waited in the lobby for me at The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK. I would love to have Waits do the Sinatra album Dylan did.
Covers of Bob Dylan are invariably better than Bob Dylan singing his own stuff. But the same could be said for most great composers. Who is Gershwin without Ella Fitzgerald?
Debates's out though, if you're talking Leonard Cohen or Willie Nelson. Their voices are so distictive.
Not true. Covers of Dylan, in fact, are rarely better than Dylan singing his own stuff -- on records (not live). Only Hendrix's Watchtower cover comes to mind and that was better more due to his playing than his singing.
I think Dylan is like cilantro -- some people are just hardwired not to like his voice. But for those of us who are not wired like that, Dylan's vocal performances aren't just passable -- they are amazing. Hs vocals are great at least through 1975's Blood On The Tracks. No pre-1975 cover is a vocal improvement on Dylan himself and many of them, including many of the most popular covers, are just cheesy popularizations made more palatable for the mass market.
There is a lot of the Pat Boone covering Little Richard phenomenon when it comes to Dylan covers. Little Richard didn't need any help. Neither did Bob Dylan.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against covering Dylan! I do it myself and frankly among the most rewarding experiences I have ever had is listening to Jerry Garcia cover Dylan. Garcia doing Its All Over Now Baby Blue or Forever Young or Simple Twist of Fate or Tangled Up In Blue etc etc melt my brain.
Charlie, Dylan is Dylan. You don't need any explanation of why his music is good. You either like it or you don't. And if you don't, it's ok! It's hard to imagine most Dylan's lyrics on someone else's music, just to make it aesthetically appealing. Plus, what "sounds good" to you might "sound awful" to someone else, and vice versa. Music is highly subjective and there's no right or wrong. Suffice it to say artists that I loathe sell millions of records.
Ditto for things like House Music and Gospel. It's no science, man. There's no quantifiable or logical proof. :)
As for Johnny Depp, I abstain (my film knowledge is almost null).
Now you've got me boiling....Johnny Depp being disrespected in the name of honest brokering is the least thing I expected to see on this orange streets today 😂😂😂😂
2) Not true about Dylan albums. Of course his songwriting is unsurpassed, but his songs and his singing sound great too -- in the studio. I was about 18 when I first started listening to Dylan on records and I thought he sounded great right off the bat. It was not an acquired taste. I like Howling Wolf too. I do agree that the Dylan live performances -- as opposed to studio recordings -- I've seen and heard have mostly been not very good, except in the earliest days. I also agree that many of his later records don't sound good as his voice did suffer over time. But he still pulled out amazingly good surprises like Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.
3) the best American genres are rock, blues, soul, funk, and gospel. House not so much compared to these.
Another problem with your position is it is quite likely that you, like the vast majority of people in this era, believe in relativism. There are no truths, everything is relative to something -- culture, conceptual scheme, etc. And your position on music follows from that relativism.
But relativism is incoherent. For example, your own categorical assertion that no music can be "better" suggests that in this case the relativism has been jettisoned and now you are dealing with right and wrong.
Of course none of this makes judging better or worse easy or infallible.
1) There is a cognitive component to music appreciation. In addition to idiosyncratic personal responses there is the processing of public information. Some of the variation in taste is attributable not to the idiosyncratic component alone but also to differences in cognitive skills which have an independent impact. So, for example, someone with a short attention span will have a hard time listening to music that requires attention like jazz or classical or the Grateful Dead. Or someone who has no appreciation for language and literature will have a hard time judging the quality of lyrics.
2) Likewise, someone who has little experience with a genre of music will make mistakes in judgment that are not attributable to idiosyncratic preference. Education and knowledge have an independent contribution.
3) Compare different stages of the same person, e.g. you or me, thus controlling for idiosyncratic taste. Like many people, I have had the experience of growing up and deciding that some of my earliest musical preferences were regrettable and based on ignorance. When I was in high school I liked Kiss and Foreigner. Now I don't. But it wasn't just a random change in preference. I have REASONS why my preferences change. I can look back, for example, at my juvenile preferences and judge that my current tastes are better than my juvenile tastes. I have progressed in my musical appreciation even by my own lights and while holding idiosyncratic factors constant.
I’m in the North Carolina mountains at music camp-traditional song week. Hard to explain the breadth and depth of the music and amazing teachers. Best part is the song circles with 40 friends that go on until 3 am in a pavilion under the stars. Still gotta watch for bears…..
Hi Ted. I am slowly making my way through your annual album recommendations (since 2011) listed at tedgioia.com. It has helped me to define my own tastes in music when confronted with so much unfamiliar music at one time. I have tagged about 40% of your listings, and have a preference for the melodic over the less melodic. But I always knew this. I am a Beatle boy. But this can be found across so many styles of music - jazz, bluegrass, soul, even ambient. Thank you for this gift. I have increased my appreciation for the contemporary musician (like me), struggling away in the digital wilderness.
Hope this peeve is not too far afield for this group, but am I the only one whose tired of seeing articles on hazing in sports programs where the coaches and supervisors all are modern versions of Casablanca's Inspector Renault (without the class of Claude Rains)? They are all "shocked, shocked to find that hazing is going on in here!" Considering the hazing starts in middle school football, I'm "shocked, shocked."
The fact that I can only think of one non-vocal non-jazz album appalls me. But hearing Scubert’s Quartet in G minor in 1991 is why I changed my entire life because the Truth of it made me realize I was living a lie. Also seeing five Powell and Pressburger movies in a row around the same time.
Hello, everyone,
Since I have this opportunity, I'd like to show the single I'm releasing today. It's called Sambience 2, and it's an instrumental track with cavaquinho, percussion, keyboards and loops. I hope you like it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAxns0gFGSQ
https://tratore.ffm.to/sambience2
Olá João, gostei muito da sua música. Eu sou Americano mas moro em Portugal e estou a aprender português. Eu toco violão e estudo samba e bossa nova com um brasileiro aqui em Lisboa. A música brasileira é o melhor!
Muito obrigado, Ken,
Adoro música americana e a portuguesa, também!
I play and write for uke so I freak'n love ur song. I haven't quite mastered the pick on my instrument yet.
I'm glad you liked it, Tina!
Please show your uke music, too.
Just for you. https://on.soundcloud.com/ZUyEf I use SoundCloud to demo and work on stuff.
Beautiful folk song, Tina!
Thank you. Very nice of you to say. It's fun.
Your music is so beautiful!! Thank you for sharing it. Wish you the best!
Thank you so much, Smita!
Here's my YT channel, if you want to hear some more:
https://www.youtube.com/@joaocalladomusico
Great single! Love the simple arrangement and the video is very well done too. I'm curious how you tracked the Güiro? Live in your home Logic based studio or in another setting? The sound is crisp and polished!
Thank you so much, Jason!
I tracked in my home studio with a MXL 2001 microphone.
I actually like this quite a lot. I kept wondering how the cavaquinho is tuned and can it be played in an open tuning?
Thank you, Thomas!
The cavaquinho's tuning is: D3, G3, B3, D4. But some people tune it like a mandolin (G2, D3, A3, E4).
I love this! This was a great song. The ending was so abrupt, shook me out of the dream-like state I was in while listening to the song
Thank you so much, Greg!
If you want to hear some more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VUUnYZJIt4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbTMqUVH5yM
I would love to hear it on YouTube, as I don’t subscribe to the ones that are posted. Thanks!
Here it is, Muriel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAxns0gFGSQ
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=S2I2DGFGMNU&feature=share
Nice!
Thanks!
Well, that was super! I also had the pleasure of listening to Sambience 1, it was also a delight! Fortuitously, I’ve been on a Samba music kick for weeks now. This fits in perfectly with my musical mood 😁❤️👍
Thanks you, Jackione!
Since you're in a samba mood, please have a listen on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtE4wS0srMc&list=OLAK5uy_nIEbuKVlx6mbuGAdk7CS9e9Higt4El2XU
Oh yeah! That’s really nice music! 😻
Thanks!
That's Grupo Semente, my samba group. This album is our latest release
Also, I just subscribed 😁
Excellent! I loved the album!
Listening now. Great work -- nice mix, too.
Thank you, Brett!
Ted, would love to know more about the principles of how you manage your time in a highly effective manner, especially relevant given that you have managed to achieve success in the disparate worlds of management consulting and jazz piano.
When do you wake? How much time do you allocate to practicing piano, writing articles, reading and research, etc. and on what schedule? Do you do your best work in the am or at night? How much is too much when it comes to music practice? Writing practice?
If you had to articulate these rules for your adult child a la Lord Chesterfield, how would you do so to ensure maximum compliance with minimal misunderstanding? Thanks in advance!
Add me to the list of those who want to know how Ted organizes his day.
I too have pondered what a typical day looks like for Ted!
Excellent query
Great questions
Father-in-law and I are getting Taco Bell and then watching Cocaine Bear. It's what summer is all about
So need to see Cocaine Bear and what a great way to see it.
Lol this made me chuckle. What a fine idea!
What a combo!
I am 63 years old. Have I earned the right to be a grumpy old man or should I wait another decade? I am embarrassed by the outlandish statements made by politicians on both sides of the aisle in recent years. I am even more embarrassed by the tens of millions of people who believe this nonsense and seem to be willing to die for silly rhetoric as if it were foundational truth. We seem to keep electing people who love to stir up conflict without any ability to discern the difference between what is real and inflammatory slogans. All of this increases tribalism and division. I feel that our nation has become unstable. I long for the peace of mind provided by the common belief that being the UNITED States was bigger than politics.
The ideals that inspired the American Experiment remain unimpeachable. Full implementation was always a long shot. But we are better when we try. Experienced Americans should speak up more, I think, and sanely. Civilized exercise of free speech and honest listening promote good faith and workable compromise. So yeah, speak your mind to fellow citizens, just as respectfully as you did. I think it helps.
Gordon, 63 doesn’t qualify as “grumpy old man” - have to wait at least another 10 years or more. But longing for a civil discourse in politics has no age limit.....
Lately, I worry that the problem with parliamentary democracy in general is its tendency to treat the floor of the legislature as a platform for social media. It's being used for continuous, non-stop campaigning rather than government policy. Transparency is great, but we need to find a way to separate the job interview that is the election from actually doing the job of politics.
Politicians from every angle are clowns, but I worry most of them are, in this climate, too afraid not lie or manipulate, even if they know what they're involved in is insanity.
I read a very interesting treatese that conjectured that the source of said performative tribalism is too much transparency, which engenders bullying and influence from constituents and special interests. Fascinating perspective still taking it in.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-secret-government
Hunh, interesting article. It's very particular to the American context, but it makes some excellent arguments, as well as some interesting ones.
On special interests and the influence of money on politics, I feel a more direct remedy would be campaign finance reform. I liked the system we used to have in Canada (before Harper) where parties received grants based on the number of votes they received in the last election, which, while imperfect, tied the campaign war chest to the one-person one-vote principal. Having this be the principal funding mechanism also limits the total amount of money wasted campaigning.
As I see it, the work of drafting laws, and the procedural mechanisms around legislation have no business being televised. No more than we should feel entitled to rifle through the research notes of academics, or their rough drafts, looking for something to argue with. I feel that which laws are proposed, and who votes for what are both necessary information for evaluating politicians, but also, entirely sufficient. I think the party apparatuses themselves are more than capable of promotion, criticism, commentary, and debate outside the legislature, which needs to be focused on passing laws. Legislation is a technical exercise.
I think the article is a little hasty in rejecting the concept of promissory democracy. If, I hired a personal assistant to help me run my household or business, but they refused to follow my directions and ran it as they pleased, or worse, for their own benefit, I wouldn't want to wait four years to break the contract. Politicians should be encouraged to make at least some campaign commitments they're legally obliged to follow through on, and that even for closed door work, an ombudsman should be appointed for the exclusive purpose of monitoring compliance with those legal obligations. It's been argued politicians need more flexibility than that--but in my opinion, let voters decide how much flexibility they wish to entrust them.
I think more granular and specific representation would also help citizens to trust legislators behind closed doors. I prefer a notion of proportional representation that conceptualizes the parties themselves as the constituency or ridings. Instead of your vote being lumped in with that grump neighbor, citizens could choose to sort themselves into the riding that best represents the community they believe shares their interests. For instance, besides proposing specific platforms, parties could limit registration to specific regions, professional qualifications, incomes, ages, or minorities in order to ensure that group has a voice--although, you'd still need more general parties for anyone. Beyond that, you just need to ensure the parties themselves are internally democratic and their members participate. I don't want for the chunk of land I happen to be renting on to be represented by some party apparatchik lawyer, I want for my actual community to be represented by people like me. I think people would focus less on how much they hated the other guy if they had any enthusiasm for the people representing them.
I hate this both sides of the aisle nonsense. There are serious people mostly on the Democratic side. When you think of somebody like Jamie raskin or senator Sheldon Whitehouse. These are serious scholars, professionals and not sociopaths like so many on the other side of the aisle. Only one side is untethered to facts and truth. I understand there's interpretation and that can be discussed. Let's get real about where the problem resides.
I agree. We may need a major conservative party, but none exists just now. It has destroyed its center which could not hold.
I agree again. Biden played a tough hand well and has led toward the middle.
To your other points I would add that Republicans have by far worsened the national debt and weakened our fiscal position more severely than Democrats.
We need reasonable debate about policies. Independents, moderate Democrats, and what rational Republicans remain must form a “coalition of the sane” to move the country forward. I think compromise needs to be rediscovered as our special genius.
Joe Biden has been a master at negotiation and getting something done in this crazy environment.
I get what you're saying but
We kind of have a conservative party. There's a party that wants to conserve the environment, conserve the middle class, conserve resources, conserve medical Care. Conserve social security and on and on. I think the last actual good conservative was Eisenhower. He would make a great Democrat now!
No doubt there were Ten-Tousand Tings (as the Irish say) that Trump could’ve been impeached for but the Democrats chose to impeach him over Russia, which was no doubt the IC’s idea to drum into Merikan hearts and minds to prepare for the coming ballooning NATO budgets. Also, the Democrats turned out to be largely wrong about dealing with the pandemic - yes, there were many unknowns in the beginning but they doubled down on them even after data and new facts had come to light. There aren’t many in the GOP one can take seriously but the Democrats are daily losing credibility and are cracking down on free speech. The winner of the 2024 election will be fascism.
It doesn't get better when you get older. The noise is more obnoxious to me than ever. I turned 70 6 months ago (aging musician/lyricist) and I wrote this earlier today: https://bobmetivier.substack.com/p/the-noise-was-too-great
My Kevin
went down to the crossroads
at Mar-a-Lardo,
Kissed the ring,
sold his soul to the Devil,
got to be
Speaker of the House.
He might could
pull some strings,
but he ain't no
Robert Johnson.
Part of the dysfunction is due to the weakness of the legislative branch, caused by legislator's fear of election results. The House of Reps, the most accountable to the people, end up punting/hiding, resulting in the executive and judicial far more powerful than they should be -- which creates incredible pressure in the system since the people don't have a voice. The founding fathers worried about that, that legislators would find the Capitol engaging enough to forget their constituents and cling to their jobs. This tendency appeared on steroids once a/c came to D.C. and made it a comfortable place to live. Ultimately the problem, as John Adams warned, is there's not enough civic virtue to make things work -- legislator's allegiances don't align with their constituents but with beltway interests.
Citzens need civic virtue too. A lot could change pretty dramatically if everybody voted regularly. Extremes can be blunted by moderate voices and more citizens voting. It need not be a big burden to vote regularly if we wanted to be serious about increasing democratic forces in the Republic, I think.
They are not there to solve problems; they are there to present themselves and be seen. We live in an age of performance. Politics is no different. The values we were taught as children were made by a generation that is now gone. Media, from radio on down, is where we see value and where modern norms have been created.
I think you’re grump is justified here brother!
I’m 67, and have embrace my inner curmudgeon. I shake my fist at foolish drivers. I wear slip-over sunglasses that dangle from a cord. It’s refreshing,
I am 72, so my answer would be you have nine years to go.
However, to your point. Samuel Adams would most likely applaud what is going on today. John Adams, however, would be beside himself. John Hancock would enquire as to when his next box of Alaska Seafood Salmon would arrive.
Maybe some day I'll have the opportunity to chat with you face to face, and if I did, I'd want to talk about the balance in the arts between what I'd call "art" (the aesthetic impulse) and "craft" (the application of skills to bring that impulse to life).
My thesis is that we as a culture tend to over-emphasize "art" and undervalue "craft". The acclaim or criticism that we give to artists often seems to run on these axes. You can see this historically with Bach, who was (as I maybe poorly understand it) appreciated for his craft, but not thought of as a great artist until his rehabilitation by Mendelssohn. Or consider the sometimes lukewarm critical response to Oscar Peterson (who, regardless of how you determine "art" certainly was a master of the craft).
This! Totally agree. For me, the craft IS the art in this sense: without craft it doesn’t matter how amazing your concept, because it isn’t going to be fully realized. And I don’t mean some kind of standardized perfection. I mean part of craft is understanding that you have to pay attention to all of it, the philosophy and the ‘will it stand up’. That’s real craft, zooming in and out simultaneously
Music Theory is failing musicians. Let me clarify—capital "T" Music Theory, the kind that is codified in academic circles, and trickles all the way down to preschool classrooms, is ill-equipped to express the variety, depth, and nuance of various musical practices from different cultures, let alone the ones that the "Western" canon has subsumed. In fact, the rigidity it enforces is in fact counter to its own traditions, namely many classical and baroque composers were in fact prolific improvisers. Music Theory should be radically simplified, reduced to its bare components, and then in fact, positioned backseat in favor of providing students with a broader understanding of sound-making in different cultures.
You don't need music theory to make music. At all. You can learn basic music theory and use it or you can learn more advanced music theory. But there are touchstone amazing musicians who couldn't verbalize anything music whatsoever. Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery are two notable examples of people who were more or less musically illiterate but made harmonically complex music.
I think this is why its worth making a distinction between the capitalized and non-capitalized versions. Django and Wes had "theories" with a small "t", whether they conformed or not with big "T" Theory is another thing entirely. I would argue we need to make room for a plurality of approaches, including folk styles of theory—we do as much in linguistics!
As a HUGE Allan Holdsworth fan, I would add him to the list of musicians with minimal/no music theory, who invented their own 'theory'.
At the end of the day you just gotta make the melodies and harmonies that sound good and feel good to share 🙏
So, I'm in the very strange position of having a Music Theory only education, which was never my intention. Can't sing, never learned in instrument, and didn't listen to much music growing up. But then I found Wikipedia.
The first thing I learned was how octaves work, which blew my mind. It took me a long time to understand basic things like 12-TET octave parity, and much, much longer to understand what intervals like 3rds and 5ths were and why they sounded so distinct regardless of the notes involved. It helps to understand how Harmonics are stacked, mathematically. It also helps to avoid some of the more fruitless debates as to the Westernness of Music when you understand that some rough hierarchy of consonance is universal at a psycho-acoustic level, and we all experience some kind of rhythm. It reminds us that, yes, we all have different music, but no, none of us are aliens (yet). Chords don't "work" because we're cultural insiders, they work mathematically because of what the harmonics are doing--it's how a tradition chooses to use those musical properties that changes.
The things I resent about Music Theory are the same as what I resent about academic Math. As a visual artist, I understand quite a bit about geometry and so on intuitively, and as a coder, I manage a lot of math-like things, but the terse miserly code of symbols preferred by Mathematicians seem calculated to keep outsiders out. As an example, you may have heard of the Tau Manifesto, or Reverse Polish Notation as simplifying alternatives to the ways things are done in math. Likewise, reading standardized sheet music is absolutely horrible to the uninitiated. Yes, children have nice plastic brains, but I think more learners would get farther without it. Piano Roll notation with some highlighting for octaves and fifths works so much better--and things like transposing become as simple as moving all the notes up and down.
Someday I'd like to compose. For instruments, I've got my ability to do digital signal processing programming--pure sine wave manipulation. For everything else, I kind of depend on my coding ability and Music Theory to guide me, and my own taste to judge my success--right now I'm working with "a Generative Theory of Tonal Music" by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff. Maybe I'll totally fail, but I promise, it will be a heroic and honorable failure.
That's correct - no one HAS take music Theory to play music. But as an instructor said to me many years ago "no, you don't have to learn all this, but think of the music you will NEVER play if you don't either read or have any understanding of the principles".
Over the years I have come to understand much of the truth of what he said.
"Oh ... listen Ma, listen to ME -I'makin' Music - & I didn't have to do anything that anyone said. Ya, all I gotta do is plug in this software & Listen Mom. I'm great"
I never once said no one should take a music theory course. That's besides the point—my issue is with the outdated modalities the system enforces. Without even trying to draw a conclusion about the relative quality of computer-mediated music that you're alluding to, I'm not sure the system even benefits musicians as much as it purports to—I'm talking about failed promise here, not abolishing music theory itself. I will point yourself back to your presupposition here—that reading and understanding the principles go hand in hand. I have spent time in pit orchestras, GB bands, etc.—there are plenty of incredible readers who don't know a diminished from an augmented. In fact, that's a much more common position, we have created the framework which produces good readers who have little to no compositional sense—understanding the principles, as you put it.
This is almost exclusively an elite issue that doesn’t translate smoothly into the industry at large. I think homie just meant that understanding how music theory can be used as a tool to enhance your understanding of what you can do can be useful.
Yeah and they're not wrong, I just think computer music isn't a joke/for kids though, so can you blame me for being a little salty? It's another can of worms and might be an unfair way to cement my point, unless we're getting into a discussion about what is "real" music (which I think I'm trying to avoid today!)
I’ll go one step further - Classical Performance degrees and “Music Academia” is fundamentally failing performance-focused musicians by not training/providing any practical working musician skills and suppressing performer agency by not training improvisatory/compositional/arranging skills.
Andy Edwards on YT has been on a tear for the last little while weighing in on this topic. I find his thoughts and critiques as thought-provoking as Ted's.
Music theory is like calculus in that it is required to understand certain specific aspects of mathematics. It is not required for general math. The same is true with music. The vast majority of us need only a little of it (usually in an organized band setting) to function. But I'll add that the more you know about the construction of what we consider instrument performed music, and how it is put together, the more you are able to extend your ability to improvise and explore. It isn't necessary, but it doesn't hurt to understand intervals, triads, and all the rest of it.
Yea I don’t agree.
Been thinking about this one for a while and I believe what you argue for is equivalent of saying that writing doesn’t need grammar.
It’s true that one might not be conscious of many of the processes while composing, but they are there nonetheless and it can be bad advice for the average musician:
Music theory is one of the best skills we have and the tradition survived this far because it works empirically.
There’s no way you can manage a performer career at a high level with poor understanding of music theory and sight reading. It’s just a lot more work every time you have to interact with new material.
Solfège helps develop musical imagination as well, which many people might not be great at, and at any rate even if they are they can improve it with theory.
There are many composers that are intuitive but as a rule theory helps make great work consistent.
Much harder if you don’t know why it works. Intuition is great for the masters but the craft needs to be trained.
I'm glad you bring up the grammar point—a lot of my thinking is influenced by linguistics, particularly the viewpoint that linguistic analysis ought to be descriptive, not prescriptive. That is to say, if a particular set of speakers are communicating in a certain way, and are well understood by each other, the way they compose language *is* the grammar.
Now extending that to your idea, there are certainly languages which can hold on to baggage that doesn't make much sense anymore. English maintains five different distinct sounds for this letter grouping: "ough" (though, thought, tough, through, thorough). French is a briar patch of discarded sounds, abbreviations, and spellings that don't reflect modern usage. My argument is not "do not learn music theory" but simply that the main benefit of our music theory system is that it doesn't have the weight of being used as a primary mode of everyday communication like our native languages are. It's an abstract set of symbols used to describe sonic components, and we have far more control over how it looks than something like French—which to many speakers, is simply their primary survival skill.
I won't even really address the point about "career" because I think what I'm talking about transcends the success/failure mode of modern capitalism. Many others, even in this very thread, have made trite, but true arguments about musicians who have excelled financially or otherwise without a traditional or even common set of "Western" Theory principles under their belt. To me, that is also besides the point.
But you strike on something great with Solfège. I think it's a much more accessible system, but it still relies on a lot of baggage from the old. Even as far back as the Romantic era, chromaticism and modality were common, though a more common and shorter view of history sees serialism and jazz as the start of these being fixtures in "Western" music. In reality, the way in which much of this music is played, heard, and understood defies major diatonicism. And that is truly at the root of much of our woes, an insistence on enharmonic values, along with its double flats and double sharps (and technically infinite N-flats and N-sharps, though most theorists will deny they are mathematicians when presented with that fact). Solfège is great—until, due to this mistake, you have to then memorize two or three additional vowel sounds for each syllable.
Overall, you're correct, intuition is an incredibly useful tool, and plenty of musicians in fact intuit enough about the musical practices of their desired musical community such that they have long, fulfilling—let's not say "careers", but—experiences in those worlds (this may in fact include making money, for better or worse, though I'm certain music's intrinsic value lies somewhere else). My belief is in a plurality of music theories, and the ones "worth studying" may be better selected by the studying musician rather than an institution. At the very least, if a "Theory" which rests on its "explanatory" power, has no solution for, say, the blues—a genre which provides the basis for a large swath of modern musicking in this particular country—it is not a very useful one, in my book.
Now this is the good stuff. Our music education institutions seem to fail spectacularly at properly training direct musical sound interfacing as the mode of communication and instead fixate exclusively on reading sheet music. It’s like learning a formal written language without practicing speaking it.
Jazz schools seem to get more to the core of this over classical degrees in my experience, but I have a background in classical education and later cross-trained into jazz and folk.
Naturally, music’s value lies beyond financialization. However, in terms of labor, it is highly undervalued, and many trained in institutions seem to not be educated in practical working career skills.
I tend to think of “a plurality of music theories” as just being different genres or styles that people then use music theory to describe. But that’s because I don’t see “theory” as hegemonic, nor am I a cultural essentialist.
Music theory is well named, it’s not music fact.
I mean, sound vibrating at specific frequencies that get arranged in certain ways are facts, but that’s not what we’re really talking about 😂
Kinda more physics, once you start interpreting and labelling lot more doubt enters.
E.g., a note is a chord and a rhythm. So are they really divisible?
Well yes, but it depends on what you mean. Rhythm is mathematical ratios of sound waves heard in time, but you can also speed up a particular rhythmic pulse to the point that it becomes a pitch itself if it is made of a sound wave.
Chords are arrangements of pitch in relation to one another, so also yes. Generally the reference point for chords is the bass note.
I think the theory bit is referring to ways of organizing and interpreting what we do with sounds, but I wouldn’t call it skeptical. Music theory is descriptive - we’re describing how we do musical things and codifying them. There are performers and composers who introduce theoretical practices for how to approach creating and organizing music, but it’s still the medium we use to describe sound.
I don't think it is well named at all, because it exists on an entirely different axis than that of facts, whereas "harder" sciences might compose theories from available facts. The majority of those who practice Music Theory at the academic level, are rather doing a subjective analysis based on cultural norms.
I wouldn’t say it’s on a different axis from facts, it’s just not necessarily a skeptical process of hypothesis inquiry either. It’s a means of describing and codifying sound practices.
I’m not a fan of the way Music Theory™️ is often understood or portrayed by many academic elites either. It’s often as you describe in that setting, which obfuscates the foundation of what music theory practically is.
I read "Music Theory for Dummies" and I still got lost. haha I tried, I really did.
Surely - I found it hard (way back when) & I tried & studied it in College. But it still taught me much. I don't regret trying at all. I wish I would have been able to carry on at the time, but I also had to work. Had to leave school & hit the road in band- which also taught me so much.
Way back when, I was in College as a Jazz major. We had a performance class (jamming to standards reading the heads & then ....
So one day in come some young classical musicians in training. They had a Hell of a time playing spontaneously. But if it was written down ? Very good players. It just served to illustrate what so many here are saying. It taught me quite a bit as I was an aspiring sight reader who was not good at it. And it showed me there was much to know on Both sides of the street.
For example: By all accounts I have seen - Tommy Tedesco was a Phenomenal reader, but look how ferociously he could play & swing while reading ! He seemed to have mastered the best of both worlds.
Absolutely agreed. I think what frustrates people with my argument is that they seem to think if I'm critical of some component of Theory, then I'd like to throw the whole thing out. I'm all for improving the mental model that Theory gives students. I'm partially inspired by the language of jazz (particularly Barry Harris' "diminished families") and I believe there are ways to cut right to the heart of how such music works, without polluting it with presuppositions about key, cadence, movement that come along with particular classical traditions, and are often packaged alongside and presented as gospel.
The common style of notation works well for a thin slice of music, and only for a certain type of learner/performer. My own learning style makes it difficult to transpose, among other things (poor working memory), and that's not even touching the host of other ways that people's perspectives might diverge...
I think the issue that gets lost in translation is that sheet music was developed for specific purposes - to broadly propagate access to musical ideas for recreation, and eventually for translating more specific musical ideas by performers specialized in reading music.
The rub is that this is not how music was historically taught, applied, or learned for a long time - and even then it’s primarily been codified in academic training and public education programs more than anywhere else. I just went to a jazz workshop last week, and being able to read music was great for visualizing and practicing theory concepts, but the only things I really read for my combo were chord changes and the heads to my tunes. Even then I was training my ear for learning tunes more than anything else, my sheet music was just a reference point.
I think the problem is that music theory is often misconceptualized. It should be used as a tool to describe the ideas we’re trying to express, and not necessarily as an institution that houses specific theoretical concepts based on genre and style as if they are exclusive to them. There is no Classical Theory or Jazz Theory, it’s all just music theory. And we use theory to describe what we’re doing musically in classical or jazz or whatever, and to describe what the historical traditions of a given genre are to consider and practice to train in that style.
I don't agree with this:
"sheet music was developed [...] to broadly propagate access to musical ideas for recreation"
Sheet music was developed by and for the church, in order to propagate fealty to religion. It doesn't mean that there weren't some good ideas in there! The Western notation system, in its most recognizable form, at least, dates back to Guido of Arrezzo b. 992, not the era you're talking about in which parlor pianos were a common fixture of the average household.
I appreciate what you're getting at though, but I think "Classical" and "Jazz" are merely two subunits of one particular music theory. Classical music from the Arab world, from the South Asian subcontinent, from East Asia—all look vastly different, including a variety of tuning systems, compositional styles, and even things as basic as meter. So I push back on the idea that our understanding of music theory in the West can encompass all of those distinct ideas. It's particularly rich, considering that 12-TET, the foundational tuning system of the West, was first calculated and documented in China.
So, to your point, I think of it more like a world of many, sometimes overlapping, sometimes entirely self encompassed "music theories", amongst which Western capital-T Theory sits.
I should have worded it “re-creation”, to re-create the desired musical idea. I wasn’t imposing any assumptions on how it was used from there. I didn’t mean recreation as in leisurely performance lol. I know music printing began with a strong foundation in the church, you’re right about that, sorry for the confusion mate!
I also became familiarized with the differences in codified music theories from places like the Middle East, India, and China in school. I get what you mean that classical and jazz come from a subset of “Eurowestern theory”. What I mean to express is that, broadly speaking, music theory is what we practice when we want to describe whatever methodology we have devised to perform a particular kind of music. “Western Music Theory” doesn’t and can’t encompass other cultural theories because that isn’t and shouldn’t be the intention, but when I refer to music theory broadly, I’m not making assumptions of what the cultural background or methodological basis is. I happen to be adept with the language of common practice 12-TET theory, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to envision having a common foundational language and understanding when discussing similarities and differences in pitch, rhythm, and interval arrangements between various musical styles and tonal organizations.
I think we’re getting at the same thing, just in different ways, because I agree with what you’re saying!
Ah thanks for that clarification re: re- :)
I think you're conflating descriptive and prescriptive. Music theory is, has always been, and always should be, descriptive. It is an attempt at explaining what happened musically already, finding logical patterns and concluding: if this is the sound/effect you want, you can achieve it by doing A, B, then C.
What you are talking about is prescriptive. Music MUST be made in a certain way, and you assume that those who teach theory only say there is only a few legitimate ways of making music. That's not at all the case. The top music theory experts in the world would never make such a claim. It is in fact the people who understand music theory the least who often make such claims and confuse description with prescription.
I agree that there is an over-emphasis on Western European systems in theory in academia, but there are also many people pushing back on this. There is an important reason though, which is this sort of self-sustaining cycle of the expectation that one be expert in these practices in order to compose, arrange, and teach in the dominant styles found in the West. That said, there are certainly many other systems which are just as complex and rich, and students of music should certainly learn about those.
However, it begs the questions of how useful Konakol and Raga (for example) systems knowledge would be for the average college music student in their careers. Certainly, counterpoint isn't much more useful in that respect, so an appropriate balance should be found.
You must not have met a large majority of music teachers even at the college level, many of whom do in fact, implicitly or otherwise, help propagate the belief that there are set ways to make music. Regardless, I think you betray your own true beliefs by your use of language here: "logical patterns"—unless you mean a piece of music's *internal* logic, but even these are rules determined by cultural context—I find the idea of "logical patterns" underlying music itself specious at best, a piece of music is not a formal proof. Many music theorists want to offer an appeal to natural sciences, e.g. "Western music is based on 'perfect' ratios" (which are no longer in common practice with 12-TET, go figure).
I'll let you decide for yourself whether or not I have any expertise, it doesn't matter to me. But don't you think its telling, that even by your own admission, the affect of imparting music theory on beginners results in confusion? Were it truly a logical discipline, it would be much like teaching mathematics, which starts and progresses naturally from an early age. A little bit of math education means you can do a little bit of math, a little bit of music theory education means you're worse off than knowing none.
> The top music theory experts in the world would never make such a claim.
I don't know if you're aware, but the academy is in exactly such a crisis at the moment over Schenker, who many have credibly argued (among them P. Ewell), that despite his achievements, he should be understood to have created a system which outlines a hierarchy of good and bad music based on exacting, but arbitrary, specifications. His beliefs in race "science" likely informed his favoring of music from a particular part of the world and a particular type of musical complexity over all else. No music theorist is above their own biases. Yet Schenkerian analysis remains one of the most prominent and ubiquitous tools in the academy.
In fact, it would be "begging the question" to make an argument, like Schenker, that European chamber music is more valuable than a Raga form because European chamber music contains more auxiliary cadences— ("begging the question" does not mean "it makes one wonder", FYI.)
I think there is a certain hollowness to the argument that is often put forward about "logic" underlying all musicking—it is brushed upon, but never extrapolated. It is meant to be accepted, not observed closely. Much how we shant interrogate how the "dominant styles found in the West" ended up dominant, or how certain systems might reproduce their values and shut out those who don't conform.
Music theory is excellent. However it is often not taught well. You don’t need music theory to become the Beatles. But music theory is the way to instantly hear what they are playing and to be able to play along.
I have met them, as I am one myself, and I don't know of a single music theory professor who would claim that there is one kind of internal logic that governs musical organization.
Ideas about "universal grammar" in music may have been prominent in the past, but they have been discredited time and again in the last 30 years, particularly by ethnomusicologists who have been publishing study after study showing that musical understanding is learned and cultural, and doesn't have anything to do with science or universal human nature, not to mention the recent trends of music and cognitive science, music and psychology, and music and anthropology/social science. These advancements in understanding have been undercut by amateurish drivel like "The Mozart Effect", perhaps because people who never studied music seriously tend to drift towards simplistic and convenient conclusions that align with their previously held beliefs, rather than engaging seriously with complex nuances that are contrary to those beliefs and which require deeper consideration.
Because music is so diverse and is cultural, not universal, any "music theory" will by default be descriptive, not prescriptive. Schenkerian analysis works for Western European Classical Music, but it doesn't work at all for Javanese Gamelan, modal jazz, Yoruba folk music, or Aleatoric Postmodern American music. There's not a single music theory professor in the world who would claim otherwise. Mainly it's the fault of the students and amateurs who think that learning music in music school is about learning "rules" and "what you should do" (prescriptive). That's a particularly immature, stubborn and close-minded way of viewing such a deep and diverse branch of study. Rather, those who have spent the most amount of time studying music, the music teachers, are actually the ones most aware of how complex and nuanced it all is.
The topic of music in academia having bias and failing to equip music students with the proper knowledge and tools to succeed in the real world of music making, however, is another topic. Again, all of the music teachers I know are well aware of this problem and many are working to address it. I don't know of anyone in academia these days who disputes that or who claims that contemporary music education is perfect as-is.
The main issue is not that music teachers and music schools are not aware of these problems. The issue is rather, if you get rid of something, you have to replace it with something else. If you make a claim that something isn't working and needs to be changed, then you need to propose a viable alternative.
So far I have only seen criticisms, but no realistic solutions. If you want to change music education, you have to come up with a plan of study that holds the students accountable, and which has specific, rigorous and quantifiable standards that can be objectively assessed. Otherwise, it becomes either a free-for-all where one can justify learning nothing for 4 years because "yeah man, music is anything, man" OR it becomes so bloated and disparate because we have to cram absolutely every kind of music and methodology about music into the curriculum that it becomes completely untenable for anyone to learn it all in 4 years. I hope that makes sense.
Frankly, it's funny that everything in your middle four paragraphs I have essentially argued verbatim in other contexts. We simply disagree about how widespread the thinking is, and how much cultural hegemony is acceptable. They do say someone cannot see something when their paycheck relies on them not understanding it. So then, prof, what reformist approaches to Western Music are you already familiar with and teaching your students, or is such a subject taboo? It's strange, I could have sworn you argued moments earlier that music theory is bounded by "logical" analysis, and now deny any professor would say such a thing here.
I will also point out, you've toed the line of directly insulting me, by doing weird subterfuge "people who do X" are amateurish, stubborn, close-minded, etc. Do you treat your students with the same level of respect? It doesn't seem like a particularly humanist approach. I might be willing to share more with you if I truly believed you could approach the subject without bias and animus.
I will say, this notion that everything has to be "specific, rigorous and quantifiable" is one of the least artistic sentiments I've heard in my life. My particular thesis lies in the topic of disability, and my own developmental disorder has led me to many alternative learning pathways. I'm grateful for that fact, since the academy has largely rejected me based on such difficulties, and I have grown and succeeded in my own goals in spite of that. That said, I'm not satisfied with leaving things in their current state (simple "awareness", as you put it) and one of my key focuses is how to make meaningful inclusions for disabled musicians (not through "special" education, but by including them in group musicking). To me, this requires going back to the drawing board re: the fundamental technological basis for music theory, one that fails large swaths of disabled and/or neurodivergent students. Sheet music in of itself fails people with visual disabilities and visual processing disorders, and those many students are more or less culled from meaningful music-making with their peers; then you, a music professor, simply concludes "that's the way it is". I suppose that is one more point of disagreement. You, by my understanding, believe in a "master-apprentice" model of education, that is essentially designed to maximize the amount of available "musical labor" for capital to extract value from. Your job is not to allow students to explore new ideas, as evidenced by the stoner-cum-would-be-philosopher strawman you have imagined, replete with "yeah man"s. Is it that terribly difficult to imagine designing your curriculum around your student's wants and desires (or god forbid, with your students)? I have to imagine a professor with your talents could handle such a premise. I doubt the "bloated and disparate" aspect, because there are programs that operate in such a manner today, although they are rarely considered "theory" programs, per se.
Frankly, if someone suggested to me that "anything is music" I might ask them, "how?" and then try to explore that conversation to its ends (or beginnings). I mean, learners deserve at least that—it should push us to our own limits of understanding to teach. Would that that result in learning nothing, I don't know, maybe it's just uncomfortable to do, when at the end of the day you judge your success by "How much monetary value have my graduated students produced?" as opposed to "How much meaning have we created?" "How many communities have we bridged?" "How have I enabled my students to celebrate each other?". If you are aware of "the problems" as you say, what are you doing today to address them?
I haven't taught the music theory classes for years, but when I have I begin with the caveat that what we are learning in the class is not prescriptive but rather descriptive, and a very limited descriptive aspect of how people think about music. First there's music, then comes theory, not the other way around (except in the atonal style of Schoenberg).
I now do more research and teach about different styles of music. I talk about cultural relativism a lot and I talk a lot in my classes about how different people make and conceive of music in different ways. You may be interested in a couple books about such topics. They are now quite old and classics in the literature: Philip Tagg, Everyday Tonality, and John Blacking, How Musical Is Man?
You frustrations (and arguments) all seem to be based on the idea that music education in college should foster artistic expression in a humanist approach. That is not the case currently. I don't think anyone working in academia would make that argument. Rather, music education as it stands today is about training the next generation of music educators and researchers, not creators, particularly at the graduate level.
Those educators and researchers do have some means of changing things for the next generation, but they are not in control of the curriculum, nor are they in control of the standards. So, all they can do in their limited capacity is say, in effect: I am teaching this, because that's what the curriculum and standards dictate. I don't believe this is the only way of making music. There are some elective classes that provide alternative modes, but the core requirements are heavily Western European Classical biassed. I'm just helping you to fulfill those requirements of the degree you are seeking.
If you don't want a degree in music, there are many alternatives. You don't have to go to college to learn music. I would argue that most people don't. College is just one way, and I think the biggest failure isn't teaching or fostering creativity and artistic expression, but failing to prepare students to succeed in the music business as working professionals. Can creativity be taught? I think it's an interesting question. Fostered perhaps. Does it need to be taught? My point of view is a 4 year degree should simply give the students a big bag of tools, and what they do with those is up to them.
I agree. I’ve written a lot about this, and have put forward a simplified way to understand music more deeply.
Would love to hear more about this—my current work is trying to produce a survey of alternative methodologies.
I’d be happy to connect about this!
If I had to proffer one up, I would argue for a dialectical materialist approach to understanding musical functionality and applied practices. An understanding of fundamental and descriptive terms that can be applied to any given musical or cultural context will be both considerate of variate methodological understandings of what music is, and capable of mediating between the material bases of sound production and the cultural practices that generate genre and style.
Though I can't say I think the term is good, I think "ethnomusicology" in some circles is meant to be or understood to attempt this, though I gather its not a field without faults or essentialism. Systematic musicology is another discipline that is more common in Europe from my understanding and might have some basis in this approach. Ultimately, I'd like to see a performance-oriented musicology take the place of theory dept.s at the college level, and let the 1800s Chamber Music be its own minor.
Huh, I’m not familiar with systematic musicology! I wouldn’t say ethnomusicology is what I’m describing, it sounds more to me like you’re trying to revamp ethnomusicology lol. Though, you could apply what I’m suggesting to an ethnomusicological context, it’s not my foundational focus as much as it’s considerate of those factors. I get wanting things to be performance-oriented, I think that would be a great change. It would be more practical to base theory and analysis on contemporary industry trends and applications for people interested in making a career of it imo, but I get why it’s been institutionally situated the way it has been for so long in a eurowestern classical background. Historical context and tradition can be really helpful, like I’ve found in Jazz (and ostensibly for different classical traditions), but the presentation is definitely backwards in classical scenes where it places their perspective as the “center of the world” for theory and analysis instead of how it’s situated in the broader context of music making. Classical styles would make way more sense as minor focuses imo.
You've got the goal ("Music Theory should be radically simplified, reduced to its bare components") but I don't see any details here. What are those "core components"? You're calling for other people to do the work?
For my part, I've developed a fixed, chromatic, solfege alternative called manepu. It operates on similar principles as those systems, except a note name always corresponds to a scientific pitch, and therefore is meant to be used as a verbal reference across various instruments in different keys. It eliminates sharps and flats, and focuses on a repetitive cycle of vowels that outline the three diminished tetrads. The caveat with this system is that it is in fact aligned with (and indebted to) my own musical background and culture—in other words, is very much is meant to accommodate 12-TET, Western musical thinking, but may have more utility in improvisatory-based musical systems, for musicians with visual processing, developmental, or vision-based disabilities. That said, I based it on an initial proposal which anyone could use to develop their own system. I think overreliance on written notation for an aural medium is just one problem, but I also believe we can't and shouldn't fully replace our current notation and nomenclature. Regardless, there are various attempts being made at alternative notation systems, which is not my area of expertise, and my own bias against it makes me unlikely to be its savior. But to answer your question, yes, I believe it will require more than just my own input to make any significant or radical changes.
Noooo not another Fixed Do system 💀
I’m mostly joking. I don’t prefer Fixed Do theory because I like to simplify my pitch relationships based around where my tonic is. I feel more flexible when I know what my intervallic relationships are at any given time, even if harmonies move to a different tonic or become a bit more “out there” and “less functional”, because I can still map to the interval relationships around my horn.
Are you familiar with Barry Harris’s theories? He starts with the chromatic 12-TET scale as his basis and then proceeds to break things down into the two octatonic scales and three diminished chords from there before proceeding to anything diatonic. Cool stuff.
Do is an illusion! I love Barry, part of my inspiration.
Good for you. Have you put this out in public yet?
I'm great at starting projects, but not finishing them. Occasionally I find a way to blather on about myself like this, but looking to try and put a pin in it and put out an article or a book or something by the end of next year (realistically).
OK, if you don't mind a word of advice: get some collaborators, NOW. Maybe you can do it alone, but it sounds like you'll have a hard time pulling that off.
What are the societal implications of the vinyl resurgence, particularly among those without a record player? Will there be similar movements that reject AI? Will farm-to-table art go as big as Whole Foods? Will the Honest Broker become the Tiny Desk of music recommendations?
Feel like it will eventually reduce classic albums to a kind of coffee-table kitsch. Like, people buying Dark Side of the Moon purely because it matches their sofa.
First of all, if that sofa exists, I WANT IT
Dark Side Of The Settee
Maybe go for a Wizard of Oz couch and go for all the Dark Side of the Rainbow vibes.
Same!!! I want that couch.
Musicians can be assured that the only digital copies of their works will be from analog sources.
Classic albums will always be popular as long as record labels keep recycling them. The big companies have stopped caring about new music. See my other post on this thread.
Records have become tokens of an unknown past (to many). As such, they are more important as symbols than as music.
Vinyl > NFTs
Duh.
I still don’t understand NFTs
Here are two musical coincidences that you might find interesting, Ted. The first involves classical composer Edvard Grieg, who wrote one of his most famous pieces, the Piano Concerto in A minor, in 1868. On March 1, 1934, one great American composer, 18-year-old Billy Strayhorn, performed the piece with the Westinghouse High School (Pittsburgh) Senior Orchestra. Music director Carl McVicker said of the performance "I never heard a student play that way before or after." As you know, Billy actually had dreams of becoming a concert pianist, but his race precluded such ambitions, and so he gravitated to Jazz, and his eventual partnership with Duke Ellington became one of the most extraordinary in the history of American music. A little over two months later, on May 14, 1934, another great American composer, 16-year-old Leonard Bernstein, performed the first movement of the Concerto in A minor at Roxbury High School, with the Boston Public School Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of T. Francis Burk.
The other coincidence involves a landmark Jazz recording, the October 11, 1939 version by Coleman Hawkins of "Body And Soul." This was significant because it features Hawkins improvising during the entire take, not playing the melody at any point. It was considered a bridge between the popular, melody-based Jazz music of the Swing Era, and the more sophisticated, improvisation-based Jazz music of the Bebop Era that was to follow. Not many realize, however, that a very similar recording was made only eight days later, on October 19, 1939, by the trombonist Jack Jenny. His improvisation was over a similar standard, "Stardust," and just like Hawkins, at no point does he play the melody.
Here is Coleman's recording: https://youtu.be/zUFg6HvljDE
And here is Jenny's: https://youtu.be/gz5tM3egfF4
I have yet to read any assertion that these two recordings were related, but Jenny's contribution seems to have been mostly forgotten, as he unfortunately died from complications following an appendectomy in 1945. Nevertheless, I've heard parts of either solo quoted by musicians since, as a tribute, or even incorporated in some way into big band arrangements.
That's it! Whether anything I've just said is significant in any way is questionable, but I just thought the coincidences were interesting, at the very least. Thank you!
Here's another fun coincidence I just discovered. When Jimi Hendrix moved to London, he lived directly next door to G.F. Handel's old home. It's now a museum.
https://handelhendrix.org/
There is also the alternate take
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC-kWPfBc1Q&list=LL&index=13
Thanks for mentioning Jack Jenny! I'd never heard him before. His "Stardust" improvisation ranks up there with Charlie Christian's and Lester Young's!
Jack Jenny was in the Artie Shaw band which had a huge hit recording of “Stardust”. Jenny played a gorgeous solo on the Shaw recording, which he quotes on his own band’s recording you post above. Great trombone sound and lovely melodic ideas. Thanks for sharing this.
1) Secret Treaties
2) Cultosaurus Erectus
3) Tyranny and Mutation
4) Spectres
5) Fire of Unknown Origin
6) Blue Oyster Cult
7) Agents of Fortune
8) Mirrors
9) Imaginos
10) The Symbol Remains
11) Heaven Forbid
12) The Revolution By Night
13) Club Ninja
14) Curse of the Hidden Mirror
Assuming the list is a ranking of BOC's albums, I would put their debut in first place. In his "The Rough Guide to Rock" Peter Buckley rightly calls the album,
"Heavy metal for people who hate heavy metal; sleek, primal rock and roll music, filtered through unsettling, if thrilling, images of Altamont, drug-dealing and murder."
At the end of the 1950s, the LP itself was only about a decade in, and "stereo" was more of a buzzword than an actual day-to-day reality for most people.
Dad was an electronics tech, and he built our first stereo by hand. It may have been from a hobbyist kit, but it was good quality. He fitted the turntable, the pre-amp, the amplifier, the tweeter speakers, and two downward-facing woofers all into one nice walnut cabinet.
When the stereo was ready for testing, he went out and bought five LPs of completely different characteristics: one was a test demonstration record, designed to push a stereo to its limits, with a narrative for each particular track, alerting us to we were supposed to listen for; the second one -- I don't remember the name -- was an enjoyable mix of musical styles also designed to showcase your stereo's capabilities, but without the accompanying narrative; the third was "Italia Mia," the lush orchestrations of Mantovani (what we would probably call "elevator" music today); the fourth was " 'sWonderful" by the Ray Conniff Orchestra, and -- last, but to me certainly not least -- 1959's "Stereo Concert" by the Kingston Trio !!!
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THAT RECORD !!!
In 1960 I was a high school freshman. Every day, I would come home from school, put "Stereo Concert" on the turntable, lie down on the floor with my head between the woofers, and just luxuriate. I listened to it so many times that I could pantomime the chatter between songs, the laughs, and even the throat-clearings before starting the next song. Many of the jokes would not play well in today's society, drunken driving jokes, ethnic jokes, but the trio's energy and humor shines through every single second of this album.
There were only ten tracks instead of the obligatory twelve, and most of the songs had been previously recorded on the trio's first two LPs, neither of which I had yet heard at that time. It had obviously been recorded at a large venue, with large-venue acoustics, and everything about it was crystal clear. What amazed me most was the realism of the audience applause.
It was not much later that I asked Dad to buy me a banjo, so that I could become a clone of Dave Guard. Dad was an untrained but proficient play-by-ear musician. He had failed to interest me in electronics, I was lackadaisical at sports, and this was the first thing I had really shown any great interest in. He did buy me a pretty good banjo, and he bought himself a cheap guitar as well, to show me how to get started playing music on my own.
This was a major turning point in my life. By the time I finished high school, some friends and I had formed a Kingston Trio copy band -- striped short-sleeved shirts and all -- and we performed at our senior class talent show. We called ourselves "The Lemonliters" -- LOL.
Unfortunately, Dad died young, before my graduation. Now, as Fathers' Day approaches, I can't help but wish that I'd been able to show him the results that his faith in me produced.
Jim, my dad loved the Kingston Trio and that's how I was raised. My mom LOVED the Kingston Trio when she wasn't listening to Russian composers. There is certainly the Dave Guard/John Stewart argument to be had. I would recuse myself because I became close to John during his solo career. That being said, Dave Guard was always the heart and soul of the group. Bob Shane, a very nice man, was Guard's Mike Love. Which really sounds like an insult to Bob Shane. I'll have one Scotch and Soda, please.
I will never forget the day that a high school classmate came over to my house with two records. The Kingston Trio at the Hungry Eye and the second Weavers at Carnegie Hall. Literally, it changed my life. I think Tom Paxton said that a similar experience “changed my DNA.” The power of music is awesome!
Your dad's toil at the the stereo rig mirrors mine, right down to the randomized selection of test records (minus the KT). Great big reel to reel machines were part of the hardware array. I remember also his custom-formed rubber wheels for driving the turntable – he had various ways of calibrating the turn rate (turntable speed). Great big reel to reel machines were part of the hardware array as well.
All this was part of his jump from mono to stereo, with the usual stereo demo records that were pretty close to awful.
These are my three most anarchic, (playfully) abrasive opinions:
- Any Johnny Depp movie would be immeasurably improved if Depp was replaced with Guy Pearce.
- Bob Dylan's skills as a songwriter vastly, vastly outstrip the aesthetic appeal of his music: without context or someone explaining why it's good, most Bob Dylan songs won't "sound good" to a new listener.
- House music and Gospel are the best genres of American music. Don't ask for quantifiable or logical proof, I have none.
I welcome disagreement! And also want to shill a recent essay I'm proud of: "Simplicity, Expertise, and Bullshit" where I argue that we conflate deep understanding with the ability to explain understanding, and lose a lot because of it! https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/simplicity-expertise-and-bullshit
Thank you for sharing, I really enjoyed your essay! One of tlmy favourite aspects of Ted's substack is all the opportunities to discover other delightful people and places.
As to point number two, I would say the same about Tom Waits.
My wife, who hates almost all music post 1969, LOVES Tom Waits. She patiently waited in the lobby for me at The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK. I would love to have Waits do the Sinatra album Dylan did.
Covers of Bob Dylan are invariably better than Bob Dylan singing his own stuff. But the same could be said for most great composers. Who is Gershwin without Ella Fitzgerald?
Debates's out though, if you're talking Leonard Cohen or Willie Nelson. Their voices are so distictive.
Not true. Covers of Dylan, in fact, are rarely better than Dylan singing his own stuff -- on records (not live). Only Hendrix's Watchtower cover comes to mind and that was better more due to his playing than his singing.
Enjoy Bob, but oh quite a few are and the one cover I really enjoy more is RL Burnside’s cover of Everything is Broken.
I think Dylan is like cilantro -- some people are just hardwired not to like his voice. But for those of us who are not wired like that, Dylan's vocal performances aren't just passable -- they are amazing. Hs vocals are great at least through 1975's Blood On The Tracks. No pre-1975 cover is a vocal improvement on Dylan himself and many of them, including many of the most popular covers, are just cheesy popularizations made more palatable for the mass market.
Love the cilantro comparison and it is apt.
Just a matter of taste. Can like the original and the cover or a cover a little more. Even have a playlist with originals and covers.
Same with the Rolling Stones. Enjoy them but there are plenty of covers I enjoy.
There is a lot of the Pat Boone covering Little Richard phenomenon when it comes to Dylan covers. Little Richard didn't need any help. Neither did Bob Dylan.
Funny. I was gonna call out Ben Sidran's version.
Can’t argue against it. Just listened and Will listen to more.
All along the Watchtower is great if it’s Dylan or Hendrix
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against covering Dylan! I do it myself and frankly among the most rewarding experiences I have ever had is listening to Jerry Garcia cover Dylan. Garcia doing Its All Over Now Baby Blue or Forever Young or Simple Twist of Fate or Tangled Up In Blue etc etc melt my brain.
Might not be better, definitely worth hearing
Mark lanegan Long Black Coat
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-wsKBd6_9I&pp=ygUobWFuIGluIHRoZSBsb25nIGJsYWNrIGNvYXQgbWFyayBsYW5lZ2FuIA%3D%3D
Charlie, Dylan is Dylan. You don't need any explanation of why his music is good. You either like it or you don't. And if you don't, it's ok! It's hard to imagine most Dylan's lyrics on someone else's music, just to make it aesthetically appealing. Plus, what "sounds good" to you might "sound awful" to someone else, and vice versa. Music is highly subjective and there's no right or wrong. Suffice it to say artists that I loathe sell millions of records.
Ditto for things like House Music and Gospel. It's no science, man. There's no quantifiable or logical proof. :)
As for Johnny Depp, I abstain (my film knowledge is almost null).
Guy Pearce as Ed Scissorhands would be hilarious but also terrible
Now you've got me boiling....Johnny Depp being disrespected in the name of honest brokering is the least thing I expected to see on this orange streets today 😂😂😂😂
1) true
2) Not true about Dylan albums. Of course his songwriting is unsurpassed, but his songs and his singing sound great too -- in the studio. I was about 18 when I first started listening to Dylan on records and I thought he sounded great right off the bat. It was not an acquired taste. I like Howling Wolf too. I do agree that the Dylan live performances -- as opposed to studio recordings -- I've seen and heard have mostly been not very good, except in the earliest days. I also agree that many of his later records don't sound good as his voice did suffer over time. But he still pulled out amazingly good surprises like Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.
3) the best American genres are rock, blues, soul, funk, and gospel. House not so much compared to these.
There's no best anything, there's only what you like.
its not that simple, bro
ok, explain it to me.
Another problem with your position is it is quite likely that you, like the vast majority of people in this era, believe in relativism. There are no truths, everything is relative to something -- culture, conceptual scheme, etc. And your position on music follows from that relativism.
But relativism is incoherent. For example, your own categorical assertion that no music can be "better" suggests that in this case the relativism has been jettisoned and now you are dealing with right and wrong.
Of course none of this makes judging better or worse easy or infallible.
OK, briefly.
1) There is a cognitive component to music appreciation. In addition to idiosyncratic personal responses there is the processing of public information. Some of the variation in taste is attributable not to the idiosyncratic component alone but also to differences in cognitive skills which have an independent impact. So, for example, someone with a short attention span will have a hard time listening to music that requires attention like jazz or classical or the Grateful Dead. Or someone who has no appreciation for language and literature will have a hard time judging the quality of lyrics.
2) Likewise, someone who has little experience with a genre of music will make mistakes in judgment that are not attributable to idiosyncratic preference. Education and knowledge have an independent contribution.
3) Compare different stages of the same person, e.g. you or me, thus controlling for idiosyncratic taste. Like many people, I have had the experience of growing up and deciding that some of my earliest musical preferences were regrettable and based on ignorance. When I was in high school I liked Kiss and Foreigner. Now I don't. But it wasn't just a random change in preference. I have REASONS why my preferences change. I can look back, for example, at my juvenile preferences and judge that my current tastes are better than my juvenile tastes. I have progressed in my musical appreciation even by my own lights and while holding idiosyncratic factors constant.
I’m in the North Carolina mountains at music camp-traditional song week. Hard to explain the breadth and depth of the music and amazing teachers. Best part is the song circles with 40 friends that go on until 3 am in a pavilion under the stars. Still gotta watch for bears…..
You may want to check out the folk school here in Fayetteville. We also have mountains. :)
https://www.folkschooloffayetteville.org
Check out this new trove of recordings, photos, and film from Western North Carolina's historic Beech Mountain music community -- just went online this week. https://www.southernmusicresearch.org/collections/show/50
Hi Ted. I am slowly making my way through your annual album recommendations (since 2011) listed at tedgioia.com. It has helped me to define my own tastes in music when confronted with so much unfamiliar music at one time. I have tagged about 40% of your listings, and have a preference for the melodic over the less melodic. But I always knew this. I am a Beatle boy. But this can be found across so many styles of music - jazz, bluegrass, soul, even ambient. Thank you for this gift. I have increased my appreciation for the contemporary musician (like me), struggling away in the digital wilderness.
I absolutely loved your piece on reading!! Keep giving and soliciting book recommendations!! The best recommendations come from avid readers
Hope this peeve is not too far afield for this group, but am I the only one whose tired of seeing articles on hazing in sports programs where the coaches and supervisors all are modern versions of Casablanca's Inspector Renault (without the class of Claude Rains)? They are all "shocked, shocked to find that hazing is going on in here!" Considering the hazing starts in middle school football, I'm "shocked, shocked."
What are your Top 5 favorite instrumental albums(non-jazz) ?
I'm adding this to my list of possible article topics. Thanks!
Looking forward to hearing your choices
If I looked at my ambient collection including Brian Eno and Steve Roach, I would have a hard time narrowing it down to five.
I haven’t given this thorough consideration, but this week I played The Ventures Christmas album.
The fact that I can only think of one non-vocal non-jazz album appalls me. But hearing Scubert’s Quartet in G minor in 1991 is why I changed my entire life because the Truth of it made me realize I was living a lie. Also seeing five Powell and Pressburger movies in a row around the same time.
Sibelius Violin Concerto, Anna Sophie Mutter.
Mahler's 5th. Claudio Abbado
Stockhausen, Zyklus, any performer.
Japanese Koto music, any.
Ali Akbar Khan, any.
1. The Rhythmatist (Stewart Copeland)
Check out “Neon Dreamscape Odyssey”.