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When The Levee Breaks
The drum intro from Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” is the perfect embodiment of The Awesome Majesty Of Rock. Download: What makes John Bonham’s drums on this track so staggeringly heavy?...
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Apache makes you go hmmm
DJ Kool Herc describes “Apache” by The Incredible Bongo Band as the national anthem of hip-hop. “Apache” includes a famous drum and percussion break that has reliably put bodies on the dance floor...
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Tales of an Apple fanboy
I’ve now had a couple of opportunities to play around with an iPad, and to surreptitiously watch other people use it. I have strong and mixed feelings. The touchscreen interface is pretty wonderful and...
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Capturing sound
I was doing a frivolous Google search for the Simpsons episode where Bart, Nelson, Milhouse and Ralph form a boy band. They’re in the studio singing, and they sound terrible, until the producer pushes...
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Blues for the Jews
December is always a complex month for half-Jewish mutts like me. When pressured to self-identify, I usually just go with “Jewish” for the sake of simplicity, but this is in spite of not having being...
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Tuning system geekery
If you’re a guitarist, you may have noticed that it’s hard to get your instrument perfectly in tune. This is not your imagination. If you tune each string perfectly to the one next to it, the low E...
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Toward a better music curriculum
I love music grad school and am finding it extremely valuable, except for one part: the music theory requirement. In order to get my degree, I have to attain mastery of Western tonal harmony of the...
View ArticleThere’s joy in repetition
Susan McClary “Rap, Minimalism and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture.” in Audio Culture, Daniel Warner, ed, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004, pp 289 – 298. This is...
View ArticleFriends don’t let friends clap on one and three
Here’s my final project for NYU’s Psychology of Music class, enjoy. Feel free to download this presentation or the full paper. Friends Don’t Let Friends Clap on One and Three: a Backbeat Clapping Study...
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Blues tonality
Abstract The blues is a foundational element of America’s vernacular and art music. It is commonly described as a combination of African rhythms and European harmonies. This characterization is...
View ArticleElectronic music tasting menu
Right now I’m teaching music technology to a lot of classical musicians. I came up outside the classical pipeline, and am always surprised to be reminded how insulated these folks are from the rest of...
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Prepping my rap and rock class at Montclair State
This summer, I’m teaching Cultural Significance of Rap and Rock at Montclair State University. It’s my first time teaching it, and it’s also the first time anyone has taught it completely online. The...
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Between The World And Me
I’m taking a sociology class called Learning Of Culture with Lisa Stulberg. It could just as easily be called Culture Of Learning, since it views school as just one cultural setting among many. Our...
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The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg Our first reading was Ta-Nehisi Coates. The second one is Max Weber. The transition between their prose styles is like gliding downhill on a bike...
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American Apartheid
Denton, N. A., & Massey, D. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. The question endlessly debated by sociologists: is the black underclass the result of a) racism...
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The Vocoder, Auto-Tune, Pitch Standardization and Vocal Virtuosity
Writing assignment for History of Science and Technology class with Myles Jackson. See a more informal introduction to the vocoder here. Casual music listeners know the vocoder best as the robotic...
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White nationalist music in Sweden
Writing assignment for Ethnomusicology: History and Theory with David Samuels Benjamin Teitelbaum’s study of Nordic nationalist music could not be any more timely. Gramsci diverged from classic Marxism...
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Duke Ellington, Percy Grainger, and the status of jazz in the academy
Final paper for The History of the African-American Freedom Struggle with Thomas Sugrue On October 25, 1932, Percy Grainger invited Duke Ellington and his orchestra to perform “Creole Love Call” as...
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Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music
As of this writing, the biggest song in America is “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. It might also be the most interesting pop song of the 21st century so far. “Old Town Road” defies genre categorization....
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