Ethan Hein
@ethanhein.bsky.social
http://www.ethanhein.com/
I explain a few of his ideas here www.ethanhein.com/wp/2017/phil...
Philip Tagg’s Everyday Tonality
I complain a lot on this blog about traditional approaches to teaching music theory. Fortunately, there are some alternatives out there. One such is Everyday Tonality by Philip Tagg. Don’t be…
www.ethanhein.comRIP Philip Tagg, a major inspiration for my academic life. Ten Little Title Tunes and Everyday Tonality are anchor points for me.
New MusicRadar column about "Back to Black" by Amy Winehouse www.musicradar.com/news/back-to...
“She’s slightly behind the beat but this doesn’t make her sound sloppy; to the contrary, it shows an effortless command of musical time”: A music professor breaks down Amy Winehouse's Back to Black
With Winehouse's biopic in the cinemas, we put her best-loved song under the musical microscope
www.musicradar.comRIP Steve Albini, who recorded a few of my favorite albums of all time, including this one cordeliasdad.bandcamp.com/album/spine
Final pop aural skills topic of the semester: harmonic sequences www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying sequences
The final topic in pop aural skills is harmonic sequences, strings of chords whose roots move in a predictable interval pattern. Related to galant schemas. Sequences are common in European classica…
www.ethanhein.comIn class the other day we were talking polymeter and polyrhythm and I used Bach's minuet from his Partita No. 5 and "Afro Blue" by Mongo Santamaría as examples. Then I wondered how it would sound to combine them. The answer: super cool! ethanhein.bandcamp.com/track/partit...
Partita No 5 in G major - Tempo di minuetto - Glenn Gould Afro Blue mix, by Ethan Hein
from the album Bach Remixes
ethanhein.bandcamp.comI finally figured out how (and why) to explain hypermeter www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/hype...
Hypermeter
I didn’t find out about hypermeter until very late in my music theory learning journey. I think it should be part of the basic toolkit, especially for songwriters and improvisers. The explana…
www.ethanhein.comThat is too good
@ethanhein.bsky.social
"She said that if music had a smell, that would be its timbre."
hazlitt.net/feature/ever...
New column in MusicRadar about "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", the best Michael Jackson song and probably the best song of the 1980s: www.musicradar.com/news/michael...
"This track is an undeniable banger, but it’s also extremely weird": The borrowed hooks and unstable grooves behind Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
We put one of MJ's best-loved tunes under the musical microscope and explore the unlikely origins of its iconic hook
www.musicradar.comToday was "Chris Thile covering Kendrick Lamar to the horror of my undergrads" day in class digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcont...
Happy Easter from Bach and Paul Simon www.ethanhein.com/wp/2011/bach...
Bach and Paul Simon
Since it was Easter yesterday, Anna wanted to listen to Bach’s St Matthew Passion while we did stuff around the house. A certain passage grabbed my ear, a hymn called “O Haupt voll Blut…
www.ethanhein.comGot cited in a law review article about sampling. My blog continues to crush my legit publications in citations ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcont...
We're studying blues melodies in class this week, here's what I'm using for examples www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying blues melodies
This is an exciting week of class for me, because we are analyzing blues melodies, and that is a music-theoretic subject that is close to my heart. Given its impact on the past hundred years of Ang…
www.ethanhein.comNew MusicRadar column is up, just in time for all the Beyoncé discourse! www.musicradar.com/news/beyonce...
“Part of a beautiful American tradition”: A music theory expert explains the country roots of Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em, and why it also owes a debt to the blues
The lead single from Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s forthcoming country album, goes under the musical microscope
www.musicradar.comThis is new to me and I love it. The Led Zeppelin Levee break is in there!
Do people still know about this by the way? Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Saint Etienne. The best Neil Young cover ever made. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZAa...
I wrote about "What Was I Made For" on Musicradar www.musicradar.com/news/billie-...
What makes an Oscar-winning song? We break down the music theory behind Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For?
We put Eilish's haunting contribution to the star-studded Barbie soundtrack under the musical microscope
www.musicradar.comMeanwhile in aural skills class www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying phrase structure
It’s easy to understand what a section of a song is: an intro, a verse, a chorus, a bridge. It is less easy to understand phrases, the components of a song section. Usually a song section con…
www.ethanhein.comKate Wagner brings the heat in this one. “People clinked glasses of free champagne in outfits worth more than the market price of all the organs in my body.” web.archive.org/web/20240301...
I wish I believed in hell so I could feel comforted by picturing this guy in it
Darren Woods is CEO of the 3rd most polluting firm in history. Over the last two years it has earned more money than any other IOC in history, thanks to the highest taxpayer subsidies for his products in history
But it's you, the reader, who is to blame www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...
Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures
Darren Woods tells Fortune consumers not willing to pay for clean-energy transition, prompting backlash from climate experts
www.theguardian.comIt's harmonic cliche week in aural skills class www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying standard pop chord progressions
This week in aural skills, we are practicing identifying pop schemas, that is, chord sequences and loops that occur commonly in various kinds of Anglo-American top 40, rock, R&B and related sty…
www.ethanhein.comAuto-Tune is an underappreciated music ed tool. There isn't a lot of data on this, but anecdotally, producers report that it improves singers' intonation, and it definitely helped mine.
I was goofing around with my kids and discovered that Auto-Tune got my daughter to instinctively match the corrected pitch it was playing back to her. She was two years old.
Auto-Tune with zero retune speed works great for this because it gives you instantaneous real-time feedback. The further off the desired note you are, the weirder the timbre of your corrected voice will be in your headphones. As you get closer to the note, your voice sounds more normal.
I don't know about dummy-proof but perhaps you would enjoy my blog www.ethanhein.com/wp/
We were clapping in odd time signatures in aural skills today, perhaps you might enjoy a collection of loops I made for that purpose ethanhein.bandcamp.com/track/time-s...
This might be old-fashioned but it is not conservative
my most old fashioned and conservative view is students should be made to memorize poetry by rote at least once a year
I got a shoutout in a @12tone.nebula.tv video youtu.be/_kKtdPJGC-Y?...
Which Scale Is BEST?
I promise this is the best way to find out!Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/12toneCheck out Polyphonic's Neb...
youtu.beThe tempo increases over the course of the track, and in 1988 there was no way to alter the pitch and tempo of a sample independently, so even if they had automated the tempo somehow, the sample would have gotten sharper and sharper.
I wrote about why "Fast Car" is such a great song (and not just because of its lyrics) for MusicRadar www.musicradar.com/news/tracy-c...
"The verse melody is subtly strange, and it took me a while to figure out why": A music professor breaks down the theory and production behind Tracy Chapman's Fast Car
We put Chapman's moving 1988 single under the musical microscope after Luke Combs' Grammy-nominated cover thrusts it back into the charts
www.musicradar.comMy aural skills students are identifying the diatonic modes this week and it is not easy! I collected some examples to help them. www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying the diatonic modes
In Aural Skills class we continue our sprint through harmony concepts with the diatonic modes. These are an advanced topic in classical theory, but for popular music, you need to deal with them up …
www.ethanhein.comNew aural skills treats www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying the diatonic modes
In Aural Skills class we continue our sprint through harmony concepts with the diatonic modes. These are an advanced topic in classical theory, but for popular music, you need to deal with them up …
www.ethanhein.comMy second MusicRadar column is up, about "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", check it out! www.musicradar.com/news/while-m...
Lament bass, varispeed and Eric Clapton: A music professor breaks down the key theory, playing and production ingredients of The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps
We put one of The Beatles' most beloved tunes under the musical microscope
www.musicradar.comWe did pentatonic scales in aural skills class today www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying pentatonic scales
It’s pentatonic scales week in aural skills class. This would seem to be the easiest thing on the syllabus, but I discovered while doing listening exercises with the students that even these …
www.ethanhein.comHappy Dilla Day to all who celebrate youtu.be/c7Rl6KzdlTM?...
Wrote some new chord explainers www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/iden...
Identifying added-note chords
My NYU aural skills students are working on chord identification. My last post talked about seventh chords; this post is about chords with more notes in them, or at least, different notes. My theor…
www.ethanhein.comHey so a while back @NotesByHeather and I published some Orff music, and we just heard from a music teacher who adapted some of it into a super cool classroom activity, check it out music educators! write.as/playfewernot...
Fresh Feels Part I - Classroom Grove
One of my Christmas presents to myself was the book 5 Pop Grooves for Orff Ensembles by Heather Fortune and Ethan Hein. I don’t teach th...
write.asI started teaching pop aural skills with a group analysis of "Call Me Maybe" www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/call...
Call Me Maybe
For the first day of my new pop-oriented Aural Skills II class at NYU, we analyzed “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. I have been using this song as a listening example in music tech …
www.ethanhein.comI have started writing a monthly column for MusicRadar, and the first one dropped today, an in-depth exploration of "What Was I Made For" by Billie Eilish. Check it out! www.musicradar.com/news/theory-...
"It’s seemingly nursery-rhyme simple, but there are a few intriguing twists": A music pr...
We put Billie Eilish's haunting contribution to the star-studded Barbie soundtrack under the musical microscope
www.musicradar.comIt's incredible that this was filmed, RIP Les McCann www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDM...
There was a man called Mr Lang
And he had a neon sign
And Mr Lang was very old
So they called it Old Lang's Sign
Big revelation of this month is that sharpening your knives makes them sharper
Is there a song out there that loops dominant seventh chords a tritone apart, eg C7 and F#7? There must be, right?