From the monthly archives:
Last month I wrote about the very popular chord progression from the 50s: I vi IV V and played you a video of seven versions of that song. In case you didn’t read it:
Paul McCartney said that he and John Lennon always tried to make their songs “a little different” [...]
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Dean Christopher Waterman announced today that the Herb Alpert Foundation has given 30 million dollars to UCLA, specifically to create a synergistic relationship between the three (now) separate music departments: The Department of Musicology, The Department of Ethnomusicology, and The Department of Music. I am the Chair of the latter. Associate Dean Tim Rice has [...]
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Thanks to commenter yesmydog for pointing this one out. It’s from the Beatles film YELLOW SUBMARINE” I don’t think it had anything to do with the movie, but was a very cool song. It begins with a very butch guitar riff, in the line of “Paperback Writer” and “Day Tripper.” It slips back and forth [...]
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Our dogs require a daily dose of exercise.
I’ve isolated the two favorite exercising rhythms that our dogs thrive on:
running–whether it be a chase, or a run/walk with the pack–and
playing tug.
Running is aerobic, and it stimulates the cardiovascular system, and the other is tugging on a toy, a [...]
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With a few exceptions, the prevaiing harmonic progression in “When Doves Cry” is:
i bVII
What is odd is that there doesn’t seem to be a chordal instrument that fleshes out much harmony. The predominant timbre is the bass and the spectrum of the snare. The synth harpsichord vamps occasionally but doesn’t really help us out [...]
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I learned to play Lady Madonna in high school and sang it with my old friend Todd Buffa. Todd’s voice did a perfect McCartney imitation for this song. I butched it up with the blue note grace notes in the opening piano figure. I’m fairly sure this is a McCartney song: couplet rhyme scheme, it [...]
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I’ve been working a big 12 minute scena for the dramatic musical that I’m working on (how’s that for a fusion between opera and musical?!). I’ve composed the score using Sibelius (music notation software) and am orchestrating it electronically using Apple’s LOGIC. The image below is a teeny tiny version of what I see on [...]
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Whenever I stretch out on the floor, my dogs assume that I’m dying and they immediately come and start licking my face. I’m not a big fan of getting licked in the face by my dogs, but I realize that this instinct could save my life some day, so I’ve learned from Daniel to thank [...]
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Daniel Wolf found this questionable resource: The Blog Readability Test where you can enter the URL of your blog, and find what level of education is required to understand it. I blushed to see that mine was Junior High School. I immediately put in Alex Ross’s blog and was relieved to find that his was [...]
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Saxophonist Doug Masek has released a new record of new music for saxophone on Centaur recordings. Besides a terrific recording of my piece for alto saxophone and electronics entitled GLAMOUR AND EROS, there is music by Jane Brockman, Paul Cholicchio, William Haubrich, and Liviu Marinescu. The CD can be purchased from Centaur directly, from Amazon, [...]
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