From the category archives:
“O Superman” was Laurie Anderson’s first big HIT: it made it to number 2 in the UK but didn’t do as well in America. Her music is marvelously in-the-cracks reminding me of Steve Reich, Lou Reed (her husband), David Byrne, and Joni Mitchell, but it would be an insult to say that she is only [...]
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There are some marvelous harmonic details in Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” It was Mark Carlson who pointed out to me that there is no dominant chord in the song. I was incredulous. He was right.
Look at the chart of the chord progression for the song. I laid out the harmonic analysis so that the line starts [...]
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Or something like that.
I discovered a gold mine of wonderful literature about the materials of popular music through soundscape.info. There is a lot of material from a musicological point of view, but I’m interested in finding the nitty gritty about notes, chords, form and such. Author and music theorist Elizabeth Marvin suggested I read Walter [...]
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I am thrilled to have re-discovered Alan W. Pollack’s brilliant analyses of songs by the Beatles as examples of ways to discuss form, structure, harmony, and melody in popular songs. I will spend some time poring over these analytic nuggets and report on them. If you are curious, look at them and send me your [...]
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I keep asking myself: is it true? It seems there isn’t any music “theory” about popular music. My colleague David Lefkowitz wanted to write about Cole Porter in his upcoming theory text book, but the cost of reprinting the entire score was prohibitive.
Music majors are made to study analytic methods of approved composers like Beethoven [...]
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“A hook is a musical idea, a passage or phrase, that is believed to be catchy and helps the song stand out; it is “meant to catch the ear of the listener” (Covach 2005, p.71). This term generally applies to popular music, especially pop music.” (Wikipedia)
There is a difference between a hook and a riff. [...]
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I discovered a most remarkable piece of information today: a list of the 365 top selling songs of the 20th century as compiled by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). I encourage you to spend a few minutes and look down the list to see what songs have charmed Americans for the past eleven [...]
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In the Baroque, Italian composers deemed melody as the most important element in a composition, whereas French composers held melody as subordinate to harmony, melody being merely the top voice of a progression of chords. This is clearly an oversimplification, but these philosophies have resonated down through the ages. Some songwriters come up with a [...]
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