Wayne Shorter: “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum”
Another step in my continuing quest to learn more about jazz by transcribing recordings. I like Wayne Shorter’s 1960s albums a lot, and “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” (YouTube video) is my favorite tune from the most...
View ArticleHenry Threadgill, “To Undertake My Corners Open”, part 1
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid group has made some really interesting recent music in an original musical language, but I’ve seen very little discussion of what the language is, and Threadgill himself...
View ArticleDavid Temperley: Music and Probability
This is a book about music cognition: attempting to understand how people understand the music they hear. Temperley’s main thesis throughout the book is that a profitable way to study music perception...
View ArticleMnemosyne, part 3
Mnemosyne is a spaced repetition program for aiding memorization; see my first and second posts for more information on the program and how I use it. I guess it is high time for another update; when...
View ArticleM-x insert-c++-scope
If you write C++ code like I do, when you add a new method to a class, you: type the function signature into the declaration in the header file; copy and paste it into the source file; either type in...
View ArticleHenry Threadgill, “To Undertake My Corners Open”, part 2
Over a year ago I started transcribing Henry Threadgill’s “To Undertake My Corners Open”. I got to the 90% point a long time ago, but as with many projects, it’s the last 10% that takes the most...
View ArticleHerb Healy Open House 2014-01-01
One of my favorite tournaments at the Boylston Chess Club is the annual Herb Healy Open House held every New Year’s Day. You get to socialize and play four relatively quick (G/40) games of chess, and...
View ArticleHenry Threadgill, “To Undertake My Corners Open”, part 3
I’ve had a little more time now to study the structure of this piece. First, I’ll lay out the form as I see it: 0:00–0:13 (mm. 1–5): Intro figure 0:13–0:28 (mm. 6–9): Guitar & bass cycle 1...
View ArticleBond songs
I recently went on a James Bond binge and watched all the canonical movies, ranking the theme songs as I went. Ethan Iverson graciously offered to host the resulting piece on his super...
View Article“Once in a Lifetime” and the case of the mysterious shifting downbeat
For over thirty years I’ve been disturbed by the location of the downbeat in the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime”. I listened to it dozens of times without paying a ton of attention to the...
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