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The Ethan Hein Blog

ethanhein.com/wp

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’10’15’20’25
Posts
1,165 from 13 Nov 2008 to 28 Oct 2026
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weekly (55 in the last year)
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personal blog
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https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/feed/

2026 40

  1. New podcast series: the Beatles in 10 songs
  2. I joined the dark side and vibe coded a music theory app
  3. The meanings of Louis Armstrong
  4. RIP Dolly Parton
  5. Podcast episode about AI and musical creativity
  6. AI is harmful for learning which is why I’m banning it in my classes
  7. My 20th Century American Pop History syllabus
  8. I decided what song I’m going to start my History of 20th Century American Popular Music class with
  9. My Favorite Things update
  10. Seven and Nine
  11. Take Five
  12. Teaching Pop Music Analysis for Non-Majors
  13. The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
  14. Teaching the history of 20th century American popular music
  15. How to learn to jam
  16. More people should be listening to Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine
  17. Podcast episode on songs vs grooves
  18. That one weird chord in “Sir Duke”
  19. Radiolab used my Mozart remix
  20. Blackbird singing in the dead of night
  21. Introducing Tuniversity
  22. The Gospel According To Aretha
  23. Angine de Poitrine on MusicRadar
  24. Check out these grooves that I have my aural skills students improvise over
  25. A unified theory of rock harmony in one sentence
  26. The Weight
  27. What I learned from remixing “Dreams” over and over
  28. Twelve remixes of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac
  29. Happy In A Silent Way Day to all who celebrate
  30. Free improvisation
  31. Low end theory
  32. I’m in this Adam Neely video about AI
  33. Two-chord shuttles on the pod
  34. I love when my songwriting students drop albums
  35. Satisfaction
  36. It Takes Two
  37. Bob Weir tribute on MusicRadar
  38. The plan for Pop Theory II and Pop Aural Skills II this semester
  39. RIP Bob Weir
  40. Season two of the podcast

2025 67

  1. Things I wrote in 2025
  2. Mr Tambourine Man
  3. All of Me
  4. Dancing in the Street
  5. Is there a way to teach counterpoint that is less of a drag?
  6. Advanced Pop Transcription wrap-up
  7. AI slop predates AI
  8. AI transcription on MusicRadar
  9. Portrait of Portrait of Tracy
  10. Fretless bass
  11. Electric and electronic instruments of 20th century pop
  12. Amen break listening guide
  13. Uncharted Territory, The Number Ones, 500 Songs, and a different 500 songs
  14. Five songs that show the evolution of rap from 2000 to 2025
  15. Five songs that show the evolution of rap from 1986 to 2000
  16. We should be counting most pop music in 8/4
  17. D’Angelo tribute on MusicRadar
  18. Advanced Pop Transcription at mid-semester
  19. Introducing my first podcast guest, my daughter
  20. AI slop and musical creativity
  21. A couple of media hits
  22. Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd on MusicRader
  23. Yet another podcast update
  24. Podcast update, and I guess blog update
  25. Aretha Franklin and Art Garfunkel on the pod
  26. An homage to Otis Redding on the pod
  27. Rockit on the podcast
  28. One week left to register for Songwriters Lab
  29. Circle of Fifths sequences on the pod (also me singing)
  30. F-sharp, G-flat, and the mysteries of just intonation
  31. Listening to the Well-Tempered Clavier in actual well temperament
  32. William Orbit’s polymetric groove in an All Saints song
  33. Watermelon Man on the podcast
  34. The name of this tune is The Funky Drummer
  35. Check out this beautiful EP by one of my former songwriting students
  36. Podcast episode on swing
  37. Podcast episode on blue notes
  38. Modulations in “Man in the Mirror”
  39. Ray Charles on the podcast
  40. The circle of fifths is a lie
  41. New podcast episode on McCoy Tyner and the fourths chord
  42. I started a podcast
  43. Thelonious Monk plays the blues
  44. Aretha Franklin sings “Bridge Over Troubled Water”
  45. I wrote a song about chromatic embellishments
  46. End-accented phrases make melodies sound cool
  47. Explaining suspensions
  48. Explaining embellishing tones
  49. New online songwriting class with Synthase
  50. Is ABBA, like, good?
  51. Everybody Loves The Sunshine
  52. What key is “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac actually in?
  53. Bring It On Down To My House
  54. Visualizing secondary dominants
  55. A year of writing for MusicRadar
  56. RIP Roberta Flack
  57. Is music getting dumber?
  58. Terrapin Station
  59. Doechii on Colbert
  60. Fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn
  61. Ray Charles sings “You Are My Sunshine”
  62. Harmonic rhythm in two-chord shuttles
  63. Inside the Super MAGFest Jam Clinic
  64. New MusicRadar column on Music For Airports
  65. Subterranean Homesick Blues
  66. I want to write a book about the Grateful Dead
  67. MusicRadar column on one of Bob Dylan’s greatest hits

2024 91

  1. Things I wrote in 2024
  2. My year in pop aural skills teaching
  3. My year in pop music theory teaching
  4. In defense of “Wonderful Christmastime”
  5. Jason Yust on the racist history of tonality
  6. Stormy Monday
  7. A general theory of pop smashes
  8. Uncle John’s Band
  9. Don’t Know Why
  10. Ii v i
  11. The melodic-harmonic divorce in pop
  12. Adding vocal harmony to a Tears for Fears song
  13. Identifying chromatic embellishments
  14. Cumberland Blues
  15. Identifying suspensions
  16. Dark Star part two
  17. Dark Star part one
  18. Modern Band Music Theory
  19. He’s Gone
  20. We Were Pretending
  21. Black Peter
  22. Anyway, here’s Wonderwall
  23. MusicRadar column on “Lilac Wine” by Jeff Buckley
  24. The Grateful Dead as improv comedy
  25. A nice Jerry line from the Cornell Scarlet>Fire
  26. Scarlet>Fire 5/8/77
  27. Playing in the Band
  28. I wrote a song to help my students with key signatures
  29. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
  30. I built a track out of Grateful Dead jamming
  31. Big River
  32. The 32-bar AABA song form
  33. Phil Lesh gets funky
  34. Jerry Garcia’s Slipknot! solo
  35. The Mind Left Body Jam
  36. Inside the Beautiful Jam
  37. Touch of Grey
  38. The harmonica as a metaphor for pop music theory
  39. C-flat and B-sharp
  40. MusicRadar column on three songs from Brat by Charli XCX
  41. Maceo Parker’s blue notes in a James Brown classic
  42. F-sharp vs G-flat in just intonation
  43. What does Jerry Garcia play on “Eyes of the World” and why does it sound so cool
  44. New book chapter with Toni Blackman
  45. High Time
  46. Hobo Blues
  47. New MusicRadar column about Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”
  48. Devil Got My Woman
  49. Russian Lullaby
  50. The F-Flat Annual Back-to-School Symposium
  51. The minor key universe
  52. Joy To The Modes
  53. Understanding intervals
  54. What is voice leading?
  55. Visualizing note and rest durations
  56. What is tempo?
  57. What is syncopation?
  58. The major key universe
  59. New MusicRadar column on Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso”
  60. The bottom number in time signatures has always confused me
  61. Happiness is a Warm Gun
  62. The Beatles multitracks
  63. What are harmonics?
  64. Back to Black
  65. Identifying major and minor
  66. Identifying sequences
  67. Hypermeter
  68. Identifying augmented chords
  69. MusicRadar column on “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” and “Soul Makossa”
  70. Identifying tritone substitutions
  71. Identifying modulations
  72. Improvising over secondary dominants
  73. Improvising countermelodies
  74. Identifying blues melodies
  75. Identifying melodic motives
  76. Identifying embellishing tones
  77. Identifying song forms
  78. Identifying phrase structure
  79. Identifying harmonized basslines
  80. Identifying standard pop chord progressions
  81. Identifying plagal cadences
  82. Identifying I, IV and V chords
  83. Identifying the diatonic modes
  84. Identifying pentatonic scales
  85. Identifying added-note chords
  86. Identifying seventh chords
  87. Call Me Maybe
  88. New monthly column for MusicRadar
  89. As it turns out, I will be teaching aural skills at NYU this semester
  90. Jack Straw
  91. Whisper Not

2023 69

  1. Things I wrote in 2023
  2. NYU Steinhardt is assigning this blog in its music theory and aural skills core classes
  3. Love Rollercoaster, Genius of Love, and nonsensical chord loops
  4. The Beastie Boys, James Newton, and phonographic orality
  5. How Infrastructure Works
  6. Bemsha Swing
  7. Nature Boy Megamegamix update
  8. Can I Kick It?
  9. Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires
  10. Rap before hip-hop
  11. You’re Gettin’ A Little Too Smart
  12. Gladys Knight heard it through the grapevine
  13. Exploring Hip-Hop Pedagogies in Music Education
  14. Dissertation summary
  15. Polymeter vs polyrhythm
  16. New Orff arrangements with Heather Fortune
  17. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
  18. Freedom Jazz Dance
  19. Artificial intelligence in music
  20. Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing
  21. Musical Borrowing syllabus
  22. Dies irae
  23. Technology in Music Education – updated syllabus
  24. If I Fell
  25. Bach’s Duet in E minor BWV 802
  26. Pusherman
  27. Lil’ Darlin’
  28. I made a new track for teaching swing
  29. Absolute Beginners
  30. Ashes to Ashes
  31. Moonage Daydream
  32. Little Simz and Ramsey Lewis
  33. Melanie’s chords are usually sad
  34. Baby, I Love You
  35. The saddest chord progression ever (revisited)
  36. Rock Steady
  37. Over The Modal Rainbow
  38. Ahmad Jamal and hip-hop
  39. I made some music using modes of the harmonic series
  40. The final day of the Song Factory course
  41. As The World Falls Down
  42. Songs in film and television
  43. Building the Amen break
  44. God Make Me Funky
  45. Playing “Giant Steps” as an instrument
  46. No one can agree what time signature “Row Row Row Your Boat” is in
  47. Building the Funky Drummer beat
  48. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
  49. We’re just normal men
  50. Frequency and EQ
  51. Why did 13th century Europeans think that major sixths were dissonant?
  52. St Stephen
  53. A nice thing happened with my music theory songs
  54. Eye Know
  55. The Man Who Sold The World
  56. Life On Mars?
  57. RIP Wayne Shorter
  58. For No One
  59. What is the difference between analog and digital recording?
  60. Building Hip-Hop Educators – new book chapter abstract
  61. Where do jazz standards come from?
  62. She’s Leaving Home
  63. Brad Mehldau plays the Beatles
  64. The twelve bar blues
  65. Strawberry Fields Forever
  66. There Was A Time (I Got To Move)
  67. Althea
  68. Don’t Sweat the Technique
  69. The Song Factory course

2022 61

  1. My year in writing
  2. New book chapter on critical race theory in music education
  3. Just intonation harmonicas
  4. Check out this excellent blue note
  5. I Want To Hold Your Hand
  6. I Heard It Through The Grapevine
  7. Dorian mode
  8. The Ghostbusters theme song
  9. Blues harmony primer
  10. Mixolydian mode
  11. The microphone placement playlist
  12. In My Life
  13. Why are there so many minor scales
  14. Tuning is hard
  15. What’s Going On
  16. The first day of Contemporary Music Theories at the New School
  17. Why are D-sharp and E-flat considered to be two different notes
  18. Bach’s mysterious Sarabande
  19. Bach’s Lute Suite in G minor
  20. Tennessee Jed
  21. Patrice Rushen’s memory songs
  22. Bach Anxiety
  23. Led Zeppelin and the folkloric integrity of the blues
  24. Groove: an aesthetic of measured time
  25. Human Behaviour
  26. Elizabeth Cotten’s fingerstyle ragtime
  27. I Wanna Be Your Lover
  28. Betty Davis and the blues sus4
  29. Warp factor
  30. Psycho Killer
  31. Crosseyed And Painless
  32. Take Me To The River
  33. Making Flippy Floppy
  34. Burning Down The House
  35. Once In A Lifetime
  36. Lonely Woman
  37. The tale of my PhD
  38. Isaac Schankler remixes Beethoven
  39. Who’s got two thumbs and a PhD in music education?
  40. Slippery People
  41. This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
  42. Don’t Worry About The Government
  43. David Byrne’s American Utopia
  44. Erroll Garner meets the Carpenters
  45. Dilla Time in “Chameleon”
  46. Watermelon Man
  47. What the heck is a decibel
  48. Get Dis Money
  49. Dilla Time
  50. Aural Skills for Audio Engineers
  51. I wrote another rap song to inspire my Pop Practicum students
  52. Designing learning experiences with music technology: good for whom, good for what?
  53. Hidden Place
  54. The Anchor Song
  55. Hear J Dilla flip a Gary Burton sample three different ways
  56. The diminished scale
  57. Relative minor, relative major
  58. We Don’t Talk About Bruno
  59. Theory Hacks with Ableton
  60. Technology Trends in Music Education
  61. The whole tone scale

2021 82

  1. My current Intro to Music Technology syllabus
  2. Things I wrote this year
  3. Living for the City
  4. The chromatic circle and the circle of fifths
  5. Remixing David Bowie’s “Starman”
  6. Morning Dew
  7. The harmonic family tree
  8. Seventh chords in just intonation vs 12-TET
  9. Let’s analyze Alexander Scriabin incorrectly
  10. Dual tonicity in a classic klezmer tune
  11. Led Zeppelin, “Ten Years Gone”
  12. Curb Your Enthusiasm
  13. Smokestack Lightning
  14. How guitarists learn music theory
  15. Research statement
  16. Nahre Sol introduces Billie Eilish to the classical canon
  17. The blues and the harmonic series – a visual guide
  18. The problem with just intonation – a visual guide
  19. Modes from light to dark around the chromatic circle
  20. The Well-Tempered (and not-so-well-tempered) Clavier
  21. Teaching statement
  22. Just intonation and key changes
  23. The three diminished chords: blues, jazz and classical
  24. The Kronos Quartet play Jimi Hendrix
  25. Defining key centers with rhythm
  26. Music Theory Songs
  27. Chords and modal interchange
  28. Waiting For Benny
  29. The politics is in the drums: Producing and composing in the music classroom
  30. Spoonful
  31. No, Rolling Stone, D minor is not the saddest of all keys
  32. Lightnin’ Hopkins – “My California”
  33. I made a Patreon page
  34. Nature Boy
  35. Starfish and Coffee
  36. Here is a web based music education tool that I wish existed
  37. I Want You Back
  38. Interview with the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society
  39. I was weirdly obsessed with this jazz tune when I was twelve
  40. Our book is out!
  41. The great scale flowchart
  42. The blues and the harmonic series
  43. Kind Hearted Woman Blues
  44. Blues tonality update
  45. Boogie Chillen
  46. Brokedown Palace
  47. Did Lorde rip off George Michael?
  48. Kicking out the JAMS
  49. Pieces vs Songs vs Grooves
  50. Chain of Fools
  51. Oye Como Va
  52. Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor
  53. What if the Bach Chaconne was modal jazz?
  54. Deep dive into the Bach Chaconne
  55. Music Ed Tech Talk with Will and me
  56. Green Onions
  57. Conversation with Jim Frankel on the MusicFirst podcast
  58. Music is not a universal language and this klezmer song proves it
  59. Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus XI
  60. Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus VIII
  61. I am making my students write raps and I wrote one too
  62. The Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus I
  63. Teaching songwriting to music education students
  64. Sonnymoon for Two
  65. Groove melodies
  66. Repetition legitimizes, funk beautifies
  67. Adam Neely video on “Hey Joe” and blues tonality
  68. The best guitar solo ever recorded
  69. Groove harmony
  70. Keep On Truckin’
  71. You Are What I’m All About
  72. Who is Heinrich Schenker and why should you care?
  73. Swing primer
  74. Miles Davis – In a Silent Way
  75. The Roots, “Don’t See Us”
  76. The NYU Music Education Popular Music Practicum
  77. The Roots – “The Lesson Part III (It’s Over Now)”
  78. Thelonius
  79. Happy inauguration day
  80. Soon may the wellerman come
  81. Rhythm-a-Ning
  82. Straight, No Chaser

2020 80

  1. I’m doing a session for the 2021 Remixing General Music conference
  2. Circular chord charts
  3. Songs vs Grooves
  4. Beethoven Remixed
  5. Let’s ditch “The Star-Spangled Banner” and make “Lean On Me” our national anthem instead
  6. Für Elise
  7. Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye
  8. Lonely Woman but it’s Gregorian chant
  9. Transcribing Kendrick Lamar
  10. Transcribing Missy Elliott
  11. So What
  12. John Oswald said he likes my Stevie Wonder/Laurie Anderson mashup
  13. Transcribing Noname
  14. Transcribing Lil’ Kim
  15. What is Hip-Hop Education, the remix
  16. What is going on in this Noname beat?
  17. Transcribing KRS-One
  18. Brandon Bennett interview remix – What is hip-hop education?
  19. Adam Neely video on rap covers
  20. Toni Blackman interview remix – What is hip-hop education?
  21. Martin Urbach interview remix – What is hip-hop education?
  22. Children of Production
  23. Lesson Plan Sundays on Twitch with Will Kuhn
  24. Remixing the Grateful Dead
  25. My favorite Jerry Garcia riff
  26. Mothership Connection
  27. Greensleeves
  28. Let’s rename the scales something more memorable
  29. Will Kuhn and I finished our book
  30. Help on the Way -> Slipknot! -> Franklin’s Tower
  31. Jazzy harmony and crazy tuplets in Chopin’s Nocturne Op 9 No 1
  32. What does the Well-Tempered Clavier sound like in actual well temperament?
  33. I learned how to make animated gifs
  34. Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata
  35. Learn to improvise on the white piano keys
  36. Fugue as sample flip
  37. What does it mean to remix the classical canon
  38. Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude
  39. Remixing Bartók’s Mikrokosmos No 133 – Syncopation
  40. Two hundred Disquiet Junto submissions
  41. The racial politics of music education
  42. Eleanor Rigby
  43. Remixing a solo saxophone recording by Catherine Sikora
  44. Perpetual motion in the Presto from Bach’s G minor Violin Sonata
  45. “Work Song” and blues harmony
  46. An intro to remixes
  47. Clair de Lune
  48. Dear Prudence
  49. Rhythmic ambiguity in the Bach E major partita prelude
  50. Hip-hop glossary
  51. Perpetual motion in Bach’s E major Violin Partita Prelude
  52. Is it okay to post tracks with unlicensed samples?
  53. Key centers in the Grateful Dead’s China>Rider
  54. Brian Eno and the role of the producer
  55. I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
  56. Make your chord progressions less boring using secondary dominants
  57. Ain’t No Sunshine
  58. Let’s listen to some extremely slowed down Bach
  59. An intro to counterpoint
  60. The Chord Dictionary
  61. I’m making a bunch of music teaching videos
  62. Online music teaching resources
  63. Harmonica Meditation
  64. RIP McCoy Tyner
  65. Metrical dissonance in the Gigue from Bach’s E minor English Suite
  66. Syncopation in Chopin
  67. The Amen Break of snobbery
  68. Let’s argue about this one weird chord in the Brahms Intermezzo in B-flat minor
  69. Flava In Ya Ear
  70. What is going on in this Ariana Grande song?
  71. Glenn Gould wanted me to make this remix
  72. Goodbye Ralph
  73. Classical music as ancient alien power source
  74. Ignorant Populists
  75. Teaching note values
  76. Bach Chaconne – Gimme the Lute mix
  77. NYU Music Education Technology Practicum syllabus
  78. Scales, keys and modes on the circle of fifths
  79. Remixing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 – Andante
  80. Party like it’s 1624

2019 41

  1. Chord progressions in the Bach Chaconne
  2. My year in blogging
  3. Teaching dynamics and loudness
  4. Remixing Ben Shapiro
  5. How do key signatures work?
  6. Live scoring with No Country for Old Men: update
  7. Live film scoring with No Country For Old Men
  8. How to record from the aQWERTYon
  9. Learning minor key harmony from the Bach Chaconne
  10. Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 – Prelude
  11. Ben Shapiro has opinions about rap
  12. Announcing the Theory aQWERTYon
  13. Salsa in Central Park
  14. Sound writing with my New School students
  15. Donna Lee
  16. RIP Godfried Toussaint
  17. I Wanna Dance With Somebody
  18. Jacob Collier’s four magical chords
  19. Remixing “A Day In The Life”
  20. Naima
  21. Toni Blackman asks, why worry?
  22. Developing an intro-level music theory course
  23. Talking whiteness on the So Strangely podcast
  24. Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music
  25. Remixing Monk vs covering Monk
  26. The Groove Pizzeria
  27. Why can’t you tune your guitar?
  28. Rob Walker on The Art of Noticing
  29. Toni Blackman on the wisdom of the cypher
  30. The “Rockit” rhizome
  31. The longest sample chain
  32. Toni Blackman’s hip-hop meditation
  33. Samuel Halligan’s awesome Pop-Up Piano for Ableton Live
  34. Brandon Bennett: the ethnopedagogical remix
  35. Kumbaya
  36. Ableton Loop 2017 panel on music tech and education
  37. New book chapter on the Groove Pizza
  38. The Shinobi Cuts remix chain
  39. New gig at the New School
  40. Tim Eriksen is the best folk musician in the world
  41. Mr Ethan, I want to hear you rap

2018 38

  1. My year in (other people’s) music
  2. Speech to song with iZotope and Ableton
  3. Groove Pizza update
  4. Future jazz
  5. Giant Steps
  6. Learn diatonic harmony from a classic breakbeat
  7. Ableton Loop 2018
  8. Making music with students’ found sounds
  9. White people with acoustic instruments covering rap songs
  10. Young Thug meets Elton John
  11. Blogging about blogging
  12. Happy Earth, Wind and Fire Day
  13. Funky Minuet in G major
  14. Simple songs
  15. Dissertation update
  16. Remixing Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1 with Ableton Live
  17. RIP Aretha Franklin
  18. How to make drums and synths from literally any sound
  19. Jordan Peterson and Luke Skywalker
  20. My adventures among the alt-right
  21. Some news
  22. Scratching “This Is America”
  23. Separating children from their parents at the border is morally wrong
  24. Racism is not over and America’s prisons prove it
  25. Learning Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” with Ableton Live
  26. The orchestra hit as a possible future for classical music
  27. This Is America
  28. Teaching whiteness in music class
  29. Participant ethnography of a hip-hop cypher
  30. RIP Cecil Taylor
  31. Big thoughts on music tech
  32. Music for practicing scales
  33. Hip-hop as a tool for hip-hop ethnography
  34. Chord pizzas
  35. Dancing to Michael Jackson with my kids
  36. Hip-hop teaches confidence lessons
  37. Real vs hyperreal vs surreal
  38. Junto trios

2017 68

  1. Critiquing creative work with a growth mindset
  2. New harmony course with Soundfly
  3. The happiest chord progression ever
  4. Gender in science
  5. Duke Ellington, Percy Grainger, and the status of jazz in the music academy
  6. In praise of the Reflex Re-Edit
  7. The fake and the real in Chance the Rapper’s “All We Got”
  8. Ngoma aesthetics after apartheid
  9. Four bars of Mozart explains everything humans like in music
  10. Aurality
  11. Theorizing sound writing
  12. Ableton Loop 2017
  13. White nationalist music in Sweden
  14. What is culture?
  15. Ethnomusicology and the voice
  16. Ethnomusicology and the body
  17. Happy 100th birthday to Thelonious Monk
  18. The value of music
  19. Ethnomusicology and world music
  20. The vocoder and Auto-Tune
  21. My music technology syllabus
  22. The aQWERTYon pitch wheels and the future of music theory visualization
  23. My first Musicto playlist
  24. Philip Tagg’s Everyday Tonality
  25. Noteflight as a DAW
  26. In praise of campy Batman
  27. Cranes in the Sky
  28. Groove challenges with the Groove Pizza
  29. Teaching myself the Bach Chaconne with Ableton Live
  30. Learning music from Ableton
  31. Demographics of the Disquiet Junto
  32. You kids like the wrong music, part two
  33. Toward a Methodological Stance
  34. Research proposal – Hip-Hop Pedagogy
  35. Designing a more welcoming aQWERTYon experience
  36. A participant ethnography of the Ed Sullivan Fellows program
  37. American Apartheid
  38. It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Blogging)
  39. Design-Based Research
  40. The Long Shadow
  41. The Groove Pizza now exports MIDI
  42. Cyclic Defrost
  43. Testing the effects of game music on cognition
  44. Breaking down the harmony in Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”
  45. Meet the audio file formats
  46. New online music theory course with Soundfly!
  47. Milo’s first original song
  48. Marked
  49. Ain’t No Makin’ It
  50. Durkheim – Suicide
  51. Ideological and Theoretical Assumptions
  52. Intersectionality
  53. Deconstructing the bassline in Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon”
  54. Objectivity, Positivism, and Epistemological Others
  55. Examining the Assumptions Underpinning Interpretive Inquiry
  56. Classical composers, Bowie and Björk
  57. Games for learning research method overview: interviews
  58. Descriptive Participant Observations on the Culture of the Park Slope Food Coop
  59. Frank Ocean – Pink and White
  60. The Interpretive Turn: From Sociological Positivism to Constructivism
  61. More salsa-dancing social science
  62. Measurement in games for learning research
  63. The role of culture in interpretive inquiry
  64. The Craft of Research and Salsa Dancing
  65. Introduction to Research on Games and Simulations
  66. Affordances and Constraints
  67. Chance the Rapper’s verse on “Ultralight Beam”
  68. Freedom ’90

2016 69

  1. Careless Whisper
  2. Cultural hegemony in music education
  3. Despite the Best Intentions
  4. Design Process For Learning book review
  5. Making better citizens through dance
  6. QWERTYBeats design documentation
  7. Artistic citizenship in the age of Trump
  8. High school masculinity
  9. Coping strategies
  10. Foucault – History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume One
  11. Music Matters chapter seven
  12. Foucault – Discipline and Punish
  13. The title of this book is everything wrong with music education
  14. Music in a capitalist culture
  15. Marx and Althusser
  16. Music Matters chapter six
  17. Bourdieu and Swidler – Structures and the Habitus
  18. Music Matters chapter nine
  19. QWERTYBeats research
  20. Freud – Civilization And Its Discontents
  21. Music Matters chapter five
  22. Émile Durkheim – Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
  23. Music Matters chapter four
  24. The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
  25. Music Matters chapter one
  26. Music Matters chapter two
  27. Music Matters chapter three
  28. Writing advice from Hamilton
  29. Between The World And Me
  30. An open letter to GQ about “We Built This City”
  31. Musical simple: Groove Is In The Heart
  32. Musical simples: This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
  33. Musical simples: With Or Without You
  34. Musical simples: Hey Jude
  35. Musical simples: Day Tripper
  36. Musical simples: Come Together
  37. Musical simples: Smells Like Teen Spirit
  38. Visualizing hip-hop melodies
  39. Why hip-hop is interesting
  40. Visualizing trap beats with the Groove Pizza
  41. Composing in the classroom
  42. Rohan lays beats
  43. More remixes of my Disquiet Junto remix
  44. Recursive remixes
  45. Prepping my rap and rock class at Montclair State
  46. John Dewey on music education as experience
  47. Ilan meets the Fugees
  48. Liora Bresler on qualitative research methodology
  49. Personhood and music education
  50. Seeing classic beats with the Groove Pizza
  51. Project-based music technology teaching
  52. Beatmaking fundamentals
  53. The evolution of the Groove Pizza
  54. Musical simples: Family Affair
  55. Theory for Producers: the White Keys
  56. Afrofuturist pedagogy
  57. Compositional prompts
  58. What the heck is the LIGO chirp?
  59. Musical simples – Under Pressure
  60. Musical simples – Teenage Dream
  61. Milo meets Beethoven
  62. Ultralight Beam
  63. Inside the aQWERTYon
  64. Theory for Producers
  65. Music education at the grownups’ table
  66. What should we call classical music?
  67. Please stop saying “consuming music”
  68. Space Oddity: from song to track
  69. RIP David Bowie

2015 65

  1. Teaching reflections
  2. We dream of Star Wars
  3. You kids like the wrong music
  4. Ethan’s Trax
  5. Musical simples – Possibly Maybe
  6. Musical simples – Star Wars
  7. Victor Wooten teaches music teaching
  8. Musical simples: Stir It Up
  9. Musical simples: Army Of Me
  10. Musical Simples: Once In A Lifetime
  11. Musical Simples: Superstition
  12. Here’s what’s cooking with the NYU MusEDLab
  13. Resisting imperialism through secular devotion
  14. Hit Me Baby
  15. User interface case study: Patterning
  16. Goodbye SoundCloud?
  17. The Great Cut-Time Shift
  18. Prototyping Play With Your Music: Theory
  19. Musical Necker cubes
  20. Rhythmic simples
  21. Compound musical simples
  22. Why do people think music should be free?
  23. Steve Reich’s Clapping Music: The Game
  24. Musical simples part two
  25. Musical simples
  26. Pedagogical remixing with Splice
  27. Hip-hop top 100
  28. Diverge, converge, diverge, converge
  29. Making chords from scales
  30. Ch-ch-ch-check out, check out check out my melody
  31. When does a speech turn into a song?
  32. Circular rhythm visualization talk at Spotify
  33. The harmonica explains all of Western music
  34. What even is digital art
  35. Lifelong general music
  36. How does jazz work? The up-goer five version
  37. Music in a world of noise pollution
  38. Music theory for the perplexed guitarist
  39. Scale necklaces and symmetry
  40. Music theory on Hacker News
  41. Beats and scales
  42. A history of pop production in three tracks
  43. How the heck do you know what scale you’re supposed to use for lead guitar?
  44. Rhythm Necklace
  45. Do you need music theory to create music?
  46. BB King gives us a guitar lesson
  47. Were the Beatles great musicians?
  48. Modern classical techno
  49. Mobile music app recommendations
  50. Why is there so much Auto-Tune on everything?
  51. Beethoven fan sputters with rage
  52. Björk live at Kings Theater
  53. The Blurred Lines lawsuit
  54. Musical shares
  55. Booking me for workshops
  56. We got both kinds, country and western
  57. Sampling composers
  58. Talent considered harmful
  59. Pop songwriting in the age of the Digital Audio Workstation
  60. The poetics of rock
  61. Mixing “Call Me Maybe”
  62. First day of music tech class
  63. Composing speech
  64. Listening, hearing, and the infinite loop
  65. Subverting music education

2014 59

  1. How to tell funk from disco
  2. DJ Earworm on the art of the mashup
  3. Terry Riley and Taylor Swift
  4. What’s missing from music theory class?
  5. How should we be teaching music technology?
  6. Pop musicians in the academy
  7. My Montclair State students evaluate me
  8. Adam Bell evaluates my teaching
  9. What if music theory made sense?
  10. The saddest chord progression ever
  11. Why do people love music so much?
  12. Composing for controllerism
  13. Toward a statement of purpose
  14. How to write a pop song
  15. Ableton Session View and instrument design
  16. All student work should go on the web
  17. A book you should read
  18. Happy birthday Thelonious Monk
  19. Will musicians ever be replaced by robots?
  20. Panel on games in education
  21. Shared sample projects
  22. Electronic music tasting menu
  23. Music theory blues
  24. Blues tonality
  25. Digital audio basics
  26. My music education
  27. Sucker MCs
  28. My NYU course this fall
  29. Remix as compositional critique
  30. The great music interface metaphor shift
  31. A DIY video about DIY recording
  32. Killen and Marotta
  33. Internet blues
  34. Making rhythm tutorial videos
  35. Reflections on teaching Ableton Live, part two
  36. Reflections on teaching Ableton Live: part one
  37. What is groove?
  38. What’s up with Ethan
  39. Remixing Verdi with Ableton Live
  40. Why is “Let It Go” such a big deal?
  41. Announcing the Peter Gabriel edition of Play With Your Music
  42. Participatory music vs presentational music
  43. Anatomy of a Disquiet Junto project
  44. Some contemporary classical music that I actually like
  45. Composing improvisationally with Ableton Live
  46. Marc Weidenbaum on remixes
  47. Recording Peter Gabriel’s Security
  48. Tabla Breakbeat Science is dropping an album
  49. Repetition defines music
  50. Play With Your Rhythm
  51. The state of the lullaby
  52. Play with your music theory
  53. Everyone can and should be making music
  54. TufAmerica suing Frank Ocean is ridiculous
  55. Video production is hard but fun
  56. Milo is walking
  57. The Red Hot Chili Peppers unplugged
  58. Fractal music
  59. Animated gifs and electronic music

2013 59

  1. Why is son clave so awesome?
  2. The Groove Pizza
  3. Reflections on the MOOC
  4. Thesis presentation
  5. My masters thesis is done
  6. Can science make a better music theory?
  7. Toward a better music theory
  8. My collection of transcribed rhythm patterns
  9. Analyzing the musical structure of “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel
  10. Teaching audio and MIDI editing in the MOOC
  11. Teaching expressive use of audio effects in the MOOC
  12. Teaching mixing in a MOOC
  13. Play With Your Music curriculum design – learning to listen
  14. Designing a music production MOOC
  15. Teaching math with the Drum Loop
  16. Tabla Breakbeat Science
  17. Software design as research
  18. Hip-hop transcriptions
  19. Constructivist learning and Scratch
  20. Against Music Theory – some commentary
  21. Against music theory
  22. Miley vs Sinéad
  23. ComposerQuest podcast with Marc Weidenbaum
  24. Experience designers design experiences
  25. Drum Loop programming lesson concept images
  26. Another radial drum machine
  27. Music students and maker culture
  28. Radial drum machine update
  29. Designing music learning experiences with technology
  30. Hi people in Alex’s class
  31. Why isn’t repetitive music boring to listen to?
  32. Hereditary units in music
  33. My process of composing music
  34. Minsky on music
  35. Listening like a musician
  36. Getting ready for the recording studio
  37. Making it easier to be musical
  38. What is polyphony?
  39. Why do suburban white kids like gangsta rap?
  40. How to promote flow in music students
  41. The Nirvana effect
  42. Computer improvisation
  43. The definition of music
  44. Rockism
  45. Where I’m at
  46. Friends don’t let friends clap on one and three
  47. The radial drum machine: background and inspiration
  48. The evolutionary origin of laughter
  49. The backbeat: a literature review
  50. My thesis proposal
  51. Is it boring to play repetitive music?
  52. User Interface Design for Music Learning Software
  53. Remixing “Here Comes The Sun” in 5.1 Surround
  54. Using Ableton Live to teach music
  55. Make the music with your mouth
  56. Carl Sagan explains why Pong is good for you
  57. Live at apexart
  58. Top tracks of 2012
  59. Did Yoko Ono break up the Beatles?

2012 45

  1. Meet Milo
  2. There’s joy in repetition
  3. Teaching the studio as instrument
  4. The Schizophonia of David Byrne, Brian Eno, and The Orb
  5. A modern classical fan responds
  6. Sonic analysis of “Tightrope” by Janelle Monáe
  7. Catch my presentation at the Ableton Advanced Users Meetup
  8. How has the representation of the human body changed in modern and contemporary art over the last 100 years?
  9. Nicest blog comment ever
  10. Toward a better music curriculum
  11. My top 100 jazz tracks
  12. The Disquiet Junto
  13. Silver Apples of the Moon
  14. Debating the morals of the mashup
  15. Frank Ocean’s Real Love
  16. Visualizing song structures
  17. My NPR debut
  18. Dreaming of a masters thesis
  19. User interface case study: iOS Garageband
  20. User interface case study: Propellerheads Figure
  21. High modernist electronic interfaces
  22. Graceland
  23. Who cares if you listen?
  24. My first foray into iOS music
  25. Inside Morton Subotnick’s studio
  26. Originality in Digital Music
  27. Sampling and semiotic democracy
  28. What we talk about when we talk about Kanye West
  29. Encoding emotion
  30. From my SoundCloud stats
  31. Programming languages as musical instruments
  32. Improvisation in music games
  33. Looping and stasis in Medúlla
  34. The post-fidelity era
  35. Teaching music with looping
  36. That ill tight sound
  37. Beatboxing and mashups are the new folk music
  38. What is an octave?
  39. Image schemas in music software
  40. What is the worst aspect of the United States of America?
  41. Grad school update
  42. Round Midnight
  43. How does jazz work?
  44. Who should you follow to keep up to date on digital music trends?
  45. How did Cher’s “Believe” come to be the first pop song to use Auto-Tune?

2011 83

  1. How do I learn to draw?
  2. What is the best song by a solo Beatle?
  3. Musical politicians
  4. What makes jazz great?
  5. Why do people watch music videos, especially tweens and teenagers?
  6. How did the word “groovy” come to acquire its current meaning?
  7. What are some ideas for making jazz more popular?
  8. Does free will exist?
  9. Who are some musicians whose work got better with age?
  10. The Lick
  11. How do you learn to remix/mashup songs?
  12. Updated social flow
  13. The best jazz versions of classical pieces
  14. Donner Social
  15. Where does the “Egyptian” melody originally come from?
  16. Is music the most abstract art form?
  17. What is the best live album?
  18. What are the main ideas and highlights of Gödel, Escher, Bach?
  19. Why do I grimace when I concentrate?
  20. The Makossa diaspora
  21. Visual remixes
  22. What are the greatest basslines ever?
  23. How do I learn to improvise music?
  24. What is the evolutionary purpose of dreaming?
  25. Visualizing music
  26. Who are the best mashup DJs?
  27. Why has the human brain evolved so much more than any other animals?
  28. How do you isolate samples like Girl Talk?
  29. Biggie Biggie Smalls Is The Illest
  30. Why do people like Girl Talk?
  31. Does teaching Intelligent Design in schools really damage science?
  32. What is the relationship between music and math?
  33. How is Earth’s gravity generated?
  34. Is Richard Dawkins helping science through his attacks on religion?
  35. My top five SoundCloud tracks
  36. Building a better dopamine awareness campaign
  37. Why hasn’t the recording industry sued Girl Talk?
  38. What does the human brain find exciting about syncopated rhythm and breakbeats?
  39. Tune-Yards
  40. Why do fake rumors such as vaccines causing child autism work?
  41. Is Dan Savage’s internet campaign against Rick Santorum moral?
  42. What are some possible innovations for Delicious going forward?
  43. Kid-friendly hip-hop recommendations
  44. Why does listening to music sometimes make you feel high?
  45. The Amen Break
  46. What goes on neurologically when a song gets stuck in your head?
  47. Jay-Z and Alan Lomax
  48. How do you know what key you’re in?
  49. Samples and community
  50. How do you have a career as a musician?
  51. What is the creative process like when writing a song?
  52. Probability
  53. Check The Rhime
  54. How is it possible to compose jazz when improvisation is an essential component?
  55. Reggie Watts
  56. How to groove
  57. Flute of Forgotten Dreams
  58. How does a computer work?
  59. How can you give an effective talk on a depressing topic without depressing your audience?
  60. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing
  61. What does “ye-yeah” and “baby” mean in the context of pop songs?
  62. What are all the genres of Western music and their typical characteristics?
  63. Is the album dead?
  64. Why is so much music written in 4-4?
  65. Why is music so important in our lives?
  66. Harmonica guide
  67. The major scale and the circle of fifths
  68. Interviewing Leo Ferguson
  69. Na Na Na Na
  70. Bach and Paul Simon
  71. Facebook and multiple identites
  72. Lost In The World
  73. The Facebook Effect
  74. Promoting music through social media
  75. Diminished chords and the blues
  76. The roof is on fire
  77. White people and hip-hop
  78. The freakiness of melodic minor
  79. Intro to minor keys
  80. The major scale modes
  81. Meet the major scale
  82. The blues scale
  83. Blues basics

2010 71

  1. The Delicious debacle
  2. Blues for the Jews
  3. The pentatonic box
  4. In praise of copying
  5. Hawaii, part five
  6. Hawaii, part four
  7. Hawaii, part three
  8. Hawaii, part two
  9. Hawaii, part one
  10. The mystical tritone
  11. Capturing sound
  12. Improvising electronica
  13. Empire State Of Mind
  14. Busta Rhymes has got you all in check
  15. Music in The Social Network
  16. The Mad Men theme and Autumn Leaves
  17. Cold Sweat in the Terrordome
  18. Eric B and Rakim
  19. The Champ
  20. Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it
  21. The complicated case of Antoine Dodson
  22. Michael Jackson lives
  23. Ashley’s Roachclip
  24. Nas Is Like
  25. Another social media flowchart
  26. Doctorin’ The Top Forty
  27. May the weak force be with you
  28. The Choice Is Yours
  29. INXS needs you tonight
  30. They Reminisce Over You
  31. Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough
  32. Michael Jackson, one year later
  33. Janelle Monáe and Randall Thompson
  34. Brand Nubian meets Edie Brickell
  35. My social media setup
  36. One for the treble, two for the bass
  37. Tommy The Cat
  38. Music theory for beginner guitarists
  39. Dig the big bang
  40. Muppet Silly Songs
  41. Hey! Wait!
  42. WordPress is why I love the internet
  43. Drum machine programming
  44. Blue notes and other microtones
  45. Bach to the future
  46. Do that stuff, aw do that stuff
  47. Life in one day
  48. Here comes the sun
  49. Tales of an Apple fanboy
  50. Impeach The President
  51. The Revenge Of The Nerds band
  52. What does live music mean in the laptop era?
  53. The Grateful Dead and electronica
  54. Moody’s Mood For Love
  55. Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition
  56. Glenn Gould predicts remix culture
  57. Scales and emotions
  58. Inside the recording process
  59. Songwriting and genealogy
  60. I’m speaking on a panel
  61. Le Freak, c’est chic
  62. Authenticity
  63. The case for sampling
  64. Imogen Heap and artificial harmony
  65. Copyright Criminals
  66. Bloom County and Michael Jackson
  67. Apache makes you go hmmm
  68. How to get web traffic from Google
  69. Resequencing the Funky Drummer’s DNA
  70. Open-source music
  71. Video remixes and mashups

2009 71

  1. Blue Christmas
  2. Billie Jean and lip-synching
  3. How we wrote this song
  4. Blogging is a real-time strategy game
  5. Coltrane was an analog remixer
  6. Female A Milli remixes
  7. Bitter Sweet Symphony
  8. Dancin’ On The Ceiling
  9. Don Draper and my dad
  10. Human Nature
  11. Kramer
  12. Breakdance
  13. Janet and Michael vs Molly and me
  14. DJ on the one and two
  15. Good old Grateful Dead
  16. Halo is a giant mashup
  17. Janet (Ms Jackson if you’re nasty)
  18. In spite of everything, I still listen to Kanye West all the time
  19. DDR at Turkey Day
  20. Who owns the Michael Jackson makossa chant?
  21. The web browser as a musical instrument
  22. Michael Jackson fan art
  23. Rhymefest is looking at the man in the mirror
  24. Lil Wayne’s productivity secrets
  25. Björk thought she could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of her
  26. The Beatles were an electronica band
  27. Game controllers as musical instruments
  28. His name is Prince, and he is funky
  29. Music at my house
  30. Real guitars are for old people
  31. Can robots DJ?
  32. Brian Eno writes songs with the mixing desk
  33. Sampling keyboards
  34. Loop mode: improvisation is composition is recording
  35. How musical instruments work
  36. Nah, na na na na nah na naah, Katamari Damacy!
  37. Auto-tune (is) the news
  38. A synthesizer is like an axe
  39. Clap your hands, stomp your feet
  40. Is clock time oppressive or liberating? Yes.
  41. Jazz Jazz Revolution
  42. Biz Markie gets the copyright smackdown
  43. Jimi Hendrix, electronic musician
  44. Mashups as micro-mixtapes
  45. The Doctor Who theme song: analog electronica
  46. Wow chicka wah-wah
  47. RIP MJ
  48. When The Levee Breaks
  49. Herbie Hancock gets future shock
  50. Bad meaning good
  51. God don’t ever give me nothing I can’t handle, so please don’t ever give me records I can’t sample
  52. How to make a hot beat
  53. Human technology is part of nature
  54. Self-reference in computer programming and hip-hop
  55. The Michael Jackson sample map goes viral
  56. Songwriting and computer programming
  57. The natural history of the Funky Drummer break
  58. The desktop metaphor is, like, so five minutes ago
  59. So what is the big deal with Einstein?
  60. Be brave, go ahead and divide by zero
  61. Learning music theory with Auto-Tune
  62. The Minus World and the Blue Screen Of Death
  63. Brain vs computer: which is better?
  64. Inside the black box
  65. How transistors think
  66. Is technological progress good or bad? Yes.
  67. No one has ever written an original song
  68. Twitter, jazz and moving music forward into the stone age
  69. In the sequencer, the notation is the performance
  70. Robot counting for humans
  71. Fun facts from the usage logs

2008 6

  1. Why I love Gawker
  2. Digital audio is just long lists of numbers
  3. In praise of Auto-tune
  4. Visual outlining with Flickr
  5. Social bookmarking is delicious
  6. How to write something long and complicated