“Aesthetics is to me as an artist must be what ornithology is like to a bird.”– Barnett Newman, an artist Someone broached the subject of aesthetics, specifically the Japanese idea of Ma, meaning negative space, […]
Category: theory
The one true path to knowledge
I am referring to, of course, the autopsy. Obviously. This fascinating by which I mean abominable study has been brought to my attention, scientifically examining the “micro timing” of Charlie Watts’s drumming in the context […]
Counting system overhaul – 01
This guy gets it. Severely long two-part nerd item alert— the following post is an embarrassing mess that will be perhaps useful/entertaining for music teachers and others who think about this stuff all day every […]
What time signature it’s “really” in
A little sidebar on the subject of time signatures, everyone’s favorite topic to be confused about. We’re resolving a lot of little outstanding issues here lately. Time signatures (I prefer the word meter) are a little […]
A player’s analysis of drumming
For a long time I’ve been thinking about developing a system of analysis for drumming, like the harmonic analysis you do in college theory courses, deciding the function of every note in a composition. Doing […]
Here is the deal with 6/8 time
I had an interesting interaction on a drumming forum recently— it’s ongoing actually— there was an extremely long and frustrating conversation involving a whole lot of basic misunderstandings about rhythm and meter. A user is […]
Common time
The pedant is a disturbingly-slender, reedy-voiced, scrutinous man. There’s a lot of confusion about rhythm, making the subject an easy target for low-grade, often barely-informed pedantry. See any internet music forum, or rehearsal of college […]
Triplets vs. not-triplets
This is a pretty fine point of theory, but it comes up a lot on this site, so I want to state my thinking about it, so I can link to it every time it […]
Microtiming jive
Microtiming is a term that gives me hives every time I hear musicians use it. To me it suggests misaligned priorities, a disappearance up one’s own rear end, and the resulting degraded musical abilities. The […]
Drumming/jazz glossary roundup
Here I have briefly reviewed a selection of drumming and related glossaries from around the web. Writing definitions requires a special type of mind and writing skill, and is a pretty tedious, thankless task, so […]