Thanks to Australian composer, professor and fellow computer geek Matthew Hindson, I’m excited this morning to announce a version of my theory pages localized for British and Australian musicians! This is the first (and, admittedly, easiest) translated versions of Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People that are currently in progress, thanks to the efforts of an …
Category Archives: music theory
Whoa I Guess a Lot of People Like Music Theory
Between appearing on Hacker News in October and on Classic FM last week, my theory pages have been getting quite a bit of attention, which has been fun. It made me think I should go back and make all those corrections and updates I’ve been meaning to make! So I did… I fixed a bunch …
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New Pages
I’ve finally gotten around to working a bit more on my theory review pages, and I’ve added three more pages in the Species Counterpoint section. I plan to add one more (Species I in three voices) and then I’ll move on to more twentieth-century pages. When will that happen? Maybe later today. Maybe next year! …
The Devil Went Down To Leipzig
In response and homage to Ryan Laney’s fugue of the same name, in which he used the famous fiddle riff from the Charlie Daniels Band’s famous song as the subject. The Devil went down to Leipzig, he was looking for another soul Had a date with a doc down in Auerbach’s… but he had time …
Ch-ch-ch-changes
As many of you know, I’ve been in the process of applying to other schools for a tenure-track teaching position. Because of this, I’ve been putting off making some changes to the way I teach my classes, figuring that upon moving to a new school, I’ll likely need to make some significant adjustments anyway. Well, …
A Small Gift to My Students
My dad told me a story once about when he was a boy growing up in Kansas City. One of the neighborhood kids had found out that he was related to Daniel Boone. Of course, at the time, Daniel Boone was a superstar and coonskin caps were a frequent sight in any group of kids. …
Aural Skills is a Funny Thing
I’ve never met anyone who wanted to be an Aural Skills teacher when they grew up. For you non-music-majors out there reading this: (First of all, why are you reading this?) Aural Skills is a set of courses that music majors are required to take, generally as freshmen and sophomores, which help them learn ear …
Goodbye, MUS 113-170; We Hardly Knew Thee
So yesterday in our weekly Academic Area meeting we made a small change that should save a lot of grief. For those of you unfamiliar with UNC Music Theory, here’s the deal: theory students, in addition to registering for a theory class, must also register for a zero-credit-hour lab section. This section represents Theory Keyboard …
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The Tao of Grading Systems
Most people seem to enjoy my classes, but most of my students are in agreement regarding their hatred of the seven-point grading system I have used. I can understand their dislike for it, and I can understand the reasons. I don’t generally go into detail in my classes about the reasons for using this system, …