The 500 Songs episode about James Brown's "Please Please Please" features this Little Richard song that is a fantastically clear example of melodic-harmonic divorce in the blues. www.youtube.com/watch?v=undi...

Happening now in war ravaged Portland: the city's Parks and Recreation Department (the most subversive of all government entities, is giving away trees.

Everyone hates memorizing key signatures, right? I never did memorize them in any systematic way, I just wrote, played and improvised enough music in enough different keys to eventually just kind of absorb them by osmosis. My method works great but it takes 20 years. Is there a faster way?

This only happens to you once

I was afraid this was for something sinister but no it's just something asinine www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

the political policy cure for “male loneliness” is - more time to hang with the fellas (4 day work week) - more money to spend with the fellas (higher wages) - more things to do with the fellas (taxing the rich and building 3rd spaces)

A nation of Sea-Doo enthusiasts with ideas about people on food stamps that would scare Ted Cruz

This is the weirdest intersection of two fandoms that I nevertheless understood. #CunkOnArrakis

Hey teachers of tonal theory, if you need to give beginners a challenge in identifying I, IV and V in various keys, give them "I Walk The Line"

Fun fact from the 500 Songs podcast: Johnny Cash, as an air force radio operator, was the first American to learn of the death of Stalin

Guy in my neighborhood is wearing a t-shirt that just says PIZZA, and, true

Last night in Tech Trends class we were talking Ableton's wonderful Learning Synths site. learningsynths.ableton.com

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

I have to admit it's very funny that just yesterday JD Vance was shedding his crocodile tears about the debased state of discourse and how people were baselessly calling certain people Nazis and today Alex Jones shows up dressed as Hitler, talking about how it drives the ladies wild

Because I don't love myself I have been rewatching Succession and wondering how you might map different characters onto people in the Trump administration

Correlation vs Causation #tylenol #acetaminophen

I think it’s really magical that we (Americans) get to experience first hand what we did to the Soviet Union when it fell. Poetic justice maybe

Aretha Franklin week continued in pop transcription class today and the kids were INTO IT. My goal is to identify some specific Aretha-isms in terms of melody, harmony, time and timbre, and put into words at least some of what makes her sound so excellent.

Heck yes maxread.substack.com/p/what-if-th...

If Zohran wanted to fire and replace the entire leadership of the MTA that would be fine by me

Tomorrow in class we're comparing Aretha Franklin recordings of songs with other people's. It's enlightening! "Respect" vs Otis Redding, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" vs Carole King, "The Weight" vs The Band, "The Long and Winding Road" vs the Beatles.

I had my pop transcription students transcribe the melodies to various versions of "Watermelon Man", including the ones by Mongo Santamaria and Poncho Sanchez. I got 31 different charts showing 31 different plausible interpretations of the rhythms. It has been fun comparing them all.

If you like contra dance, check out the Kickstarter for Blind Carbon Copy's debut album, they feature my buddy Chris Jacoby who is an ace practitioner of the genre www.kickstarter.com/projects/car...

A person in my life generated a song with Suno about a thing, and her intentions might have been positive but man, if she couldn't be bothered to write the song, what possible reason is there for me to listen to it

Do any of the professors or journalists or teachers also get their jobs back or nah

Rosh Hashonah dinner turned into a jam session, always a nice thing to have happen at a family gathering. Say what you want about the Grateful Dead but if you have some acoustic guitars and some people with varying levels of singing ability, those tunes work extremely well

He's funnier than I realized

the US if Tylenol actually caused autism

Big day today www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCd...

every bluesky post: the democrats are pathetic, democracy is dying and all they can do is write strongly worded letters every x post: the democrats murdered charlie kirk and they're going to murder you next

I'm torn because I would love to have had more of it, more time with the characters, more seeing the nitty-gritty of different stories playing out

Updating my CV and you know what, it's a pretty impressive CV! Someone should put me on their faculty full time. www.ethanhein.com/wp/cv/

My new weight loss strategy is constant biopsies

All we are doing in class this week is analyzing Aretha and man is that ever what the doctor ordered. Maybe we will be able to put into words what makes her the greatest? Probably not! But we will enjoy trying

dudes rock

God, what an incredibly distracting news cycle. I for one have completely forgotten about the Epstein files

Somebody got the memo that every single rural hospital was going to have to shut down

The fun thing about Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace film is that you're like, who is that one white lady getting down in the back, and oh it's Mick Jagger www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPqq...

John Lee Hooker with a diagram of the evolution of the Blues.

Happy Earth, Wind and Fire Day to all who celebrate www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPwG...

Just bought tix for the fam to see Mavis Staples in February and am very glad to be in a room with her while we still can

Wait Rachel Sennott is NOT JEWISH? How?

It's honestly kind of sadistic of me to make students transcribe Aretha. Pick any bar of "Dr Feelgood." How would you notate it? Could you even? You would have to simplify and quantize substantially.

I can explain the term "the woke right." The logic: 1) I denounced "wokeness" for years, proclaiming it dire threat to free speech, a civilizational danger 2) This fascism I was downplaying while focused on wokeness seems actually bad 3) Since I am by definition never wrong, the fascism is wokeness

I will day this, the Disney Adults have proven themselves much more ready to meet this moment than any Harry Potter Adult has.

My sort of crank, not thought through theory is that as MBA brain has proliferated, management of businesses has gotten more and more divorced from the particulars of the businesses they’re managing, and CEOs’ jobs are “business” in the same way Ken’s job is “beach.”

Next week my pop transcriptions have to pick an Aretha Franklin song and transcribe eight bars of her lead vocal. Western notation is... not the right tool for the job, but it's the one I'm asking them to use.

just saw a tiktok from a disney adult reading from On Tyranny and asking their followers to cancel their d+ and disney trips omg

My friend at Soros is freaking out that Trump is gunning for them, and it's nuts because I have now had several friends work there and they are all the most thoughtful, the kindest, the most earnest, the most eager to help. Think children's librarians or volunteer firefighters. That's who they are.

This is funniest possible headline for a song literally called "Song for Bob Dylan"