New headliner announced for the Freedom 250 concert

Like do you really think the Associate Vice Provost for Austerity is going to say “Oh, we would never dream of letting anyone but *subject-matter PhDs* do the prompt engineering that now constitutes instruction in all our courses” 🤔

The worst case scenario but a plausible enough one

Oh no

This weekend I'm going to a conference about teaching music history because a) I'm teaching music history for the first time in the fall and b) I got a grant to attend. My main question is going to be, how do you keep the kids from treating the class as an obstacle they have to climb over?

This rules. Absolutely the funniest possible outcome. The president of the United States filling in as the headliner of a concert because Milli Vanilli canceled.

I like how they're calling Talarico gay or whatever but then there's a photo of him wearing ankle socks and chunky running shoes and an ill fitting too large button up TUCKED IN to his Kohls shorts and, look, man

If you read your Antonio Damasio, you know that thoughts are comprised of emotions, not somehow separate from them

adult swim used to be muzak for your dealer’s house but now it’s baby sensory videos for the ambitionless boyfriends of bisexual women

This guy Balatros

Someone asked me the other day, “If Trump can just do whatever he wants, then a Democratic president can too. why is Medicare for All impossible? Why are reparations impossible? Why is anything off the table?”

I need to think out loud about my writing life for a second, indulge me.

I find jazz at this tempo to mostly be stressful but if anybody can make it sound musical, it's Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIq5...

I need a WhoSampled type site for quotes in jazz solos

Via Ethan Iverson, Mark Stryker's great Sonny Rollins listening guide open.substack.com/pub/iverson/...

"Why are people so negative about the economy?" Consider this. There are two possibilities: 1) He's right and my livelihood is screwed. Maybe not 18 months but soon. 2) He's full of shit, it won't happen, and AI is a giant bubble that will crash the economy. Why would I feel good about either?

Hacks stuck the landing

New on the pod, a look at one of my favorite Sonny Rollins tunes open.substack.com/pub/ethanhei...

Miss me with the AI slop header image but I am glad to see nerds embracing Nicola Vicentino cdm.link/microtonalit...

Quick, summarize America in one headline

Writing isn't my main gig, but I do get paid for it sometimes, and AI has less than no value to me

While we're doing AI discourse: when I was 20 years old, I somehow got it into my head that music has to be "authentic" to be good. So, no sampling, no drum machines, no MIDI; the only acceptable music was played live on acoustic instruments.

Where is the Homestar Runner of AI

With most tech, the users figure out what it's for, how it makes their days better. They tried to sell us phones and phone calls, we realised it was a camera that texted. They set up an electronic college yearbook, we realised it was a noticeboard for memes. No one's figured out what AI is *for*.

As we celebrate the Milestone Davis centennial it's important that the youth understand that Milestones is better than Kind of Blue

In case you were dropped on your head as a child and you think that generative AI belongs in music school, Adam is here to disabuse you of that idea www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfeG...

Cool cool cool

JFC new IEA report shows: orders for fossil methane plants for data centres are bigger in the US than they for *any other country for any other reason* (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) "if data centres were a country, they would be the second-largest destination for gas turbines ordered from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026"

hard manual labor builds character, says guy who just wrote a musical

At this point, sure. Why not.

We're at the halfway point of the first Tuniversity songwriting workshop and talking about what the next one is going to be. One possibility is to do a workshop specifically about writing in pairs and larger teams, since that's how things mainly happen in the commercial world. tuniversityny.com

TIL that Sonny Rollins adapted "St Thomas" from a calypso tune that his mother sang him called "Sponger Money" www.youtube.com/watch?v=DArp...

Listening to people's recordings of "Sonnymoon for Two" and aside from Sonny Rollins, everyone plays it too fast. Shoutout to Hank Crawford for his grown folks tempo. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dynm...

Ok this is a truly great tweet

The Williamsburg needs to be renamed the Sonny Rollins Bridge.

Happy birthday Stevie Nicks ethanhein.bandcamp.com/album/dreams...

Removing headphone jacks from mobile devices led directly to people just playing sound from their speakers in public

People don't long for "inconvenience." They long for permanence. And though streaming services may be convenient, people are waking up to the fact that we are paying rent-seeking middle men month after month for things we will never actually own.

"We found 222 compromised passwords" No you didn't you found 1 password that was compromised 222 times

In honor of Sonny Rollins' passing and Miles Davis' 100th birthday, let's enjoy listening to them playing together on Sonny's tune "Doxy" www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_nu...

RIP Sonny Rollins, a great jazz talent and the last surviving musician in one of the best photos of men in suits during the 20th century

RIP Sonny Rollins. I got to see him twice. First time was just okay, the second time was one of the most memorable musical performances I have ever witnessed. They opened with St Thomas. The trombonist got the first solo. He hit a clam at one point but recovered and kept going.

Nice simple ear trainer for just intonation thirds and fifths pancakezik.github.io/pureintervals/

No lies detected

The clickbait headline is annoying, the guy coins new terminology unnecessarily, and the image is nightmare-inducing, but the main point is a good one: bebop is not chord-scale theory. It's voice leading through triads, mostly the tonic triad, plus chromatic approaches. youtu.be/gRnBvxzkMdo?...

I know 80s Miles is a tough sell but Paul Thompson makes as good a case as a person could www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E9S...

Another thought about going to my wife's college reunion. It's rare as an adult to be in a big group of strangers who are all exactly the same age and who are culturally so homogenous. I knew a dozen or so people there but mostly was meeting people for the first time.

Parenting is profoundly personal, there is no foolproof blueprint and no parent wants advice unless they’ve specifically asked for it. That said, don’t force your children to compete for control of your media empire after your death

Ok serious question for #AcademicSky or anyone. We have all of these odious "the problem with higher ed is its too woke" books and think pieces, but do we have any "the problem with higher ed is it is not nearly woke enough" books and think pieces?