samuel beckett was born on this day 120 years ago. astonishing to think that if he had survived, and could run 100m in 9.57 seconds, he would be not only the oldest but also the fastest man in the world - together with his nobel prize for literature, an astonishing trifecta

Yeah, if you are shocked that a suddenly popular band is the beneficiary of a well-coordinated PR campaign, I have some news for you about the past hundred years of popular music

C'EST AVRIL 14 AUJOURD'HUI MES AMIS

Turbot Ax

Sure, no better way to connect with the youth than by referencing the late wine columnist for the American Spectator

Very flat whites this morning, presumably.

This is the guy I voted for

So! My buddy Derek and I have launched a music school! It's called Tuniversity and it was motivated by two different things: people want to study with us who don't attend NYU, and NYU does not have enough classes for us to teach. Our first songwriting class starts next month. tuniversityny.com

"People have started to believe that having an idea is the same thing as making art... You didn't even make that by typing in the prompt. The computer did, by stealing. If you didn't make the thing, you don't get to take credit for saying what if this thing was a thing?"

“I wonder why my bros who refer to non-white people as NPCs aren’t more committed to the concept of Imago Dei?”

Pundit brain has it that Trump's pope-baiting, Easter profanity, etc., are meaningfully offensive to Christians, but if you call yourself a Christian and have supported Trump through (among other things) ICE murdering innocents and kidnapping children, I don't see how the past week will flip you.

What could possibly go wrong

Lot to unpack here

I am delighted to announce the launch of Tuniversity, my new music learning venture with my NYU colleague Derek Fawcett. We're having an inaugural meetup in NYC in a couple weeks, and our first online songwriting class starts in May. Lots more to come. tuniversityny.com

Anxious travelers: what are treating our motion sickness and existential dread with? I have been using benzos for this and they work great but can, you know, kill you, so I would like a non-opioid solution

Sometimes infants go to the emergency room. Fever this. Earache that. This is perfectly healthy infants! Happens. Even with insurance, an unplanned emergency room visit can cost between $100 and $500. So while fashy dudes talk about birth rate, some couple in a 1BR is delaying starting a family.

My kids, whenever I try to put on jazz or hip-hop instrumentals or ambient or anything remotely challenging: "Can we listen to, like, a song"

I read this as "Shriekback is due for a rediscovery by popular culture" which is also true

20-something millennial feminists got mild traction on tumblr and twitter for like four entire years and now every major media corporation is like "toy story 6 should be about the dangers of race mixing"

I'm reviewing another automated music transcription tool for MusicRadar, and as with the first one I reviewed, it gets the pitches right 99% of the time even when they're in complex cluster chords, but it interprets the rhythms wrong.

I'm reading all this Derek Thompson stuff about how going to church benefits individuals and societies in a million different ways and I'm sure that's true but, like, is there a way to do it that doesn't involve so much... church

(I hate that I know the answer to this🫤) Buying a motorcycle and riding it dangerously (no helmet, too fast) is an extremely common way for men to try to deal with unresolved grief from loss. It's so common that the US military loses more soldiers to motorcycle crashes than to combat.

My favorite thing in black metal is when there’s a big epic buildup, orchestral keyboards and arpeggiated guitars and stuff, and at the exact right moment the singer comes in with “BWAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGH”

New on the podcast: how Aretha Franklin's gospel music makes even this secular Jew feel the spirit open.substack.com/pub/ethanhei...

It goes like this, the fourth (F), the fifth (G), the minor fall (Am) and the major lift (F). Then G, E7/G#, Am. The E7 is the V7 chord in A minor. Secondary dominants are very often there to create chromatic voice leading.

David Duchovny played a transgender woman, Denise, on Twin Peaks in 1990 and when greeting Cooper, the show's protagonist, she says, "I prefer Denise, if you don't mind" and Cooper responds with "OK" and her identity is settled within a couple seconds and was a non-issue, 36 years ago.

Today in class we were listening to "Try a Little Tenderness" and someone pointed out the "Otis" sample, and I was like.................yeah

the guys walking around in shoes that don’t fit are not gonna do a 25th Amendment

Writing the notes and flash cards is how the studying takes place. Running your eyes over them afterwards is just extra b

i think if you tweet "a whole civilization will die tonight" you shouldn't go to the hague, the hague should get to come to you

In 1953 Iran had a functioning democracy. A free press. Seven political parties. Women in universities. Women granted voting rights in municipal councils in 1952. A secular prime minister named Mosaddegh who believed Iran's oil belonged to Iran. The US and Britain decided he had to go.

Non-jazz arrangements of "My Favorite Things" are so hilarious. Like, I'm sorry, that's a Coltrane tune now, do it right

Whoops! Turns out we weren’t draining your educational system we were holding it together with outrageous international student tuition. Unfortunately, the only people who could have predicted this was anyone who has ever looked at a university budget even briefly.

New podcast episode about Aretha Franklin's gospel singing is in the can, will take a while to edit though

Happy birthday Merle Haggard www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRC...

Productivity has increased by 300% over the last 50 years, and yet we endure far more precarity because the fruits of that have been skimmed off to the 1%. There is absolutely no reason to believe further 'abundance' will be any different.

I'm reading A Visit From The Goon Squad and it's so good that when I lost track of who all the characters were halfway through I happily started over again

David Bruce helpfully unpacks the meters in that Angine de Poitrine video www.youtube.com/watch?v=frXX...

Bridgerton is a similar show to Game of Thrones, with the important difference that Game of Thrones is much sillier and shallower

Having a friend in their early 20s is fun because they text me at 11:30 pm when I have been asleep for hours and I text them back at 9:00 am when they will not be awake for hours

Donald Trump has seen the light of Islam inshallah.

‘Nurse, it looks like he’s trying to speak! What is it sir, what are you trying to say?’ “C…ca…caps lock”

It's GOOD for writers to blast you with how you can support the work they produce. Do y'all not like books? Who hurt you! You have a problem with being surrounded by notice of people's writing all around you? Well shit I love it. It's a beautiful milieu. Makes me very much at home.

If there a better explanation for this than, "the GOP has been parasitized by a foreign power and is working to make America weaker in every possible arena," I haven't seen it.

I had a lovely afternoon walking around Prospect Park with a buddy... until we came to the adult Quidditch game. Come on people.

It does feel good to go from behind on grading to less behind on grading

If you are writing a chart, please put chord symbols above the vocal melody, not above the piano part. This is because the chord symbols are for guitarists, who are following the melody (or, more accurately, the lyrics).

people who watch/ listen to stuff with their phones on speaker on the subway are history’s greatest monsters

If you want revenge, then dig two graves. the first one is a practice grave to get a feel for it and the second is your main or "show grave"

Grading students' transcription assignments, they are getting the music almost always exactly right, I'm pretty much just commenting on accidentals and beaming of rhythms