Music appearing in this episode:

* Ella Fitzgerald - "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1957)

* Tchaikovsky - "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" (1892)

* The Duke Ellington Orchestra - "Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance Of The Sugar-Plum Fairy)" (1960)

* JS Bach - Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043 I. Vivace (c. 1730)

* Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli & Eddie South - "Improvisation on the 1st Movement of D Minor Concerto by JS Bach" (1933)

* John Lee Hooker - "It Serves You Right to Suffer" (1966)

* The Duke Ellington Orchestra - "Overture" (1960)

* McCoy Tyner - "Contemplation" (1967)

* Hank Williams - "Lovesick Blues" (1949)

* Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys - "Bring It On Down To My House" (1946)

* Stevie Wonder - "Superstition" (1972)

* The Headhunters - "God Make Me Funky" (1975)

* James Brown - "The Funky Drummer Parts 1 & 2" (1970)

* Janet Jackson - "What Have You Done for Me Lately" (1986)

* John Coltrane - "Trane's Slo Blues" (1957) - I incorrectly identified Elvin Jones as the drummer on this recording; it is actually Art Taylor

* Slum Village - "Get Dis Money" (2000)

* J Dilla - "Bars & Twists" (2010)

I reference Milton Mermikides’ paper “‘Straight and Late’: Analytical Perspectives on Coltrane’s Time-feel” and Dan Charnas’ book Dilla Time, both of which are excellent. Check out some more swing visualization and auralization.

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Music appearing in this episode:

Skip James - "Devil Got My Woman" (1931)

Robert Johnson - "Kindhearted Woman Blues" (1936)

Charlie Christian - "Waiting for Benny" (1941)

Duke Ellington - "Far Away Blues" (1946)

John Lee Hooker - "Boogie Chillen" (1948)

Little Walter Jacobs - "Juke" (1952)

Muddy Waters - "Standing Around Crying" (1952)

The Osborne Brothers - "Ruby" (1957)

Thelonious Monk - "Functional" (1957)

Johnny Cash - "Big River" (1958)

Elizabeth Cotten - "Freight Train" (1958) (I say that it’s in C, but the guitar is tuned down a whole step, so while she’s playing in C, it sounds in Bb)

Elizabeth Cotten - "Honey Babe Your Papa Cares For You" (1958)

Charles Mingus - "Better Git It In Your Soul" (1959)

The Beatles - "A Hard Day's Night" (1964)

Aretha Franklin - "Chain of Fools" (1968)

Sam and Dave - "I Thank You" (1968)

BB King - "The Thrill Is Gone" (1969)

Nina Simone - "Nobody's Fault But Mine" (1969)

Jackson 5 - "ABC" (1970)

Grateful Dead - "Tennessee Jed" (1972)

Al Green - "Love and Happiness" (1972)

Curtis Mayfield - "Pusherman" (1972)

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - "I Love Rock n Roll" (1981)

Patrice Rushen - "Forget Me Nots" (1982)

Herbie Hancock - "Rockit" (1983)

Prince - "7" (1992)

Dawn Penn - "You Don't Love Me (No No No)" (1994)

Carly Rae Jepsen - "Call Me Maybe" (2012)

Beyoncé - "Texas Hold Em" (2024)

Tikar Woman - "Grinding Song" (1995)

Led Zeppelin - "When The Levee Breaks" (1971)

Napoleon Strickland - "Key to the Bushes (Jitterbug Version)" (1995)

Check out Miles Okazaki’s demonstration of guitar harmonics.

Panos Charalampidis’ video tutorial on blues pitch zones is a must-watch.

Here’s the 60 Minutes interview with Miles Davis from 1989.

This blog post explains the possible just intonation basis for blue notes in more depth.

I explain more about Hohner’s just intonation tuning for harmonicas here.

Gerhard Kubik lays out his theory that blue notes originate in West African tuning systems in his book Africa and the Blues. I also recommend this interview he did with Afropop Worldwide.

Jeff Titon’s book Early Downhome Blues is one of the best musicological analyses of the blues.

Court Cutting’s empirical study of blue note tuning is one of the few such studies out there.

Hear the “just intonation blues scale” in musical context.

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Tracks featured in this episode:

“You Are My Sunshine” by the Pine Ridge Boys (1939)

“You Are My Sunshine” by Ray Charles (1962)

Read more about Ray’s arrangement and see a transcription here. Read more about Black artists in country here.

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In this episode, I use “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” by Stevie Wonder (1973) as a jumping off point to contemplate the headache of naming notes and chords in keys with a lot of flats and sharps in them. The confusion stems from the fact that Western European note naming conventions got established in a time before twelve-tone equal temperament, when E-flat and D-sharp were two very different notes. We pretend that they are the same for practical reasons, but that comes at the expense of a naming system that no longer makes sense.

Something that I forgot to mention is that in Western European convention, the rule is that you only use each letter name once per major or minor key. So we spell the notes in E-flat minor like so: E-flat, F, G-flat, A-flat, B-flat, C-flat, D-flat. That C-flat might offend your intuition. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just call it B? Yes, it would, and people often incorrectly do, but it’s not what you’re supposed to do. I always thought this rule was arcane and arbitrary until I found it out that when it was established, B and C-flat sounded different from each other, and B would have sounded horrendous in E-flat minor. I know all this tuning business seems remote from practicality, but for myself at least, understanding the history of tuning is simpler than taking the illogic of twelve-tone equal temperament at face value.

The other thing I neglected to mention is that I was able to do all that Pythagorean tuning using a plugin called MTS-ESP by Oddsound. Ableton Live has some cool tuning features built in as of version 12, but if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of tuning systems, you need something more robust. MTS-ESP has a learning curve to it, but once I got the hang of it, I was able to fill some big holes in my understanding, both intellectually and intuitively. You will be hearing more about tuning in future episodes.

Read more about Pythagorean and the so-called “circle” of fifths here.

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There’s a particular passage in one of McCoy Tyner’s piano solos with John Coltrane that I adore. In his right hand, McCoy is playing the blues. In his left hand, he is playing a mysterious chord. This episode is about that chord.

The music you hear at the beginning and end is an original track of mine called “Voice Leading.” Other pieces of music discussed, in order of appearance:

“Lonnie’s Lament” by John Coltrane (1964)

“Alleluia, Nativitas Gloriose Virginis Marie (Organum Triplum Du Maître Pérotin)” (c. 1200), performed by Dominique Vellard & Ensemble Gilles Binchois

“Le fils des étoiles: Prélude du premier acte. La vocation” by Erik Satie (1892), performed by Bertrand Chamayou

“So What” by Miles Davis (1959)

“Cold Sweat, Pts. 1 & 2” by James Brown (1967)

“My Favorite Things” by John Coltrane (1961)

“Freedom Jazz Dance” by Eddie Harris (1961)

“Freedom Jazz Dance” by Miles Davis (1967)

“Maiden Voyage” by Herbie Hancock

“It's About That Time” by Miles Davis (1969)

“Everybody Loves The Sunshine” by Roy Ayers (1976)

“Star Trek: The Next Generation theme” by Jerry Goldsmith (1987)

A note to copyright holders: I use short clips of the above recordings for educational purposes. In every instance, I believe this to be protected as fair use in the USA, fair dealing in the UK and EEA, and similar exceptions in other nations’ copyright laws. I do not use any recordings in their entirety, and the excerpts that I do use are edited into analytical commentary, making this usage transformative in nature. This podcast is an educational resource, one which has no negative effect on the market for the works excerpted. Any DMCA notices (or equivalent in other jurisdictions) will be contested.

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I have been thinking about doing a podcast for a long time, but I couldn’t think of the right format. I didn’t want to just freestyle into the mic, but I also couldn’t think of a more structured way to approach it. But I’ve been listening to the great 500 Songs podcast lately, and it inspired me. To get started, I decided to talk about a song that I have loved since I was eleven years old, and one that I have talked about any time I have taught a class on music technology, popular music theory or copyright. The idea of manipulating an existing piece of music on a turntable as a form of musical expression is such a futuristic and crazy idea. You’re playing a song as a musical instrument to create a new song! What a concept.

I like weaving in the music that I’m talking about as much as possible to make the podcast a musical experience unto itself. This is a labor-intensive process, so we’ll see how sustainable it is, but I enjoy doing it and I hope people enjoy listening to it. The music you hear at the beginning and end is an original track of mine called “Voice Leading.” Other pieces of music discussed, in order of appearance:

“Peter Piper” by Run-DMC (1986)

“Take Me To The Mardi Gras” by Paul Simon (1973)

“Take Me To The Mardi Gras” by Bob James (1973)

“Rise and Shine” by Tommy Cash (1970)

"I Can't Stop" by John Davis & The Monster Orchestra (1976)

"Work It" by Missy Elliott (2002)

"King of the Beats" by Mantronix (1988)

"The Power" by Snap (1990)

A note to copyright holders: I use short clips of the above recordings for educational purposes. In every instance, I believe this to be protected as fair use in the USA, fair dealing in the UK and EEA, and similar exceptions in other nations’ copyright laws. I do not use any recordings in their entirety, and the excerpts that I do use are edited into analytical commentary, making this usage transformative in nature. This podcast is an educational resource, one which has no negative effect on the market for the works excerpted. Any DMCA notices (or equivalent in other jurisdictions) will be contested.

Get full access to Ethan teaches you music at ethanhein.substack.com/subscribe