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Many rock melodies – defining “melody” as the notes sung by the singer – are really simple. Unless you’ve picked them apart, you might not be aware how simple many [...]

As cello students, we have to learn how to hit our notes in the middle, wham, right in tune first time. Add the carefully planned shifts with their pre-shift preparations and post-shift accents [...]

Just caught one tune on KBCS.fm from this album (dropped June 2016 by the eminent KD Lang and two talented colleagues), and instantly heard more cello-esque strings than normal so of course had [...]

Radiohead’s 2016 tune Burn the Witch is based on a driving, propulsive, edgy riff played by what sounds like a string section, i.e., not produced electronically, something Radiohead [...]

This is a paraphrase of something great Tom Waits says in the middle of the Netflix original rockumentary “Keith Richards: Under the Influence”, which I recommend to anyone who cares [...]

This amazing smack down of Western Euro-centric classical music really rang my bell. This is from “Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music”, by Derek Bailey: The petrifying [...]

Here is a section from the New Yorker, May 13 1950, a re-issue of Lillian Ross’ portrait of Ernest Hemingway when he was 50 or so, visiting New York City at a time that he was living mostly [...]