Videos

  • “Random Music-Making Things”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er9M22Hil9g

  • Stone Temple Pilots: Vasoline

  • Ghanaian drummers

    We experience time as simultaneously linear (on a timeline) and cyclic (on a clock)–a fact that turns out to be interesting mathematically.  How is this music organized in time? What are the roles of the individual drummers?

  • Vacuum Cleaner “Music”?

    From the film The Triplets of Belleville (Chomet 2003).  When is a vacuum player “music?” Is the presence of the audience and stage relevant to what we call “music,” or not?

  • The “music” of silence

    Is John Cage’s 4’33” music? If not, what about the silences (“rests”) in the middle of a song? Here’s an interview with Cage in which he challenges common assumptions about music.  An interesting contrast to the definition I proposed–“music is the art of organizing sound in time”–is made by him here: “If music is the “enjoyment” of…

  • Rap in Sign Language

    Disregarding the backing beat, is this rapper a musician?    

  • Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano

    Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) turned to player pianos because they could reproduce complicated rhythms that were impossible for a human to play precisely. He also used different types of symmetry to compose pieces such as this canon. These symmetries are visually evident in the rolls themselves.

  • Tāla in Carnatic Classical Music

    Carnatic classical music from south India uses a collection of rhythmic structures called tālas.  Each tāla is cyclic and organizes time in a particular way, including the number of beats per cycle.  In this video, the performer’s hand gestures indicate the tāla. These same gestures could accompany any piece using this tāla. Compare also the hand gestures used in the American tradition of shape-note singing and this…

  • James Brown’s Groove

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV95pdw3pDw James Brown, “The Godfather of Soul,” discusses grooves in his music in this 2005 interview with Terry Gross of NPR (starting around 3:00). He compares two versions of the “I Got You” groove.  He also describes how his groove shifted with his 1965 song “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag.” 

  • Knee Play 1 by Philip Glass

    Philip Glass wrote Knee Play 1 for his 1976 opera “Einstein on the Beach.” Glass has said that numbers were sung to help the chorus learn the difficult rhythm patterns.  He intended to eventually replace them with other lyrics, but changed his mind.