Breaking Down Sonny Rollins’ Catchiest Tune
A personal OpEd on one of Sonny Rollins’ most classic melodies, and a reframed way to improvise within blues-infused modern jazz.
Ethan Hein is a Doctoral Fellow in Music Education at New York University. He teaches music technology, production and education at NYU and Montclair State University. With the NYU Music Experience Design Lab, Ethan has taken a leadership role in the creation of new technologies for learning and expression, most notably the Groove Pizza. He is the instructor of the free Soundfly course series called Theory for Producers. He maintains a widely-followed and influential blog, and has written for various publications, including Slate, Quartz, and NewMusicBox.
A personal OpEd on one of Sonny Rollins’ most classic melodies, and a reframed way to improvise within blues-infused modern jazz.
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. The 12-bar blues is the most important structural element in the history of American popular music. Musicians from Louis Armstrong to The White Stripes have used the…
By Elliott Sharp Editor’s note: For many years, I’ve been challenged and inspired by the work of Elliott Sharp, who has etched a place as one of America’s most dynamic modern composers. He’s hard to pin down both musically and literally, since he regularly travels the world for performance, recording, commissions, and likely a bit…