All (Human) Music Is Repetition — Let’s Talk About That.
Because our brains are constantly seeking out patterns, all the music we create can be plotted somewhere along the grid of repetition.
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On Alban Berg’s Great Musical Palindrome
Hidden in plain sight in a second act interlude of Berg’s monumental Lulu, sits a full orchestra musical palindrome unlike anything in music history.
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3 Atonal Techniques for Adventurous Songwriters
Inspired by Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, here are three ways to use atonal composition techniques in your pop music-making!
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4 Different Ways to Start a Musical Sentence
When you’re composing music, you kind of have to split yourself into a bunch of different personas. There’s “you, the artist” who contributes all the emotive content; “you, the craftsperson,” who gets anally retentive over just how you’re going to translate the emotive content in such a way that another human being can interpret it with…
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What Is “Prepared Piano” and How Do You Notate It?
American composer John Cage was arguably the most prolific composer of prepared-piano music and is often credited as having invented the prepared piano, so to speak. While there were earlier instances of composers placing objects on the piano strings, or bypassing the keyboard in order to directly manipulate the strings in performance (most notably Henry…
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How Does Cory Arcangel’s Cat Video Mashup of Schoenberg’s Atonal Opus 11 Stack up Against the Original?
The New York and Stavanger, Norway-based contemporary artist Cory Arcangel is widely known and respected for his use of hacked technology such as video games and software to produce thought-provoking, beautiful artwork across a range of media. His largely absurdist oeuvre explores technology from a number of theoretical angles and offers commentary on cultures that…
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Sounds of Battle: Compositions That Defined the Wars of the Early 20th Century
In 1942, half-starved and weak from war and lack of supplies, members of Leningrad’s Philharmonic Orchestra gathered in the midst of the looming threat of bombardment to pull off one of the most extraordinary musical feats of all time. The city had already endured almost a year of brutal siege by the German Army —…
