How Jonny Greenwood Uses Materiality, Clusters, and Aleatoricism in His Film Music
We break down a handful of composer Jonny Greenwood’s go-to techniques in examples from his scores to Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood.
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Billie Eilish’s “You Should See Me in a Crown” Is Microtonality Gone Pop
+ 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 dark is afraid of Billie Eilish. The 16-year-old electro-pop phenom recently dropped her newest track, “You Should See Me in a Crown,” and it is some…
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On Voice Leading and Tresillo in Troye Sivan & Ariana Grande’s “Dance to This”
+ 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. YouTube sensation and new-heartthrob-on-the-block Troye Sivan just dropped his new single, “Dance to This,” which features guest vocals by Ariana Grande. Yes, this song is destined to be…
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How ‘Apocalypse Now’ Etched Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ into Our Brains Forever
There would be only a handful of musical pieces that could rival Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” for its iconic status in screen music. It was present in the starting days of silent cinema when chosen by D.W. Griffith to partially score his controversial, artistic watershed, Birth of a Nation (1915), and it was lovingly parodied by…
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Chartmania!! I Broke Down Every Song That Reached the Billboard Top 5 in 2017
Alright songwriters and song-guzzlers alike, strap on your boots for a knowledge voyage with more divergent rectangles than the NYC skyline: that’s right, the top pop charters have now become 2017’s top pop graphed. The Top 40 song charters that is, but why 40? Well, besides this number’s significance in pop music as a result of…
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5 Compositional Elements That Define the Music of Ennio Morricone
You know these iconic sounds of movie Westerns, now dive deeper into the makeup of Ennio Morricone’s signature works via these five compositional elements.
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Philip Tagg’s Everyday Tonality
This article originally appeared on The Ethan Hein Blog. I complain a lot on my blog about the traditional teaching of music theory. Fortunately, a better alternative exists: Everyday Tonality by Philip Tagg. Don’t be put off by the DIY look of the website; the book is the single best explanation I know of for how harmony works across…
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Longing for Simpler Times? Why the ‘Good Old Days’ Ain’t So Simple This Time Around
Have you heard Macklemore and Kesha’s recent duet, “Good Old Days”? It’s got a main theme everyone can relate to: “why, oh why, did I take those days gone by for granted?” The video features some pretty universal moments as well, just driving through the woods in a van at various states of chill along…
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How Taylor Swift Turned Right Said Fred’s Body-Positive Hit Into a Revenge Fantasy
+ Soundfly helps curious musicians meet their goals with online courses like The Creative Power of Advanced Harmony and Pop Vocal Production. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe for unlimited access. Last night, Taylor Swift released a new single, and it’s already blowing up. That in and of itself is about as unsurprising as…
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The Musical and Sociopolitical Evolution of Kanye’s Use of Soul Music Samples
+ Learn the nuances of producing beats, arranging tracks, and creative sampling, drawing on the rich history and influence of hip-hop in Soundfly’s acclaimed online course, The Art of Hip-Hop Production. Between the old-school sound of his debut album, College Dropout, in 2004 and the ultra-synthesized feel of his most recent album, 2016’s The Life Of Pablo, there…
