Dr Ethan Hein
@ethanhein
Followers
6,955
Following
738
Media
2,896
Statuses
109,620
Co-author of Electronic Music School with Will Kuhn and Orff tunes with Heather Fortune; columnist for @musicradar ; adjunct prof at NYU and the New School
Brooklyn, NY
Joined January 2008
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
LINGORM PANTENE TRIP
• 574045 Tweets
محمد
• 378107 Tweets
FREEN X PRADA OPENING STORE
• 206104 Tweets
#KingPowerBirthdayxEngfa
• 71199 Tweets
علي النبي
• 71147 Tweets
Kindiki
• 65113 Tweets
ホームラン
• 58587 Tweets
APO DELIGHTS AND SURPRISES
• 56927 Tweets
KAOPP 1ST FAN MEETING
• 48302 Tweets
Hayırlı Cumalar
• 47984 Tweets
新刀剣男士
• 27477 Tweets
WIN BA PRADA WMW
• 27172 Tweets
オースティン
• 27113 Tweets
LMSY AFFAIR FINAL EP
• 22380 Tweets
Wizkid
• 21757 Tweets
#جمعه_مباركه
• 21294 Tweets
IEBC
• 17090 Tweets
#bebekkatilleri
• 11359 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
New on MusicRadar, I try to answer the question, why are dudes still pulling out guitars at parties and playing "Wonderwall" if they weren't even born yet in 1995 when it came out?
1
2
14
To paraphrase a saying, this isn't California's worst year in the last hundred, it's California's best year in the next thousand
This isn’t because “2020 sucks”, it’s because of climate change and the fossil fuel industry, who knew for decades the damage they would cause, but decided to destroy life on earth because it made them rich.
This isn’t a “2020 is a bad year” thing, this will continue to worsen.
397
45K
99K
25
5K
14K
Something valuable I learned from hip-hop and dance music producers: put a loop on and let it run, then go about your business while it plays for a few hours. You would be amazed by what you discover.
27
77
2K
"Fast Car" is a strange and cool song when you dig in there. The first chord in the loop is D, but Tracy Chapman never sings the note D in the verses, it's strictly A major pentatonic. But then in "remember when we were driving", the "mem" is finally a D, and it's like a firework
18
78
1K
Music theory can save you some tedious trial and error but the ear is the first and final judge. Also, don't confuse "theory" with "the stylistic conventions of the 19th century Western European aristocracy"
Do you guys think music theory is necessary to make music, or does one just need a great ear?
100
10
108
11
144
1K
It is sad hearing George Harrison talk about how much better Eric Clapton is than him at lead guitar, because, no George, he really isn't
93
81
986
Man some of you classical music people really do not like the idea that nurture is more important than nature in making a musician. Why is innate talent such an important concept to defend?
46
88
885
We should not be shocked that a guy who studied jazz saxophone should be so wrong about the African origins of the blues. College jazz programs hardly teach the blues at all, and when they do they try to explain it away as modal interchange or some such.
13
35
875
As I close in on a PhD in music education, I feel comfortable in confessing that I have never understood what sonata allegro form is
40
35
852
Listening to music tech students' final projects, and there's a recurring theme among the tracks made by the "real musicians": too much variation and disruption, an anxiety about being too repetitive
29
33
781
In songwriting class this morning we talked through structures of some Stevie Wonder classics, and it had the unintended effect of making everyone feel demoralized, because how are you supposed to write songs like those?
29
19
805
Greetings fellow olds! It's okay to prefer the music of your own youth to current pop music. It's natural! You don't have to invent fake musicological reasons why.
27
70
687
@SocialBeeHQ
@KaysenHarlow
The conversation might go a little better if you had some POC on your staff
10
12
648
Today was In A Silent Way day in music tech class. Possibly the most interesting jazz album in history in terms of its recording process.
20
116
676
While we're issuing spicy takes about music theory: if your "Western music theory" curriculum can't account for the blues, James Brown, or Missy Elliott, (and most of them can't), you have a serious problem.
9
91
670
Hey film composers! If you are trying to evoke alien-ness, stop using decontextualized non-Western music! It's a lazy racist trope to use Middle Eastern/Arabic scales to denote threatening otherworldliness.
76
69
672
A student asked me to explain the difference between analog and digital recording and mixing. I think I did a really cogent job of answering and I wanted to share what I wrote here.
7
70
622
I had a student tell me that while he does not really understand or enjoy jazz, he does adore A Love Supreme. He wanted to know, is there any more jazz that sounds like that, and why does it sound like that?
89
36
582
The ultimate "they did not need to go this hard"
"Chili's Baby Back Ribs" behind-the-scenes recording session from 1998. This is amazing.
1K
20K
117K
13
50
558
This is not it. Small children make art all the time. You can't stop them from making up songs and stories and drawing pictures and enacting elaborate theater scenarios with their toys. Making art is not hard. Giving yourself psychological permission to do it as an adult is hard.
At the core of a lot of the anti-AI stuff is an argument no one really wants to say out loud: ‘it should be harder to do things’.
tbh I don’t think this argument is entirely without merit, I think friction is good in some processes. but let’s be upfront about what we’re saying.
270
52
962
8
61
538
Comment from the Facebook Music Theory group: "C7 is Em7b5 with shoes on"
19
34
514
Here's something that music schools should be ready to handle: people who want to learn about jazz, not because they want to play jazz, but to support their ability to create hip-hop
17
36
475
Who's got two thumbs and a PhD in music education? This guy!
76
3
450
Learning music theory can only help your creativity, but having someone teach you the harmonic and formal conventions of 19th century Western European court music as if they are universal laws can absolutely harm your creativity
whenever i see somebody post this meme, i assume they got about as far as sharps and flats, tapped out, and resumed working on their cover of "Free Fallin"
34
72
2K
14
23
417
How to get paid for it
Musicians: What's something related to music that you wish you understood better?
317
25
992
3
25
393
If you want to know how weird it is for a rock/country/jazz musician to take tonal theory classes at the university level in the US, let me give you a hypothetical.
22
93
385
Hey music theory teachers! Stop teaching the diatonic modes as relative scales. You've got all these people thinking that C major and D Dorian are somehow the same thing, or that you're supposed to play D Dorian over the ii chord in C major. This is not helping!
43
20
382
Something I never heard mentioned in any music theory class is the role that repetition plays in creating musical meaning and harmonic function. Absolutely anything will start sounding good and "correct" if you repeat it over a nice groove. Seriously! Anything!
31
17
375
All music is in C major unless you count like a nerd
Actually my only worthwhile contribution to the “should scores be in C” discourse is that somebody with little experience understanding that as “scores should be in C major” and getting confused is a pretty understandable mistake
26
4
276
5
19
367
What if music that makes people feel good is the good music
Local genius forgets that humans love repetition in art
39
68
1K
16
28
347
@RealWadeGarrett
@annehelen
That look comes to you from the extremely working-class silent film star Clara Bow
24
4
317
It says a lot about America that most of the filmed documentation of Monk is from Europe, not America
Thelonious Monk performing “Blue Monk” with Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums live at the University Aula in Oslo, Noway, 1966.
355
4K
23K
9
21
348
I get it! The kids don't want their music to be boring, so they jam it with information. But in loop-based music, interest doesn't come from novelty and variation in a linear sequence, it comes from a sustained mood, a pleasurable state of mind.
13
14
345
This kind of thing is epidemic among music theory beginners. And non-beginners! "I have heard a million rock songs that use G chords in the key of A major but now I learn that G chords are not part of the key of A major?"
18
13
335
In the interests of science I asked ChatGPT some questions about things I know a lot about. As other people observed, it is exactly like talking to a very intelligent student who hasn't done any of the reading. Lots of smooth and plausible phrases, wrong most of the time.
7
20
334
There are many trance-inducing musical experiences but there's something unique about listening to a short loop repeated infinitely and identically. Brian Eno talks about how the recording doesn't change, but your experience of it does, constantly.
3
11
330
Here's a music theory concept for you: repetition and groove can make any harmony sound consonant.
12
19
318
Surprisingly contentious question: what time signature is "Row Your Boat" in
86
34
317
As a guy who studied music education at the doctoral level, I have some THOUGHTS about notation discourse. I can speak with the most authority about my own experience, which has been a bit idiosyncratic but also shows some more general trends.
8
18
305
Hey music teachers, stop squandering your effort on recreating ensemble rehearsals and performances over Zoom, and start embracing bedroom producing, songwriting, composition, and other musical activities that make actual sense in the current moment.
18
62
300
I love NYU students. I ask, "So why do they never mention swing in music theory class?" and raise my hands like a conductor, and the class replies as one, "RACISM"
7
21
303
The correct answer is, this song is in 4/4, as are all songs if you don't count like a nerd
10
8
285
Wait til the AI bros find out that 99% of the satisfaction of art making is the process itself. The product is to the process as pictures of your kids are to raising your kids.
9
24
282
Music theorists, I am begging you to cover Mixolydian and Dorian as intro-level concepts. Every time you go on r/musictheory there are half a dozen rock guitarists who are like, this song is in D, how can there be a C chord, or this song is in E minor, how can there be an A chord
24
15
277
Imagine hearing someone doing this in the stone age, what conclusion could you draw other than spirit possession
Here's Wolfgang Saus singing the bass and soprano lines of Pachelbel's canon... simultaneously.
Overtone singing is a technique that involves manipulating your vocal tract to isolate certain overtones and give the impression that you're singing two notes at the same time.
22
362
2K
5
14
269
There's a guy on r/musictheory who absolutely despises me and today he accused me of being a grifter and that is the funniest thing anyone has ever called me. Yeah, I'm on that sweet adjunct professor gravy train baby
13
0
269
If you are following this discourse from outside the music academy, you should be aware that the word "pop" means something different in a university music department than it does elsewhere.
Now NYU gives music students the option to do pop-oriented music theory and aural skills core classes, and there has been some predictable grumbling about it.
8
5
252
2
9
269
I don't want to turn into one of these Ghost World creeps who only listens to blues records from the 1920s and 30s but... have you heard those records
24
14
269
There are not that many chord combinations that sound good together, especially within the narrow conventions of mainstream pop. Like, wait til you find out about the 12-bar blues
The song that stood out to me from guts turns out has the same chords progression as wanegbt
133
365
5K
16
4
263
Now NYU gives music students the option to do pop-oriented music theory and aural skills core classes, and there has been some predictable grumbling about it.
8
5
252
@Legalbeagle2016
@Jordanfabian
@JenniferJJacobs
Hello, I'm Jewish and have deep misgivings about the Occupation, not all critics of Israel are anti-Semites, and not all defenders of Israel have the best interests of the Jews at heart
9
17
227
The first time I heard that someone literally just listened to a two-bar breakbeat for several hours while doing things around the house, I thought it was nutty. But I tried it, and you very quickly pass through boredom into a wonderful meditative state.
2
2
252
I was looking at a "progressive" music theory book aimed at rock musicians. It has no theory of the blues, dismisses the existence of the blues scale, and chooses not to talk about blue notes. People, don't do this.
9
7
236
There are plenty of new technologies that I am skeptical of or indifferent to but I finally put my finger on why AI music repulses me so intensely.
7
31
238
Every time I raise a question about how conventional musical meanings came to arise in Western culture, I find out that a lot of people are deeply committed to the idea that Western peoples' musical meanings are biologically innate, in the face of tons of evidence to the contrary
15
22
235
@vuzhmusic
@ostrichson
It's fine to look old but Alex Jones' "angry ziploc bag of tomato sauce" look is the result of his choices
3
1
230
After a month of J Dilla immersion, I can not abide these young Berklee guys' idea of "wonky" "Dilla grooves." These kids are prioritizing "wonky" over "groove" and it is not working.
19
22
233
I'm reading John Kratus on amateurism in music ed. A hundred years ago, school music was trying to prepare people for their musical lives outside of school. We have wind bands because America used to be full of wind bands.
2
17
235
Yes, that is what dance music does, and the idea that there is something wrong with it is a fallacy that I would like music schools to stop promulgating
@ethanhein
Doesn't a ton of dance music just hammer a repetitive pattern (or perhaps 2) for, like, 20 minutes?
That's not any good either, really.
9
0
0
15
9
229
Quarter notes should be called "whole beats." Eighth notes should be called "half beats." Sixteenth notes should be called "quarter beats."
29
12
225
TIL that before Joni Mitchell knew what sus chords were called, she referred to them as "chords of inquiry."
10
13
214
Is there a historical reference for the cliche that major is happy and minor is sad in Western tradition? I have the Cambridge History of Western Music Theory and the answer is not in there.
32
7
218
My analogy for analog signal degradation is a xerox of a xerox but today a student asked what a xerox is, and it turns out no one in the room had ever heard of it
12
5
214
If I achieve nothing else as a music educator, I want to obliterate the idea that rap songs "don't have melodies." Every emcee uses pitch expressively and specifically. It's an essential aspect of the music.
8
16
210
I have some defenders of status-quo music theory pedagogy following me, so to you, I offer a thought experiment.
7
75
216
Thought of a good intro music theory assignment: give students a MIDI file of Ode to Joy and have them turn it into an Ode to Sadness
9
16
207
The Rite of Spring was shockingly new, this stuff is numbingly banal
Do you think the outrage at this AI vomit is culture shock, like the riot Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring caused? Or do you think it offends us on a deeper level and that it will never be accepted as art?
62
5
231
3
10
214
It's helpful for me when the paper/article describes music as a universal language in the first sentence so I know I can stop reading right there
9
15
209
For the final day of pop aural skills, I plan to do my crash course in the history of Western tuning systems, better known as "why it's impossible to get a guitar in tune"
6
6
212
One of my aural skills pain points is the idea that students should have to transcribe things after a limited number of hearings. What is the pedagogical value of adding artificial stress to this task?
19
6
212
Last night my NYU music ed students presented their rap verses. Check out this bar: "in this plane i’m the pilate, call that pontius-ness, stay awake in econ, call that class consciousness." This from a jazz saxophonist who had never written rap before!
3
7
197
Something that came up in class this week: classical and musical theater musicians do not necessarily know how jazz works. Like, they might have heard it and enjoyed it, but they don't necessarily know what is involved in improvisation.
13
17
200
This live-action remake of Akira looks intense
Tractor-trailer crash sends 15,000 pounds of hot dog filler onto Pennsylvania highway
1K
2K
18K
2
28
197
Every semester I have to help a new bunch of classically trained musicians understand why they should avoid using functional Western tonal harmony in electronic dance or ambient music. I need the music theory teachers out there to help with this.
19
14
188
Music theory teachers: is there a better way to approach intervals than just, here's a bunch of arcana to memorize?
29
0
192
Today in music tech we were listening to some Beatles multitracks and as always, the class was surprised by how "human" everything sounds, how imperfect and even sloppy by current standards. They wanted to know if technology is the reason we expect so much perfection now.
2
14
186
Just from looking at the size and shape of Miles' glasses you can tell that he was on a different level from the rest of us
just listened to this album for the first time and 🤯 like how did bro even think of making music that sounds like this… utterly mind blowing ❤️
26
13
385
7
13
191
If you think that the blues is just Mixolydian mode on I, IV and V, as it is presently being taught in at least one place I'm familiar with, then sure, it's easy to say, this is just Western European tradition with a mild twist.
1
5
182
My suggestion for Finale users is to open all your files and save them all as Music XML, which you will be able to open from any other notation editor you may want to use in the future
5
13
187
If you are a rich person who values music, you have a moral obligation to give creative musicians money directly
The only reason Deerhoof can afford to continue is bare-bones touring, one crew, tiny equipment, self-produced records, and we didn't have kids. Even so, our income hovers near the poverty line every year. I don't understand how newer artists do it.
41
456
3K
9
18
182
9yo: "Jazz is boring, and you like it because your life is boring"
13
9
168
I know Robert is kidding but the idea that a love of repetition is "dumb" is one of the most toxic hangovers from Western European classical music fandom
Music made more sense to me when I realized my dumb monkey brain likes patterns and I will almost always enjoy music that features some element of repetition more than music that does not
16
19
419
18
8
171
One reason every music major should get familiar with synthesis: you can't learn music theory properly without considering timbre. There are no neutral sounds.
6
20
170
Some genius was in my mentions recently saying how pop songs are all I-IV-V and I literally can not find one example from my lifetime
42
3
168
Guess what, the Beatles multitracks are on the Internet Archive now! Note that these are very illegal, but also of incalculable pedagogical value. They are MOGG files, which you can open and convert using Audacity.
6
21
166
Nothing embodies "bad song, great groove" like "Get Lucky." The lyrics are ridiculous, the melody is awkward, the groove is sublime
16
3
167
I know music theory is hard and students are lazy, but in my experience, a huge obstacle to successful learning is when teachers present the conventions of 18th century Austria as if they are rules.
4
4
164
Another wish for music theory pedagogy: everybody should be playing and/or programming drums for at least a third of first semester
11
5
164
I have a dumb question: what makes Hedwig's Theme 3/8 and not 3/4? Other than "John Williams wrote it in 3/8"? Is it the tempo? The feel? I have never been able to distinguish.
59
1
159
The jazz theory class I took as an undergrad was by a wide margin the best music class I ever took period, because you would pick a solo, transcribe it, perform it; learn some form or concept, write a tune with it, perform it and play a solo on it.
I think there is probably something missing here, because a lot of students struggle to apply aural skills to other aspects of music making. Probably more could be done to connect aural skills to performance
2
0
50
3
2
158
"Sasha and Malia, you have earned the new puppy that will be coming with us to the white house."
1
22
151
D) Means testing costs more in administrative overhead than it "saves"
4
34
149
Their tracks tend to be full of good ideas, but... too full. A loop will enter, play twice, and then exit. Or a groove will get set up, run for four bars, and then be replaced by some new idea.
1
0
148
For her lyric-writing assignment, a student wrote a response to Radiohead's "Creep" from the point of view of the girl being stalked, and it is long overdue
4
3
148
Music theory richly deserves its bad reputation in universities, because the thing that music departments pass off as "intro music theory" is really "intro to a bunch of historical harmonic conventions that do not apply to the music you are interested in"
11
26
146
Had a music theory/aural skills/history department meeting this morning. On the one hand, NYU's program has become marvelously progressive, with pop and non-Western music woven into the core, with a history class on protest music, other good stuff.
3
3
147
I would like to see some serious musicological work on this question
27
15
143