a different kind of buzz: harmony, white femininity, and multi-racial white supremacist patriarchy

[this is a little rough; i may come back and edit it if i have time this weekend. that said, i’d love any thoughts or feedback you might have.] When I first heard Lorde’s single “Royals” on Charlotte radio, all…

On Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages: unless you realize this is about the overtone series, you probably misread Rousseau’s argument

So, this post is really rough and sorely in need of editing, but I need to get it up and running for my Phil of Music course, which starts Monday. In some ways it’s a tl;dr of one of the…

"Just Ludacris Enough"

“Just Ludacris Enough”

I’m giving a talk titled “Just Ludacris Enough” several times in the next week or two. Here are links to the blog posts & articles I’m using as the basis of the talk: My article in The New Inquiry, “Loving the Alien.”This…

My Life Would Suck Without You/Where Have You Been All My Life: Tension-and-Release Structures In Tonal Rock and Non-Tonal EDM-Pop

In this post, I contrast the formal elements in the song and video for Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” with the formal elements in the song and video for Rihanna’s “Where Have You Been All My Life.”…

Sovereign Harmony and Biopolitical Frequency: Or, what Attali and LMFAO can teach us about neoliberalism

“Every major social rupture has been preceded by an essential mutation in the codes of music, in its mode of audition, and in its economy” (Attali, Noise 10).[1] So I’ve been thinking more about this idea of “transmission,” and I’ve…

Schenker and “The Soar”: Modifying tonal conventions for not-really-tonal music

Schenker and “The Soar”: Modifying tonal conventions for not-really-tonal music

“Rhythm” and “Harmony” are often offered as contrasting, if not opposed, ways of organizing pieces of music. As the famous diagram attests, Western music uses harmony (chords) as its way of organizing pieces of music: all you need to start…