Hello!

If you would like to participate in discussions, please sign in or register.

In this Discussion

Most Popular This Week

    Due to changing needs and technologies, the SMT Executive Board has decided to retire SMT Discuss (effective Nov. 9, 2021). Posts will be preserved for archival purposes, but new posts and replies are no longer permitted.

    "Recent" posts

    Dear colleagues, I feel guiltily self serving in announcing my own work, but here goes. I have a blog, musictheorybridges.wordpress.com, devoted to applying "traditional" theoretical perspectives to (broadly-construed) "popular" music and putting "classical" and "popular" music side by side. (I've shared posts from it here before.) I intend it as a form of public musicology for a musically-educated audience, and I also sometimes use readings from it for class assignments. For example, though I wrote this too late to use it this year, I will probably use the post on the suspension in the Miley Cyrus song "Wrecking Ball" in future semesters. I share these posts in case you might also find them useful in your teaching, in case you might enjoy them over your spring break, or at the very least to keep improving my visitors count until I get tenure! In case it's helpful, I try to use lots of tags so that it's easy to find posts based on genre (pop, rock, etc.), famous artists (e.g., The Beatles), topics (lament bass), and even types of theory classes (chromatic harmony, form, etc.).

    If anyone has any questions about running a blog for a broader audience, or what kind of impact I feel like I have, I'd be happy to chat sometime.

    Is Scale Degree 6 Dangerous?

    I Came In Like a Suspension

    Bruno Mars Causes the Feels (Expectation in “When I Was Your Man”)

    Variations on "With a Little Help From My Friends"

    Aesthetics of the Singer-Songwriter Progression

    Mozart's Horn Concerto, K. 412, "Ob-la-di"

    Chord Loops vs. Progressive Harmony

    Sonata Form and Pop Music

    Sign In or Register to comment.

    Comments

    • 2 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
    • Fabulous!  Thank you so much for doing this.  It's not only laypeople who will enjoy these, but music theorists as well.

      How come you decided to do this in the form of a blog, as opposed to a YouTube series, podcast, webinar, etc?

      I'm in the process of launching a similar YouTube series, so we should definitely stay in touch! 

    • Thank you, Sam! Honestly, those other formats didn't even occur to me. But thinking about them now, the blog still feels right because for whatever reason, I'd rather not have my face on screen or my voice coming out of people's speakers. I think it's also easier for people to stumble upon since the text is easily indexed by Google. I'll look forward to your series!