An anthology with popular music examples?

George Lam

Hello everyone,

Just a quick question: is anyone familiar with an anthology for music analysis that uses popular music examples (let's say, anything that's not in the western classical canon). I suspect that copyright clearance might prohibit a publisher from exploring this, but I at least wanted to see if I've missed such a collection.

Also it might be interesting to just start an online compilation of music theory topics and pop songs where the topics can be illustrated, without actually including the notation...

Happy Holidays!



George

 

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George Lam

Assistant Professor of Music

York College CUNY

www.gtlam.com

Nicolas Meeùs

This is not really an answer to the question, or only marginally so. I wanted nevertheless to mention that Yizhak Sadaï's treatise of harmony, Harmony in its systemic and phenomenological aspects, Jerusalem, Yanetz, 1980, included an unusually large number of examples of what you call "popular music", which probably made it quite enjoyable for younger students.

The book is out of print and may not be easily found today, but it would be worth a new edition. Sadaï's conception of tonal harmony is close to that in Schoenberg's Harmonielehre, but with quite a few original views. And it is utterly readable.

Megan Lavengood

The Pop Music Interest Group maintains an examples database available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A0D64QstWef5LXhqiejkrdeBMcgdtgR2rOyw9rmtqJU/edit?usp=sharing

George Lam

Thanks for the suggestions!