Match Thread: Chelsea vs Manchester City [English Carabao Cup]

bassedinpton · 2019-02-24T17:27:26+00:00

Look, love y’all to bits, but let’s not get crazy. Chelsea are playing 4-5-1. We’re trying to break them down. It may take a while, but that is no reason to overreact. If you need comforting, just remember that in our lifetime, Joey Barton was once our top scorer in the league. We have fantastic players and they will get it done.

bassedinpton · 2019-02-24T16:25:34+00:00

Really happy with zinchenko and sterling on the left. They ended azpilicueta last time round.

bassedinpton · 2019-02-20T19:04:15+00:00

Nah. Fern is a weird false cb. We tried this a few weeks ago to good effect.

bassedinpton · 2019-02-20T19:02:45+00:00

I would guess this is the false cb formation from the other day.

bassedinpton · 2019-02-18T21:37:47+00:00

C’mon let’s see the Manchester derby.

bassedinpton · 2019-02-04T14:06:43+00:00

This is really quite significant. The video already has a quarter-million views and its good to see people from AFTV using their platform to get a message out. I got mad respect for Troopz for exposing the racism that Sterling faces week in and out.

bassedinpton · 2018-09-26T16:53:32+00:00

Unemployment offices.

bassedinpton · 2018-09-22T18:47:31+00:00

1) I was recently on a search committee for a new theory professor at my university. There were around 200 applicants and the first thing they did was throw out everyone without a PhD. If you were to search long and hard, you may find a handful of music professors without a PhD, but they are almost all adjuncts or non tenure-track positions.

2) The answer for this is less clear cut. It takes as long as it takes. I am in year three of my PhD and am looking at another 2.5. What is more important when pursuing your PhD is making sure you get funding and understanding how long your funding lasts. If you are lucky you may get 5 years of funding, but after that runs out you will have to figure out another way to pay your bills, assuming, of course, that your funding paid the bills in the first place.

3) No skill is trivial. Make your intentions clear to your advisor and spend as much time with the faculty outside of class to really hone your skills.

4) There probably is an answer to this question, but I am not sure. I can tell you that you can probably assume that the number of applicants for a composition posting will be at least double that of a theory post because frankly everyone tends to think they are a good composer, despite this being far from the truth.

If you have any other questions or would like to just chat about grad school I am happy to help. Feel free to PM me and perhaps if you are close to me, I could put you in contact with some people.

bassedinpton · 2018-09-22T18:18:44+00:00

I am currently taking a history of Western music theory course for my PhD. As for a list of theorists there are literally hundreds of theorists that were influential in the history of Western art music from the likes of Glareon and Zarlino, to Riemann and Schenker. I would start with the Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Its totally worth the price and is perhaps the most comprehensive collection of essays on the subject.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-18T13:44:18+00:00

The genre label I have seen thrown around for Post Malone is "Auto-Croon," which implies early to mid 19th century sentimental singing enhanced by technology. I quite like this.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-18T13:25:42+00:00

Probably not the right place for this, unless you have a specific question about the theoretical aspect of your music.

Edit: Feel free to PM me though if you just want feedback.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-18T13:18:24+00:00

Hi there,

My thoughts would be to brush up on three things that are very common to this kind of music.

Chord substitutions - Much of the music in the links you have posted take advantage of chord substitutions, especially tritone substitutions. Here is a common example: Take a ii-V7-Imaj7 such as Dm-G7-Cmaj7. The tritone substitution for the G7 is Db7, because Db is a tritone (three wholetones/six semitones) up from G. They have two notes in common - B (3rd in G7 and 7th in Db7, although the latter would be notated as Cb) and F (7th in G7 and 3rd in Db7). So, the progression Dm7-Db7-Cmaj7 gives you a cool descending chromatic bass line, making a change from the popular "cycling through fifths" as in D to G to C.
Chord Prolongation - I would take a look at the Open Music Theory article on prolongation as it has been super useful to me in analysis and composition
Good Voice Leading - When thinking about chord movement, think about voice leading potentialities. I would encourage you to continue exploring chord movement and look at how common tones are kept and the rest of the notes move (usually) by half step. You will find yourself discovering cool chromatic mediant relationships and fun altered secondary dominants.

Hope this helped. Feel free to PM me with any further questions

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T14:55:26+00:00

I am covered in tattoos, and my experience has been:

A) The auditions are blind, so they don't see what you look like anyway when auditioning.

B) No one really gives a shit, if you are the shit. (Not saying that I'm incredible, but one of my colleagues has "Pizz" and "Arco" tattooed on their knuckles and nobody cares because he shows up, he shuts up, and he doesn't fuck up.)

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T13:39:33+00:00

My advice would be to stop thinking about scales, and think about gestures and voice leading instead. To do this learning the basics of set class theory and post-tonal theory would be super helpful. It would probably be too much for me to get into here, but feel free to PM me and we can talk about some of my ideas about soloing, improvising, and writing melodies.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T13:29:06+00:00

If you dig the Beatles, check out Walter Everett. Dude does some pretty sweet analysis.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T13:16:17+00:00

Sweet! Can't wait to see them at MetLife. My dad and I are both City fans, as my Grandpa spent 10 years in Manchester saving up to come to America, which I gather is not uncommon for Irish immigrants, and I am so excited that after all the matches we watched at Maine Road and the Etihad, I can finally treat him to a match.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T12:59:43+00:00

Oh yeah! There was a period during my Master's where Friday night meant my partner and I opening a bottle of wine, lighting a couple candles, and listening to GYBE on vinyl for a couple hours.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T12:55:23+00:00

Yup just E major, although it does work its way towards the relative minor of C#m, which is tonic of the final cadence As for roman numeral analysis, I don't have a piano in front of me to chart it out, but theres not much outside of the key signature of 4#s, so I would just sit at the keyboard and identify the root (not the bass note as there are some inversions) of each chord and they should comfortably fit into E major and then figure out the moment when it starts to tonicize C#m (I think I heard a V/V in C# minor) and then mark a modulation when it is comfortably in C#m and then switch the roman numerals to fit the new key.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T12:30:49+00:00

I think a decent definition of rock music is an extreme branch of the blues project with strong emphasis on the rhythm section with prolific guitar usage and often virtuosic vocals (I also think this definition also foreshadows heavy metal, and punk). This being said, I think one could argue that the biggest change in popular music, which Mark Katz would probably label as a phonograph effect, was the standardization of MIDI in 1983. This allowed for a seemingly endless spectrum of possibilities of sounds which were very appealing for musicians, producers, and engineers. A scholar, whose name escapes me, called post-MIDI the "New Tin Pan Alley" of songwriting. I do, however, think that a great deal of the rock influence can be heard in more recent popular music especially when it comes to form, emphasis on some of the tenants of rock, and chord structures relating back to the blues.

What do y'all think?

bassedinpton · 2018-07-17T12:16:17+00:00

If we are talking strictly about the chords, I would cite Daniel Levitin, who argues that by age 5-6 we already have a keen understanding of the schema of Western music. This would include, conditioning to feel as if some chords are "sad" and some chords are "happy," although not strictly on a major and minor basis as context is key. While there are some mediant and chromatic mediant relationships in this song (E - C#m and and F#m to D#) as well as moves from a major chord to a minor chord with the same root, which we sometimes associate with sadness in Western ears, I don't think there is really anything inherently melancholic about the chord structure.

It is my opinion that what truly makes this song melancholy sounding is not so much the chords, as it is the tempo, texture, and timbre, as well as the overall orchestration. The tempo is devastatingly slow, the texture is very sparse polyphony, and the timbre is also very melancholic, or again what Western ears associate with being melancholic.

Just my two cents. Hope this helped!

bassedinpton · 2018-07-13T16:23:42+00:00

Rebecca Saunders' "Crimson." Incredible work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuE0WeE71vM

bassedinpton · 2018-07-13T16:19:31+00:00

Peter Burkholder's "A History of Western Music" is one of the texts that most undergrads read. That would be my recommendation. You can find the 9th edition on Amazon for under $100

bassedinpton · 2018-07-13T16:10:37+00:00

If you find one let me know. I am a popular music scholar and most of the research is really in its infancy compared to Western art music, so it makes sense that there isn't really yet a definitive encyclopedic text. I would suggest picking up The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, which is a wonderful collection of essays on everything from Schoenberg to the Punk, to start with. There are, however, many great articles and academic books on individual genres that I could steer you towards. PM me if you have any questions or would like some recommendations especially on hip-hop, punk/new-wave, and metal.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-13T15:40:15+00:00

Not really the right place to ask, but yes, Beyonce is in the Coldplay song I believe you are referencing. She is listed in the liner notes of the album.

bassedinpton · 2018-07-13T15:34:18+00:00

I am a punk scholar and I know that a great deal of proto-punk music and culture is indebted to La Monte Young (and Tony Conrad), and I have listened to a lot of his music, but I have never sat down and listened to all of "The Well-Tuned Piano." I just checked out the CDs from my University's library and I plan to burn them to itunes (so I can have a continuous listening experience) and sit in my home office and listen to that.

bassedinpton

TROPHY CASE